Although my last name is German I am not an ethnic Mennonite but grew up in the Mennonite church with my family . I attended Locust Grove Mennonite School in Lancaster, PA, but we found the Mennonite church deep in the jungle far on the other side of the world in a warzone. My father was drafted out of high school in 1965 straight into the armored cavalry in the United States Amry. He fought in the American War in Vietnam, and amidst the violence on land and people he found peace. As he rode in his armored tank, surrounded by a calvalcade of armed and marching soldiers my father remembers a group of Buddhist Monks that came walking for peace into the small village where his brigade was occupying. He saw about a dozen monks wearing only saffron tunics walking for peace with no food, no weapons, only prayer. Dad committed himself to finding a group of Christians that carried out their faith commitments in the same way, following Christ in simplicity, peace, and community. It led him to the Mennonite Church when he returned to Lancaster. This war brought my family to the Mennonite Church, and shaped a great journey of peace and community for me.

I felt as though the Mennonite Church was my family as a child. I was full of faith. After attending the Mennonite Church for over five years we were still being introduced to visiting clergy and outsiders as “the Ferich family from the city that came to know Christ through the urban outreach ministries of the church.” We were never going to be full members, somehow brought into the community to make the leadership feel justified. The church leadership chose to remember what they “gave” us more than needing us in the community. This is a framework of charity and not a framework for justice. Within the charity framework the “giver” decides which questions are asked, chosing who is empowered. Charity is justice with an ego.

how does this connect with charity and justice?

Sometimes the exclusion of individuals within our communities of faith is as subtle as the distinction between justice and charity. When I was in college I studied in the rainforests of Belize for a semester. During this time as I lived near howler monkeys and snakes that could kill you with a single bite. I came to deeply love the deep interconnection of systems through understanding ecology, a radical realization that has shaped my understanding of Communion and all Sacraments. IN Belize I realized that The Communion is perhaps one of the best manifestations of Community. This cup is our communion with each other and the land, it is the Body of Christ. It is our communion with the land, the land that grows the wheat and the grapevines that become our bread and wine, it is our communion with those who grew it. The Communion Cup is the interconnetcion of the whole world, the Community of all creation, all that is good and inclusive. The Church excluded this type of thinking for a long time through the witch trials, shunning, and the excommunication of prophets such as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin , Matthew Fox, and Meister Eckhart. Many of us grew up in churches where our love for the earth must be carefully watched, because it is a fine line between loving the earth and worshipping it. This fear has perpetuated a great violence within our communities toward the earth and most of our neighbors. Quite a few of us began to realize that not only are we Biblically mandated to love all Creation because of it’s inherent goodness, but also if we are serious about loving our neighbors we are going to be concerned about what we produce, consume, and throw-away because of our deep love for all of this Beloved Community. We follow our waste-stream because we want to love our neighbors by caring what they are breathing, eating, and drinking. Perhaps if we meet the poor who live beside the landfill where our waste goes we will throw-away less, and maybe as children of God we can envision a resurrection that transforms problems into resources, the community of resurrection that we are called to. Following the waste-stream led me to Camden, NJ.

Camden is an Environmental Justice Community, a place that is disproportionately effected by the environmental consequences of a region. In towns where there is more than one polluting industry, 70% of the people living within two miles of multiple hazardous waste facilities are people of color. All of our trash and waste, heavily polluting indsustries are often centralized in certain neigborhoods where there are a lot of poor people, people of color, and single mothers. These areas also usually have little access to healthy food. Rather than returning the jungles of Belize and working through my theology amidst the pristine I found it important to work through the matters of my faith in the context of garbage heaps and prostitutes. After college at Eastern University I moved to Camden, NJ, bearer of the violence of the empire. Camden is similar to places like Detroit, Gary, Jacksonville, St. Louis, Yakima, Flint, our great centers of the industrial boom, now the faces of the consequences of outsourcing and conecentration of polluting industries. I moved to Camden because I wanted to hear people’s stories, I wanted to help to create as much healing as possible, and because my own liberation is tied to the people’s of Camden. This great work and commitment was worked out through the context of community. When I was in Belize a few of my friends created a proposal for an intentional Christian community where we would share everything that we owned, while living simply, sharing meals and possessions with the poor and live in a place disproportionately affected by the consequences of the industrial system. We started the Camden Community House, in the context of a recent resurgence of similar communities across the U.S. Many of these communities are similar to the Catholic Worker movment as houses of hospitality and war resistance. Many of these communities including the Camden Community House are joined in a larger movement called the Community of Communities or The New Monasticism. The New Monasticism has a set of Marks to live by, a certain platform on which to shape decision making and the wisdom for a greater vision of life together, a code of conduct. The New Monasticism is defined as a “movement of Jesus followers who are committed to a new way of life in community.”

These communities are strong and loving, providing a support for members to pursue hospitality, peace making, life together, a certain home economics of sharing.

Yet when a group of people gathers together to define a community as a set of people that are inside the community following a set of Marks what happens to the individuals who do not fit within that same mold. Is there something that is lost when these communities can point to a group of people and say “not in our community.” This dualistic thinking perpetuates a paternal aspect in decision-making, resembling the principalties and powers in the world that it seeks to disengage. I left the community because some voices were valued more than others, and the ones that are more valued could not agree to disagree. I value diversity in strengthening community and began to see that the celebrated leaders of the New Monasticism were really only welcoming the voices that sounded a lot like their own. One of the Marks of the New Monasticism includes the Support for celibate singles alongside monogamous married couples and their children. This Mark in particular has been a great source of inconsistency and alienation within the New Monasticism. There are a handful of white and male leaders within the New Monasticism who have developed a moral higher ground judging others on a platform of sexclusion. I am neither married nor celibate, yet their was no room for my expression of monogomy. The New Monasticism to me has come to mean a group of people who are set apart and don’t want to include others in the community because it will dilute the substance of the community or how the community is viewed from the outside. I did not leave the Camden House with any sense of antagonism, but do wonder if the exclusive nature of so many of our communities is infact what prevents us from the depth of love, and diversity of theological wisdom that we are called to. I would like to add a Mark that would read, “A Lament for the loss of community through the creation of these Marks, the people that we have knowingly or unknowingly excluded from our inner circle.” I write this words with humility and healing, I mean no harm but as Archbishop Desmond Tutu rights, As Archbishop Desmond Tutu said “I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights.” Desmond Tutu. Currently I continue to focus on living for justice and community with the people of Camden and all people who send their waste here. I desire a community of people that support my expression and process of love because their sense of liberation is connected with my own, focused on healing with all Creation.

Even though I am no longer in the Camden Community House, my relationships with the people of this and all communities are important to me. I have found great connection and mutual liberation with the people of Camden, particularly within our neighborhood of Waterfront South. When I first started talking with people and asking them what they wanted I heard a lot of different responses. People said they wanted a grocery store, people said they wanted jobs, and people said they wanted something good for the children in the neighborhood to do. It seemed like a logical connection to start a garden with people in the city with only one grocery store for 80,000 people. Eve’s Garden was born in 2003. Eve was a woman that I met in the neighborhood who said she liked to garden. Now we grow over 12,000 heirloom seedlings and farm over an acre of various garden spaces in the neighborhood, hiring the young Jr. Farmers from the neighborhood who are paid a stipend. We work through the creation of justice together, and not the table scraps of charity.

1. Relocation to the abandoned places of Empire.

2. Sharing economic resources with fellow community members and the needy among us.

3. Hospitality to the stranger.

4. Lament for racial divisions within the church and our communities combined with the active pursuit of a just reconciliation.

5. Humble submission to Chirst’s body, the church.

6. Intentional formation in the way of Christ and the rule of the community along the lines of the old novitiate.

7. Nurturing common life among members of intentional community.

8. Support for celibate singles alongside monogamous married couples and their children.

9. Geographical proximity to community members who share a common rule of life.

10. Care for the plot of God’s earth given to us along with support of our local economics.

11. Peacemaking in the midst of violence and conflict resolution within communities along the lines of Matthew 18.

12. Commitment to a disciplined contemplative life.