Last Sunday a few of us were taken to a service of an Old Colony traditional Mennonite church nearby. We all silently filed into the church and took our seats. The church was full. Women sat to the left of the aisle and men to the right. There were no children in attendance. The women were clad in long black dresses with head coverings in hijab fashion. The men were dressed in business casual or cowboy style. There were pegs above the men's section where most of them hung the mostly white Stetson hats they wore. Most of the men seemed to have a certain look about them. Not to insult them, but they were mostly beady eyed and bull necked, looking somewhat like pigs. They were all clean shaven, which is apparently a requirement. I was encouraged to see there were no masks or concessions to the covaids nonsense anywhere to be seen.

The service was conducted entirely in Low German. It started with a choir of nine men filing in from a side door and taking their place in front of the men's section. They announced which hymns they would sing and began. Their singing was a very weird form of chanting. If I wasn't told I would not have known they were singing actual words, but rather would have assumed they were making some kind of vocal music. They were backed up by a seemingly organised female choir seated towards the back of the female section, and a minority of the general congregation sang along. It was actually quite harmonious in a surreal sort of way. Just hearing it made the service worth attending in my opinion.

Next the priest entered from a side door and proceeded to read an old prepared sermon in some kind of poetic meter. Apparently although the text was mainly prepared he occasionally inserted his own thoughts. Part of the sermon was apparently castigating men for not shaving, which was funny in hindsight given that all of our group, including the less traditional Mennonite-origin people, had facial hair.

At the end of the service we all silently filed out row by row, starting with the first and last rows and working towards the middle. Interestingly in a rejection of technology the church had no electrical fittings whatsoever, but the congregation had mostly quite nice late model pickup trucks, so I'm not sure where they stand on technology. We had a little difficulty leaving as no-one in the line of trucks would let us in, until a single woman driving a truck finally did.

It was an informative experience. I imagine those people lead good lives, but in terms of a group that an outsider would want to join, they're pretty much out.