EDITORIAL
A Ballet of Cultures

Michael A. King

TIn telling us of being a “real” ballerina, Kathy Nussbaum provides an engaging image through which to view this issue of DreamSeeker Magazine. This is because many of these articles in some way explore a ballet of cultures, or occasionally, its absence.

Earl Zimmerman tells of his and wife Ruth’s engagement in the ballet of their own and Indian culture. Gene Stoltzfus invites us to witness, of all things, a ballet of Amish and Buddhist cultural gifts. My column on marriage is not primarily a ballet of cultures yet was set in motion by a question from our African “son.”

Deborah Good is seeking to visualize what more graceful ballet might emerge if U.S. views of land ownership were less focused on private property and open to learnings even from the culture of a purple martin.

Mary Alice Hostetter tells of that life-defining moment in which she leaves her Mennonite subculture. Where does she go? She doesn’t tell us, but her steering wheel seems pointed toward the larger American culture. Now, by the very act of looking back at the leaving, she implicitly weaves for us a ballet of the subculture she left and whatever one she now writes from within.

Randy Klassen wrestles with how contemporary culture treats God as speaking (or not) through the Bible. We might see him as seeking a ballet of biblical and current cultural understandings. Some might choreograph the dance to favor one culture or the other more than Klassen does, but whatever the ideal balance, Klassen helps us enter a life-giving ballet.

Renee Gehman zooms in on one aspect of the biblical versus contemporary cultures ballet: foot washing. With both humor and candor she takes us inside preparations for the experience and helps us wonder how we experience the fullest meaning and humility of this particular dance between cultures.

Noël R. King sounds a cautionary note: What if the goal of the ballet is for a giant to plump us up for eating? Might her fable invite us to ponder how in fact cultural relations can be a ballet and not a dominance—even if by seduction that at first feels good—of one culture by another, as so often happens?

The books Daniel Hertzler reviews turn out to focus on the ballet between Jesus’ culture and ours. Who was Jesus to his people? Who is he to us? How do we dance with the real Jesus, not just our fantasy of who he was? These are some of the matters Hertzler explores.

Finally, is it too much of a stretch to see Dave Greiser as plumbing learnings from a ballet between ordinary and prison cultures, and Alan Soffin between the consumerist culture and whatever culture transcends it? —Michael A. King