WHY I AM A MENNONITE FARMER

William Dellinger

Prayer and Beginning

The winter sun is rising. In a grove of bare trees, I begin my morning prayers: "Lord father, mother, brother, sister, protect and flourish these trees, the land, and my family. Purify the land, air, water, and us from the sin of civilization."

As I contemplate the subject of this article, and speculate how I became a Mennonite Christian and a farmer, I compare myself humbly to a tree in the forest. Does a tree ever decide to grow this way or that? Does it assign causal connections to the size and bend of branches? I doubt it. The tree, in a silent wisdom, is as it is, because that’s the way it "treed", or in Christian terms, because that’s the way God made it.

In a similar sense, I am a Mennonite farmer because that’s the way God made me. But I’m not as wise as any tree, nor am I as full of God’s silent spirit, so I try to examine the rings and branches of my spiritual growth, even while realizing that the only cause of these effects is God.

Every generation of my family until my time had been farmers, since my ancestor Johann Georg Döllinger and his wife Catherine Krayhenbuhl immigrated to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1726, but I was not raised with the expectation of being a farmer, and there was no family farm.

Nonetheless, I decided to become a farmer after the birth of my first son thirty years ago, during the oil embargo of 1973. I was working at a gas station as an attendant, pumping gas and washing every window, mirror, and light of every customer’s car. I saw close-up the fear, anger, hatred, and boiling violence people held barely beneath the surface as they queued up for their daily dose of gasoline.

That small gas station, in a rural Midwestern town, had mile-long lines of enraged and fear-struck people. I’d never before or since seen or felt such imminent violence. I could see that eventually this violence and hate would be directed at someone, somewhere, as some war. And it has been, ever since.

I’ve been a pacifist since the early 1960s, and I could not bear the thought of fighting, killing, or being killed. I could not bear having my newborn son be required and taught to do the same, all for oil.

But I could not—and still cannot—imagine a vocation that would not participate in or encourage these energy wars. Examining just the least bit of history, energy wars were preceded by land wars or food wars. They will be followed by more land wars, food wars, and water wars. How does any person live on this earth without participating in these wars or desiring to enjoy their spoils?

Any of us who wants to be a moral person must eventually face this dilemma and deal with it as we can. But our situation is rather like that of a goldfish deciding whether to participate in water—war and violence are the systemic goldfish bowl of water we all swim in. My best escape, I thought, my best choice, was to live in rural isolation, and to farm.

Farming

Farming is, of course, not the perfect choice for a pacifist, but I know of none better. This land was a battleground between the Missouri and the Osage, then later between those tribes pushed here by the westward white expansion. To the best of my knowledge, no treaty nor peaceable agreement passed on title to this land. I cannot deny I am the beneficiary of blood-soaked land. (While I’d like to pay reparations to the Missouri tribe, it is extinct. And how does one pay for wiping out a tribe and stealing its land?)

Neither is my farming removed from the oil economy. Although I do farm naturally, without chemicals or oil-based fertilizer, I also use a truck to carry produce to market, to deliver eggs, and to commute to several jobs to help support the farm.

But at least farming potentially produces clean food for people, with a minimum of environmental damage or demand for scarce resources, including oil. I am not free of the oil economy, but I could do worse. Farming is the best I know to do; it is the most moral vocation I could find.

I cannot deny that I also enjoy living in isolation, partly removed from the rush, noise, and stench of civilization. And it is a very small way. Since I did not inherit land, or kill indigenous people for land, I have to buy land, although a mortgage sometimes seems indistinguishable from lifelong rent. Even amid striving for simplicity and self-sufficiency, the purchase of land requires hard income. So a simple effort to depart a violent, resource-war economy can pull us back into the economy. We cannot simply quit the world; we have to pay for our release. One might say this is swimming in circles in a goldfish bowl while calling it open water.

Becoming Mennonite

Somehow, being the regular flawed individual I am, overwork, exhaustion, nervousness, and stress for me lead to and become self-destructive behavior. Self-destructive behavior and self-hatred are companions; they are diseases that arise together. I realize this is my story, but I’ve seen the same story in many people, and I see it in you. Success becomes failure; doing what is correct and moral step-by-step leads to eventual defeat and self-hate.

Thus a life committed to remaining close to nature, to living spiritually and peaceably, can easily lead to a dark and hopeless existence. There is no way out, it seems, from the fishbowl. No escape. And the water is becoming dark and smelly.

Looking back, it seems that this encompassing darkness, the sense of failure in life (which everyone eventually faces), and the self-destructiveness of always working harder and earning ever more money is a cycle called "sin." There is no God in this, no love accepted from Jesus Christ. And one is never acceptable.

By chance, I was researching my family tree and discovered my first American ancestor had come to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, as a Mennonite refugee, then settled in Shenandoah County, Virginia, his farm at the farthest end of a long road. He was a farmer, but a Mennonite farmer, his wife the daughter of a Swiss Mennonite minister, Peter Krayhenbuhl. He had come to this place as a Mennonite seeking peace, and I wanted to know how he had sought peace and whether he had found it.

To belong to a church that seeks peace and to profess belief in a prophet and a God who promise peace has to mean more than simply voting for the most pro-peace candidate, although often there are none. Of course, I was also seeking peace in my own heart, and to me Jesus Christ is the prince of worldly peace, and also the prince of my peace.

Quietly and gradually I came to know God and Jesus in my search. It was like a soft rain that comes in gradually on a fall afternoon, but then continues steadily day after day.

The loneliness of sin (separation from God) has gone away. Although I sometimes sink, and begin to think I stand alone, this thankfully is a brief nightmare; I usually quickly recognize the darkness of pursuing some self-destructive goal.

Ironically, ambition, self-improvement, and self-development all have hurt me; what is important is that I am not important. There is nothing I have accomplished or ever will accomplish. I’ve begun to relish anonymity, quiet, the cyclical sessions of my life, rather than the linear trajectory of a life shooting, like an arrow released from the bow, toward imagined success.

I am now looking at the virtue of humility as a reward of the Christian life and of growing with Jesus. I might have seen humility as a goal at some point, because being important is a burden, a weight upon the soul and heart, both spiritually and physically. To be in humble growth with Jesus is light and relieving, a continually amazing reward. I was raised and educated to be important, and it takes something to look at the world with these new eyes. It takes Jesus.

It is also a relief to live simply and frugally, and to be relieved from the distracting sins of over-consumption, greed, and comparison-shopping, in which buyers and sellers compare consumption patterns to those typical for their social class and age, and compare themselves to those successful, happy people. The pickup I drive, the food we eat, the clothes we wear, and the house we live in are all compared to what the current class standards are (as clearly communicated by media) for our race, age, and education.

Deviating from these norms causes people to wonder, to distrust, and in some ways to ostracize and persecute. But as a Christian, and particularly as a Mennonite, I am relieved of this burden of belonging, this burden of conformity. I am separate with Jesus.

Indeed, every Christian worldwide must be separate from this world. I realize this becomes more and more difficult for Christians, and potentially more illegal, but that’s how sin works. It is not so easy not to sin and to remain in growth with Jesus. It is easy, and quickly rewarding, to rejoin the world.

For me, it is impossible to be part of the world as a fully participating capitalist—or as a communist or socialist, for that matter. While my heart is with Jesus, I just have no heart for profit, for acquisition, or for hierarchy—either to honor the existing hierarchy or to advance my position in the economic hierarchy. I just don’t have the heart for it.

There is another important reason I am a Mennonite Christian: the intertwining of gentleness, love, and compassion. These are related and appear to me to be central to the spirit of Jesus and to the practice of Mennonites. This is also why I have always found Buddhism and Christianity to be so alike; these practices are important to both Buddha and Christ.

They serve me well, for farming can be violent: violent in the way a farmer treats his livestock, helpers, and family; violent in the way a farmer sees himself as king and lord, or servant; violent when a farmer thinks he owns land versus recognizing that the land owns him. Certainly gentleness and compassion are vital when working with animals, plants, and people. They matter also when working with tools, and machinery, with woodworking and blacksmithing, and with every breath and step I take.

This spirit of gentleness, love, and compassion are central to Jesus and the New Testament (2 Cor. 10:1). And I see that this is how Jesus has been with me.

Farming as a Mennonite Christian

Although these days many might prefer to flee that legacy, Mennonites have often understood themselves to be the "quiet in the land." Quiet. The term implies more than it says.

David Augsburger speaks of three distinct stages of growth in a relationship with Jesus (Dissident Discipleship, Braoz Press, 2006, p. 11). The first stage is learning to love oneself and therefore to stop hurting oneself, to cease self-destructive behavior. While we all may strive to love our neighbor as ourselves, we forget perhaps to love ourselves first, then our neighbor in like regard. Experientially, I agree with this and see it in others and myself.

Derrick Jensen, an environmental anarchist, notes that cultures, families, governments, and nations relate to themselves as they relate to their land base. Those cultures which spawn abusers of children, abusers of women, and rapists also destroy their own land, destroying, as it were, the very ground beneath their feet. Abusers are abusers, and the land base is another silent victim (Endgame, vol. 1, Seven Stories Press, 2006, p. 155ff.).

These same cultures and abusers will also become self-destructive and will over-produce, over-consume, and over-pollute until death—the death of the land, of the abuser, or of the victims. The abuser will engage in playground bullying on a local, national, and global scale until a victim strikes back, fulfilling the abuser’s self-destruction.

Combining and synthesizing the thoughts of Augsburger and Jensen (which might shock or distress them both), I return again to the notion of Mennonites as the quiet in the land and as a peaceful people. I return again to my quiet in the land, and to my peace, and how I try to be a peacemaker in this land and with people. How do I, as a Mennonite farmer, intend to do this? How do I begin to grow in relationship with Jesus Christ, cease the encompassing sins of self-destruction, and learn to be quiet in the land?

I prefer to be practical here, rather than lofty and theoretical. The following are simple rules I pray for, even as I regretfully recognize some will offend us all individually:

Refusing to accept government subsidies. I pray this land will be part of the kingdom of God and not the earthly human kingdom. Government subsidies buy control. They cause environmental destruction, collapse poorer nations’ agricultural economies worldwide, and make welfare addicts of potentially free people.

Refusing to use chemicals, including pesticides, insecticides, rodenticides, and herbicides. Anything with the root word cide in it is not healthy to put on land or on food. Chemicals and chemical companies are expedient perhaps, but I cannot as a Mennonite Christian use these chemicals, or feed them to you, my neighbors.

Eat no meat, raise no meat, and raise no meat for sale. Raising livestock is the least efficient use of land, is cruel, and cannot preserve the environment. Corporate meat, large-scale livestock production, and the eating of meat are bad for people and the land base. It has to end.

Use a minimum of oil and oil by-products. Animal power must eventually suffice. Regardless of wars, price controls, and subsidies, there is a finite oil supply. We are always limited today to this day’s sunlight energy, and using any more manufactured energy is false economy. It would be even better if intensive agriculture used solely human power, but that involves work, and might even be so extreme as to involve white people in work. This too may be far distant in the future, but it will come.

"The trees of the field clap their hands" (Isa. 55). Farm every field as a garden. Prefer birds, insects, and beauty over industrial cleanliness and order. Remember that God’s first creative act upon earth was to create a garden, then the gardeners. It is our God-given destiny to reclaim and restore the garden.

Pray at the start and end of the day. Pray before entering or leaving the garden, before seeding, before weeding, and before harvest. Pray a hedgerow around your lands (Job 1:10).

Farm quietly. Farm quietly so that you can hear the singing of the birds, frogs, and insects, and the singing and whistling of the farmer. If you do not hear such music, something is wrong with the farmer; with the birds, frogs, and insects; or with the farming.

Farm small. Farm so small that you know your land and land base like the back of your hands. Get to know your hands.

Plant a tree for every day of your life, to help pay your debt to earth.

Grow one-half of your gardens for the poor. Grow that half for biological and institutional widows and orphans. Give the harvest away without expecting praise or reward. Become poor, become nameless.

Do not develop, grow, or eat artificial or ungodly life forms. This includes engineered plants or animals or any life form owned by anyone other than God.

Do not own, encourage, acknowledge as real, or work for any artificial being. This includes machines, computers, and corporations.

Become the quiet in the land.

—William Döllinger (Dellinger) is a farmer and member of Mt. Pisgah Mennonite Church, Cherry Box, Missouri.