Mennofolk Wheatley Review

I am the "CEO" of Mennofolk. Mennofolk works on magic. I have tried for years to categorize, outline, structure, mission state, committee-ify, legitimize, theologize, and pigeon-hole this dynamic energy. As an organization born of passion, luck, and inspiration, it has thrived despite these things, and left my mind baffled as to the mystery of its unfolding. When I read Margaret Wheatley’s Leadership and the New Science, I knew I was reading a truth that had already been manifested in my experience. Mennofolk flies on the wings of the three-winged bird of quantum physics: order out of chaos through time, human relationships and God’s grace. As Wheatley states (1999, p. 22), “as chaos theory shows, if we look at such a system over time, it demonstrates an inherent orderliness.”
Mennofolk is an organization which consists of multiple festivals that are run by five autonomous local groups creating gatherings that bring together Mennonite acoustic folk musicians and the people who love them. Each festival is created by grassroots participation and has a unique flavor and focus. But all of them are about opening the circle of the church; not the church as a designated institution, but the church as a people hood, a gathering of souls who have shared the same mind and experience of community, even if just for a season. The “church” of Mennofolk is a loose clump of ideas, dreams, hopes, acts. It encompasses many who the institutional Mennonite church would not admit, and it welcomes newcomers into its atmosphere with no judgment or expectation, allowing them to experience the benefits of that energy those within the circle know well. Mennofolk is about music, but its true purpose is love. Just as elementary particles cluster vaguely in no measurable shape (1999, p. 34), this event relies on uncharted boundaries and unprescribed definitions of what folk music needs to sound like or what Mennonites need to be like. The Wheatley premises at work here are her description of elementary particles as “bundles of potentiality,” (p. 35) and the paradoxical idea that “each organism maintains a clear sense of its individual identity within a larger network of relationships that helps shape its identity” (p. 20).
As an artist writes a song, the first strains of music may be dreamlike, not well defined. Images may start abstract and clarify as the author’s pen begins to write. Fine lyrics and melody lines carry the soul of the musician, and as that song is shared all our souls echo the same themes, the ghost of emotion. The best music carries archetypes that resonate universally. This process mirrors the creation of Mennofolk itself. The tiniest waves of sound are repeated into a song, into a repertoire, into a festival, into a movement, into a web of relationship that change the world and create a culture. Wheatley describes this by saying (1999, p.11) “relationship is the key determinator of everything,” and that “one of the principals of scientific inquiry is that at all levels, nature seems to resemble itself” (p. 162). She confirms that science shows that there are patterns and dynamics in a living system that repeat themselves (p. 144).
In 2003 I was analyzing where the centers of interest and resources were for the expansion of our festivals, and decided that Harrisonburg, Virginia was an obvious choice. I didn’t know exactly who to call to get it started, but I focused my intent on the beginnings of a Mennofolk in Harrisonburg. Two years later for reasons unrelated to Mennofolk, my family moved to Harrisonburg and “Mennofolk Harrisonburg” fell into place, as surely as it had been created within my imagination. Rather than seeing this as coincidence, Wheatley asserts that (1999, p. 41) a scientist’s intent controls the direction that electrons spin in experiments, and it is possible that our intent forms the reality for which we wish.
Mennofolk is a manifestation of relationships. This is what creates its success. For several years Mennofolk Michiana thrived, attracting many musicians, fans, and newcomers. Money came rolling in from donations, both solicited and unasked. People found each other and friendships were woven between the cities and towns that fed into the region. Many people commented on the atmosphere of love, excitement and acceptance it fostered. In later years, Mennofolk Michiana was organized by a person who was not energetically based and who was suffering from a lot of self doubt and depression. Some of the same publicity techniques were used, and the same booking policies continued, but the magic was gone. Just going through the motions did not have the same effect. Eventually funding dried up, the sponsoring conference committee “forgot” to include it in restructuring, and attendance fell by hundreds. The rise and fall of Mennofolk Michiana was based on energy, and all the long-term plans or written policies in the file cabinet couldn’t save it. Applying Wheatley’s analysis of reality, she says (1999, p. 145), “to make a system stronger, we need to create stronger relationships.” She also understood that “all of us, even in rigid organizations, have experienced self-organization, times when we recreate ourselves, not according to some idealized plan, but because the environment demands it” (p. 24).
If I could see a chart of the history of Mennofolk similar to those that Margaret Wheatley published in Leadership and the New Science, I have no doubt that it would look much like any other charted chaos--beautiful, mysterious, and self sustaining for its natural useful life.
References
Wheatley, M.J. (1999). Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.