by MarianBeaman | May 28, 2014 | Coming of Age, Conflict, Family / Nostalgia, Mennonite Lore, Nostalgia, Uncategorized
“Mare – yun,” my mother calls (yells, actually), “It’s time to lick the green stamps again. The books are on top of the kitchen table.” Mom likes to interrupt my reading. To me time with my books is serious business but to her it’s play. Not working. Wasting...
by MarianBeaman | May 24, 2014 | book review, Conflict, Family / Nostalgia, Uncategorized
This July, my friend and author Kathy Pooler will be celebrating Independence Day in a big way launching her memoir in early July. The book’s title Ever Faithful to His Lead: My Journey Away from Emotional Abuse hints at the road Kathy has traveled from victim...
by MarianBeaman | May 21, 2014 | Education, Family / Nostalgia, Memory, Mennonite History, Mennonite Lore, Nostalgia, Tips, Uncategorized
Here is my mother’s family of four brothers and one sister in a farm meadow in the 1940s. They are children of Abram Hernley Metzler and Sadie Landis Metzler, a Mennonite family of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Standing in birth order are her brothers Landis,...
by MarianBeaman | May 17, 2014 | book review, Conflict, Family / Nostalgia, Literature, Uncategorized
I am happy to introduce a new writer to these pages, Mary Gottschalk. Actually you have already visited Mary’s website if you read my recent post on her blog Flying the Coop: Leaving Mennonite Land. But though she is new to my blog, Mary is certainly not a new...
by MarianBeaman | May 14, 2014 | Family / Nostalgia, meditation, Mennonite Lore, Purple Passage, Quotations, Uncategorized
Miracles & Problems Uncertainty & Faith The opposite of doubt is not faith. It’s certainty. Faith based on certainty is no faith at all. Anne Lamott Embrace the present. Uncertainty is no excuse for paralysis. Do not wait for good to happen...
by MarianBeaman | May 10, 2014 | Coming of Age, Conflict, Family / Nostalgia, Mennonite History, Mennonite Lore, Nostalgia, Uncategorized
This is the family I grew up in: my parents Ray and Ruth with my two sisters and one brother. But after I left home and eventually married, my parents had more children. No, my mother was not a modern-day Sarah. She didn’t have babies in old age. But in their early...
by MarianBeaman | May 7, 2014 | Coming of Age, Conflict, Family / Nostalgia, Memory, Mennonite Lore, Purple Passage, Uncategorized
It’s spring concert time and I’m making my fingers fly fast over the strings of my violin pizzicato style, trying to keep up with the syncopated rhythms of The Typewriter Song. Noah Klauss, the director of our Elizabethtown High School Orchestra, is a fan of Leroy...
by MarianBeaman | May 3, 2014 | Coming of Age, Conflict, Education, Family / Nostalgia, Mennonite Lore, Nostalgia, Uncategorized
My mother saved all my report cards. When I retrieved them from the attic, only grade 8 was missing. They are tall documents, sheathed in a coarse, brown envelope. And they speak for me as a student: mostly A’s with a smattering of Bs. Once I got a C- on a...
by MarianBeaman | Apr 30, 2014 | Family / Nostalgia, Gratitude, meditation, Memory, Mennonite Lore, Nostalgia, Reflection, Uncategorized
Over forty years ago I left Lancaster county and my Mennonite life. Though I have visited dozens of times since then, Jacksonville, Florida, has been my home. Nonetheless, every single day I notice myself repeating rituals that reveal the imprint of my early training....
by MarianBeaman | Apr 26, 2014 | Coming of Age, Conflict, Education, Literature, Mennonite History, Quotations, Uncategorized
Is a family graduation on your calendar this year? As a faculty member at Florida State College at Jacksonville (then Florida Community College), I attended graduation every year in full regalia with hundreds of ecstatic grads, joyful families, and proud faculty and...
