The thing is, when you taste something you have
never tasted before, particularly if it is a strong flavour, it is
strange, it's unmistakable. It grabs your attention and you really
know you've tasted it. If, however, the flavour has been familiar to
you since your childhood, you might barely be aware of it. This is a
major factor in culinary culture shock, noticeable even in something
as simple as an American and a Brit trying tomato ketchup made for
the other market. To me, American ketchup tastes unpleasantly sweet,
but to an American, British ketchup tastes like it's been spiked with
vinegar. When you get into things that are even more different, like
spices or seasonings that are characteristic of particular cuisines,
it is even more pronounced. Consider for instance kimchi, or the
Japanese umeboshi.
For the European palate, east Asian food is particularly apt for
examples.
Experience of the
Divine, however, is so personal and subjective, so far from amenable
to corroboration, that it poses even more difficulty. Someone raised
among Friends, I am given to understand, might wonder whether they
have ever experienced it, or simply experienced it from such a young
age that they cannot identify it as special. I know some people feel
their own experiences are so vivid and unmistakable that no-one could
be confused, but really, consider the umeboshi
– and consider trying to describe its flavour. As someone who eats
one for the first time in adulthood, you would tend to describe it as
an extremely potent flavour, a very strange combination of salt and
acid, and somewhat sweet (depending on the variety). It would be
something that you couldn't mistake, something you would always know
the first time you experienced it. To someone who has eaten them
their entire life, they're just umeboshi.
A westerner's vivid description of the flavour, without any specifics
that identify the foodstuff in question, would be unlikely to put
such a person in mind of the specific food.
I'm very aware of
this as a problem with the idea of membership hinging on such a
convincement experience, because my wife was raised among Friends.
She has always identified as a Quaker, though she has never sought
membership – and isn't sure she could if there were such an
expectation. That isn't to say she's sure she hasn't had that
experience, but if she has, the first time would have been at a
pretty early age. One thing that people have suggested before is the
idea of “learning through teaching”, sharpening one's own
understanding out of necessity in order to pass it on to others. This
does not suit all people, but even more importantly it's not as
helpful for experiences as it is for concepts. That's not to say it
isn't any help, but it often doesn't quite cut it. She did have an
idea, though, related to the well-known (if not widely understood)
Amish practice of rumspringa.
Rumspringa has had a
certain mythology develop around it in popular understanding, that
does not necessarily match actual practice. This confusion is
naturally compounded by the fact that the Amish, thought of as some
sort of single cultural bloc, is nothing of the sort. Different
communities have very different practices. The version described
herein should not be taken as in any way an accurate depiction of the
practice among any community – it is naturally heavily influenced
by the faulty popular understanding, though I have tried to mitigate
that with some basic research. Interestingly, the term is apparently
also used, with similar meaning (though different expectations of the
age at which it occurs) among the Old Order Mennonites as well as the
Old Order Amish.
The word comes from
Pennsylvania Dutch (itself a misnomer due to English confusion), and
its roots can mean “jumping around” or “running around”, with
the latter understanding more common in the language as spoken by the
Amish settlers. It is often translated as “running around time”,
and in its most basic case may also be taken as meaning
“adolescence”. Even in this basic case, the behavioural
expectations of people at this age are somewhat slackened, as a
concession to expediency if nothing else. It seems likely that every
culture finds it hard to hold adolescents to behavioural standards.
The popular image, however, has – as I understand it – featured
in even some fairly serious fiction (and I think I remember it in
non-serious fiction, in a particularly weird comedy
about professional ten-pin bowling). This involves a person
outright leaving their community, parting ways from it and sojourning
in the wider world – perhaps even travelling. In such depictions,
they are often shown keeping largely to their traditional dress (how
else would you recognise the character on film or TV?), and may or
may not keep to the most important moral restrictions, such as
honesty, hard work, and chastity. I can certainly see the “dramatic”
potential for relaxing the last of those, although it seems cheap.
As far as I can tell,
this popular mythology is not actually practised in that way
anywhere. However loose it is, there's a general expectation of
keeping the most important moral restrictions – but even those are
potentially forgivable. The underlying point of rumspringa seems to
be that you can't expect adolescents to behave entirely sensibly, in
accordance with expectations, or in accordance with the demands of
their elders. I suspect we can all see the sense in that. It begins,
depending on the sect, around the age of 14 to 16, and ends when a
person is baptised, as an adult (some sects have a minimum age for
this, especially among Old Order Mennonites, but there is no general
minimum age for baptism other than being after school – and Amish
schooling traditions have people leaving around the start of
rumspringa, as noted below). Some of the “relaxation” of rules
and expectations is, in fact, simply the fact these rules are not
imposed yet. They apply to those who are baptised and have made their
full commitment to the church. Parents are, however, required by the
same rules to apply expectations to their children, and it is this
parental discipline that tends to be relaxed to some extent.
It is also the time for
courtship, for finding a spouse. This is, of course, done more
chastely than among the “English” (the Amish term for all those
outside their community), but it is still something that is often
done, or at least begun, before full adulthood is reached either by
baptism or separation from the community. Young Amish who are still
considered fully children are excluded from events and activities
that are major venues for courtship.
Some youngsters, in
some communities, do separate from the community temporarily, rather
than permanently, to learn more or to experience other ways, to “see
the world” but ideally without being conformed to its ways. Things
that a young person might do during rumspringa would include taking a
job among the English, perhaps even mixing with their young people
socially. They might consume recreational drugs, and in some
communities they may be the only ones consuming alcohol – and even
in those that accept alcohol they may be consuming most of it.
In some communities,
there are long-established “gangs” for rumspringa-aged youth, and
which gang one joins will determine some degree of how far one
diverges from social norms. These are not, of course, gangs in the
sense that many readers might immediate imagine. This is not
organised crime. It is more a venue for socialising and
experimentation, and different gangs will focus on different areas of
“rebellion”. The cover art of the 2001 edition of Donald
Kraybill's The Riddle of Amish Culture shows two young women
in conventional garb for their community, but going along on inline
skates. I can't vouch for the photograph being authentic, but it
certainly gives an idea of the frank randomness that non-conformity
during rumspringa might lead to.
I've found mention of
people getting “English education” as a form of rumspringa, and I
can see that communities might benefit from some of their members
knowing about things that would mostly be taught outside the
community. Amish formal education generally ends around age 14 or 15,
going up to and including the eighth grade in American terms, which
translates in the English and Welsh system as year 9, or S2 in the
Scottish system – and is generally taught by someone who has also
had only that education. The skills for one's working life are
learned at work, and sometimes a correspondence course might be taken
for specific skills that can be taught in that way (I understand that
book-keeping is one of the more common ones). Sometimes, though, a
young person will “return” from rumspringa, whether or not they
actually moved away, with far more “advanced” knowledge gained
the English way.
Rumspringa did sort-of
show up once on a UK documentary, however – not fiction. British
programme makers brought a group of rumspringa-age Amish kids over to
England to spend time with English contemporaries (both in the Amish
and the worldly sense). It was a fascinating programme, showing them
participating in (largely innocent) recreational activities common
among British young people, how they reacted to it and approached it.
Young men and women both were involved, if memory serves, and they
positively identified their involvement in the programme as part of
their rumspringa.
Anyway, to get back to
the point… whichever version of rumspringa one envisages, the
eventual result is either baptism, voluntarily joining the community
one was born into, or separation from that community for good (though
the attitude of the community towards such severed ex-members,
contact with them etc., seems to be variable). Personally, I very
much support the idea of expecting people to make an affirmative
choice, as an adult (or nearly so), to become part of a community
they were born into. I never really understood infant baptism, it
only being explained by the doctrine of original sin, which never
made sense to me, viscerally – but that's by the by. You might be
wondering what this all has to do with the problem I set out to
potentially address. After all, I compared the experience of Quaker
spirituality to the taste of umeboshi – and once you are
used to something like that, you never experience it as new and
amazing. So, let's look at another analogy.
Some towns and cities
have their own peculiar smells. I suspect all do, to some extent, but
some are so vivid that they can quite preoccupy a visitor. Some are
pleasant, but most are, to the visitor, unpleasant. It might be a
result of some local industry – in bygone centuries tanning towns
were quite notable for it – or because of some purely natural
feature, or just to do with how the city was built up in days gone
by. It might be there all time or only under certain conditions, but
it's there enough of the time that the locals all get used to it.
It's not that they don't notice it, but it doesn't impinge on their
awareness. They are aware of it the way most people are aware of the
local birdsong most of the time, or how anyone is aware of the
temperature and humidity in conditions that are normal to them.
Thing is, and I suspect
many of you will have experienced something like this, people don't
stay in one town or city their whole life so much any more. Some do,
to be sure, but plenty don't. People move away, for a few months at a
time for study, or for years at a time to relocate for work. They get
used to another town's smells. Then they go home, to visit friends
and family or just to see their old stomping grounds – and the
smell hits them. Maybe it will be pleasant in itself, maybe it will
be unpleasant. Maybe it will trigger pleasant memories, feel homely,
welcoming. But they notice it, probably for the first time
ever really notice it.
Perhaps one way for
those raised among Friends to really be aware of the Quaker spiritual
experience is to stop having it, and then start again. I'm not
sure what that would look like. I'm not advocating people cutting all
ties with Friends and then coming back later, though a lot of Quaker
youngsters do something close to that just as they move through the
course of life. People move on from children and young people's
activities, clearly too old for them, but not feeling like they fit
in among the adults. After all, in many cases their parents are among
the youngest non-children in their Meeting. Maybe there's some way we
can make a deliberate virtue of this, rather than something to wring
hands over. Maybe we can say that this is fine, expected but not
required, and not try to persuade people to maintain involvement in
Quaker things as they start to find their feet as a university
student, or any other sort of probationary adult. Perhaps that would
lead to more finding their way back.
The essential idea of
rumspringa, the relaxation of expectations, is hard to apply to
liberal Quakers. It's difficult for us to even say that we relax
expectations and discipline among our youngsters, as we by and large
aren't applying any particular expectations or discipline beyond that
of wider society. Indeed, in my experience many Quaker parents are
more permissive in some respects than wider society, and this
permissiveness may stem from Quaker beliefs.
Perhaps we can help
those who were raised among Friends to appreciate our particular
spiritual umeboshi by encouraging them to eat burgers, or
kimchi. Perhaps they can develop a new appreciation for the home-town
smell by visiting some other places, really spending time there.
Perhaps we should encourage our youth to positively experience
different spiritual practices. This doesn't just mean visiting
churches or synagogues or mosques when they are holding services, or
going to a meditation meeting run by a local sangha. It doesn't mean
the sort of idealised descriptions of faith and practice that many of
us were taught in school religious education classes. It means deep
learning about different faiths, and shared experiences with those of
that faith. Many faiths are perfectly open to those of other faiths
sharing their experiences and learning about them; in some cases this
is because they see it as an opportunity to win converts, but in
others it is simply because they see it as a general good for people
to learn and experience.
This may lead to them
deciding their spiritual path lies along another road, but where it
doesn't it will lead to a more meaningful deliberate decision to be a
Quaker. It may also allow another route for new insights and
experiences to feed into our theological diversity. It will be
enriching and educational, and certainly foster a greater
understanding of different faiths and traditions. It might also,
perhaps, foster a greater understanding and appreciation of the
Quaker way.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
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