Just get on with it

Review of The Essential Dale Suderman: Journals, Essays, Letters, Interpretations, Daniel Born, ed. (Resource Publications/Wipf and Stock, 2024)

Dale Suderman was the most unique person I ever met.

This book provides us with a compendium of many of his essays and book reviews, published over decades in a wide range of blogs, magazines and even his hometown newspaper in Hillsboro, Kan. The book concludes with reflections written by his sister and several close friends. I imagine this book will be purchased first by his friends, which means that the first print-run should number at least several thousand.

I first met Dale in 1975 in Alumni Hall of Fresno Pacific University in Fresno, Calif., a Mennonite Brethren college from which I graduated the following year. At the time, Dale was associate director of Mennonite Voluntary Service (MVS), an agency of the General Conference Mennonite Church. Dale grew up Mennonite Brethren and became General Conference Mennonite and finally, in later life, an Episcopalian.

I had not had much contact with “GCs” up to that time. Dale was not really like the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) recruiters with whom I’d met as a college student, and he was quite a bit different from the Mennonite Brethren denominational executives I knew. Dale was Christian and (to use an MB word) “worldly” at the same time.

Dale spent a day or two recruiting at Fresno Pacific, before one of my friends who owned a car and I drove him to the Fresno airport for the trip back to his office in Newton, Kan. While waiting for his flight, we all ordered screwdrivers in the bar while Dale regaled us with stories and blew cigarette smoke in our faces.

After graduation, I ended up not going to seminary or MCC but instead joined MVS and took an assignment with Sojourners magazine in Washington, D.C. The magazine editors, however, completely changed the assignment I had been recruited for. After seven months, I transferred to an assignment in the Denver area, where I became a peace, anti-nuclear and Third World solidarity activist. Dale had completely changed the trajectory of my life.

Do I regret this? Sometimes, yes, especially as I’ve gotten older. Was I ever angry about it? No.

This is not an easy book to read. That has nothing to do with Daniel Born’s skillful compiling and editing. It’s because most of the essays require one’s total attention. They are often provocative and leave the reader with many questions about issues raised and Dale’s decisions. When I agreed to write a review of the book, the manuscript landed in my computer’s inbox a day later. I thought I’d read it in two or three long sittings and then get right to the review.

The essays require total attention in much the same way my conversations with Dale did. This book brings Dale right into my living room. Every paragraph raises questions, whether about Dale’s experience as an infantry soldier in Vietnam, his sexuality, his church work, his faith, or his addiction recovery. Why did he go to Vietnam? He certainly knew what the war was about. In one of the reflections at the end of the book, an author tries to answer that question: maybe “to get away.”

Dale made everyone in his very wide circle feel special. It was only recently that I realized he had thousands of friends and I was surely not unique in feeling special. Very early on in our friendship, during orientation week for MVS, Dale told me he was gay. He was quick to add, “Well, to be precise, I’m bisexual.” He trusted me with information that, at that time, had to be guarded. I was not unique.

I trust that this book will be read by more than just his friends. Another question the book raises is why he didn’t write for a more mainstream publication. The range of topics he addressed covered being Mennonite, being a soldier, Karl Jung, addiction, the men’s movement, loneliness, loss, world religions, and so much more. The range of his writing was broader than that of any New York Times or Washington Post columnist.

Dale does not say this explicitly, but one of my takeaways from reading the book is that there is a limit to how far you can go in blaming your mentors, your mom, or your hometown for your mistakes in life. Just get on with it.

Some of these essays and reviews I read previously. One of my favorites is about The Simpsons writer Matt Groenig, the son of a World War II air force pilot and the relative of several Mennonite Brethren leaders. It’s actually one of the simpler essays, just telling an interesting story without many conclusive remarks.

This book is best read slowly, in paper form and not from a laptop computer. I look forward to receiving a published copy. It will sit on my nightstand for a long time.

Donald Goertzen is a former journalist and development worker. He lives in Manila, Philippines.