Todd Grotenhuis

I’ve recently dug back into checking out and buying albums directly, rather than streaming. I’m limiting myself to an album or couple EPs a month, up to what I might spend on streaming. I’m going to share about my picks here, once a month. With that, here’s the first album:

Moor Mother - Analog Fluids of Sonic Black Holes

I first found out about this artist via The Rebel Beat podcast. Analog Fluids of Sonic Black Holes is a smart and challenging album. It’s genre, like much of my favorite music is: “ummm, yes?” and contains elements of hip hop, folk, spoken word, punk, electronic, noise, and more. This is not an easy listen, but it’s a good one.

Favorite tracks:

• 3: After Images
• 6: Black Flight (feat. Saul Williams)
• 11: Private Silence (feat. Reef The Lost Cauze)

Sunday, 13 years ago, my spouse and I joined our Mennonite community and church.

You might be surprised that a Mennonite is here on the Internet, talking about things like cybersecurity. So let me give you the world’s shortest history of Mennonites and a few quick points about modern Mennonites.

History

Mennonites are descendants (sometimes literally) of the reformation, specifically, what’s often called the “radical reformation.” In that movement, the radical reformers believed that that one’s place of birth or government should not dictate one’s religion, and that one should profess their faith once they were capable of freely accepting one. For this, the label “anabaptists” or “re-baptizers” was used as an epithet, and it stuck.

Anabaptists also opted out of the violence and warring between religious and political factions, choosing to disassociate or flee to a new location, as needed. They practiced a “priesthood of all believers”, meaning that there was no formal clergy and that all were called to hold each other accountable in interpretation and life. They put a focus on Jesus’s teachings and life, not just his birth and death.

None of these stories are without exception, and I could write several other posts about the asterisks. But I promised you a short history.

Modern Anabaptists include Mennonites, Amish, Hutterites, Bruderhof, Church of Brethren, Brethren in Christ, and several variations on all these.

Modern Mennonites

Here are what I see as the most-common traits of modern Mennonites:

• Reconciliation: conflict mediation, healing relationships, restoring ecology, practicing redemption, disaster-relief
• Peacemaking: nonviolent struggles for peace & justice, echoing the voices of the voiceless, reducing harm, operating from subversive & prophetic weakness instead of domination
• Simplicity: living intentionally, being kind to animals & the earth, humility, avoiding consumerism
• Christocentrism: viewing the whole of the Bible through the lens of Jesus’s teaching and action, seeing the image of God in our neighbors & enemies

Again, this is very short list with exceptions omitted. If you want to read a short book with more, I’d recommend The Naked Anabaptist or (somewhat longer) The Upside Down Kingdom.

I was meeting with one of the folks that I mentor/coach today, and they started a great conversation around ikigai. That led to a question for me about some of my top values or principles in my work. Here are four that I discussed:

• Enablement: I don’t want to be a bottleneck. My aim is to equip and empower others through education, tools, patterns, etc. so that they can take on more responsibility and help us all be more successful.
• Mutuality: Decisions should include the context & perspectives of the stakeholders. Directly, if possible. I aim for win-win solutions.
• Resilience: Solutions should account for issues of scalability, safety, and sustainability. We ought to design things such that they can adapt to change in graceful ways. Ideally, becoming stronger & better as they do.
• Authenticity: I want be be open & direct without being a jerk. I aim to make it safe for people to be themselves, to speak up, and to do what’s right.

It’s probably no surprise that these four are strongly-interrelated.