Something Old, Something New
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If you go south of Morden, Manitoba you will soon arrive at the tiny community of Osterwick. It was first settled in 1875 as the far western edge of the land allocation provided to Mennonites by the newly formed Manitoba provincial government which was busy trying to settle European immigrants on as much land as possible. The Manitoba government thought Mennonites would be great settlers because they would mind their own business and they had no political aspirations. For better and worse that was true and as a result, the Mennonite settlements effectively kept the various Metis, French, and Aboriginal communities separated from one another, allowing the English speaking provincial government to maintain its control over the territory and to deter Americans who might have their eyes set on expanding to the north. It's odd to think that my ancestors were used as a border fence but that is really what it comes down to.
Many of the people who came to live in the area were from what is now known as the Old Colony Mennonite Church and they moved to Canada partly because they had become wary of the Russian government's efforts to get them involved in secular society. Within a generation, they became wary of the Manitoba government's efforts to make their kids go to public school so in the early years of the twentieth century a lot of these peoples moved to Mexico. They were, however, replaced by more Mennonite immigrants from Russia who arrived after they became wary of the Soviet government's efforts to turn them into collective farming communists. So Osterwick has its entire settler history defined by people who were trying to get away from a bad thing and start a good new thing in a new place.
That makes the name of the place stand out. With all due respect to a local historical society that claims that Osterwick is a religious and horticultural reference to Easter vetch, the village is named after a previous community with the same name located in the Chortitza Colony of Russia, where those first residents came from. That's not the original Osterwick either. The people from Osterwick in Russia moved there from the village of Osterwick in the Danzig region of Prussia in what is now Poland. Those people moved there from yet another town named Osterweick which is in the Anhalt region of Germany that's famous for its timber-framed houses.
Osterwick got its name, which literally means “the eastern place,” in the 9th century and it is indeed further east than the settlements that came before it. People from that first Osterweick moved to Prussia after they became wary of their government's efforts to make them do something they didn't want to do and started a town named from nostalgia, not what the words of the name really mean. Their descendants became wary of their government and moved to Russia and started a third Osterwick there, also based on nostalgia. Their descendants became wary of a subsequent government and moved to Canada in order to start a fourth Osterwick based on no less than three levels of nostalgia and the second wave of Russian Mennonites were drawn to the area by a grand total of four stacked levels of nostalgia while at the same time attempting to leave behind a bad thing. And what do you know, there's an Osterwick in Mexico too, named after the Osterwick in Manitoba, of course! That's five Osterwicks in total, all connected to one another.
Of course, Mennonites aren't the only people who get tied in knots about novelty and nostalgia. There's New York, New Brunswick, New Jersey, New Hampshire and so on. Anywhere you find cultures who have relocated from one place to another you will find communities named after the place they left. That's true even if, or maybe especially if, they left the first place in frustration, despair, anger or hardship.
That's something for us to think about. Why do people sometimes look back fondly on situations that were so difficult that they had to leave? Is selective memory and the fog of history so thick that people forget what drove them out of the first place? Maybe the first situation was complicated and was difficult but had its bright spots. Maybe people sometimes leave one situation in the heat of the moment and then look back and think maybe it wasn't so bad after all. Perhaps people eager to get away from bad things unintentionally bring the bad thing along with them and plant those seeds in the new place so that future generations have to leave it in fear, anger, and frustration.
As I write this we are in the season of Lent which is a time of contemplation before celebrating the Easter resurrection. The church hangs onto the hope of resurrection because it is both literally and figuratively a new beginning. However, it's not blank slate newness. The past is made new but not forgotten. A person or process which has died is given a new opportunity for life but as with Christ's resurrected body, the new thing is recognizably like the previous one in the same way that each Osterwick bears some resemblance to the one before it. Christians talk about both conversion and resurrection because those ideas connect past and future.
If you moved away and started a new community, would you call it “MacGregor?” Would you do the same things you did here? Is there anything about the way you live now that you would want to leave behind?
Maybe you would want to pick a new name. Maybe you would pick something from scratch or maybe you would choose a name that the people already living there use. Winnipeg was named that way and Portage la Prairie was named for what people had to do when they got to that spot. What's the balance like in your life between things that you do based on the past compared to things that are based in the present or future?
What about your faith and your relationship with your church, especially after several months of pause in public worship services? Are there things you do that have been brought forward from a different time or place? Was that a good and worthwhile process or would you do it differently if you could? Are there ways that we read the Bible or understand God that we carry with us from the past? Which of those things are good? Are there any of them that should be left behind as we choose new ways to speak about our experience with God and care for one another in Jesus' name?
