Dear Kirsten (again),

So what do I think of the rest of the book? You wanted to hear. 

For one, the 15 stands.

Your Doctrine of Chicken could serve as the next Mennonite confession of faith, I think, as we good church people may be more birdly than we know, even in the way we worship. The chickens you once tended, who thought you to be God, hollered to you, called, caroled. Their joy in you, as you put it, was wholly connected to what you could offer their stomachs. (I’ve lifted this right off the page—see that?)

Elsewhere, your words to the unattributed Mennonite pastor who said that children are for martyrdom pierced me to the core. Brother Pastor, have you given your body to grow life? Has this man conceived twins, carried them to term, and then poured out his milk for them? How do you feel about needles? you ask him. Your IVF experience was torture.

I hope you have, at least, delivered a casserole, you tell him. Your own congregation, protective, not the kind to split into schisms, fed so well your leaking body. The months’ worth of meals, arriving in pans and canning jars and reused store containers, confound me. You kept track.

I wonder what you thought when they found the bodies, you ask him. The dead UN investigators, you mean, killed in Congo in 2017, one of them MJ, son of John and Michele. I think you would put him on a pedestal, the realization of all your hopes for our children. As far as you’re concerned, nourishing ours, we’re not fattening them up for martyrdom.

You write, I hope, Sir Brother Pastor, that you don’t have any children of your own.

What I got was your honesty. I was cruel every day, you say in one chapter. Now, I think, I am only cruel on a weekly basis. You say, I was proud. I felt dirty.

And I got your Jason, attentive, faithful. My husband is crossing the meadow with honey in his hands.

Also your devotion to everything earthy. Creek stones. Erupting cucumbers. Potato-patch dirt. The sky above the valley.

And always your spurting imagination. When Stella the duck showed her new brood to the banished drake on the other side of the chicken wire: The scene looked like a prison visit. As for the lame duckling: Celeste’s right foot was curled into a tight fist, so she staggered about on the back of her wrist. But best, probably, is your wee-hours vision of baby Irene as a rabbit, tender and fat and just the right size for the small roaster.

Finally, your recipe for gelächterkuchen, oh delicious, and the groundnut-and-bhati-stew story. Returning to it the other day—we were at Zachary and Akiko’s in Pittsburgh—I had to read it out loud to Paulson. I’m so sorry we didn’t get to stop at Arvedistan on our way to Japan. Of course, we weren’t going for humility lessons, and like you said, the meat the natives served was the last of its species, but what a spot in the world. Japan doesn’t have any mountains remotely like Arvedistan’s or scrawny children who’ve never seen rain. So all in all, that bhati stew—lucky you.

All my love.

Kirsten Eve Beachy, Martyrs and Chickens, Cascadia Publishing House 2025