But this particular ache and pain grew so intense she lay awake crying at night. She hardly ate. Berg said nothing, though. She’d grown up in a military family, and it was in her DNA to tough things out. Besides, basketball was her life. She was just beginning to think about her college career. Taking time off for a sore back? Not an option.

Yes, she was stubborn back then, and she’s still stubborn now, she admits with an abashed smile. And no, she definitely wouldn’t recommend this course of non-treatment for others struggling with injury. That wasn’t the right way to handle things, but then again, it led to good things.

Her parents began to worry about the way she’d started to drag her right leg awkwardly behind her as a result of the worsening injury. They also noticed that she’d lost a lot of weight and, concerned about an eating disorder, they sat their daughter down for an intervention. Berg broke down and told them everything – how a little twinge, over the course of weeks and months, had devolved into such monstrous pain that she couldn’t sleep or eat.

End of basketball dreams

Diagnosis: two herniated discs. Berg underwent lumbar fusion surgery before her junior year of high school. She spent the summer working her way from a wheelchair to a walker to figuring out how to walk again on her own. A doctor-ordered ban on contact sports brought her basketball career to a sudden and crushing end.

Something of a spiritual crisis ensued. How could something that meant so much just be snatched from her like that? What sort of God lets that happen?

Berg gradually shifted her extracurricular focus to theater.

Before graduation, Berg and her classmates took a survey to help guide their college decisions – the sort of thing that tries to match someone’s interests and preferences with different schools’ characteristics. When the results came back, a strange word crossed Berg’s lips for the first time: Mennonite. She’d never heard of such a thing, nor had she heard of ˛ÝÝŽÉçÇř (EMU). She didn’t think much of it, skeptical about this survey outcome.

But when she stumbled across an EMU booth at a college fair soon thereafter, she lined up a campus visit. When she came for an overnight stay, she caught a student-run Gonzo Theatre show, scoped out the , and decided that the college placement survey had been right after all. EMU was the place for her.

Arriving on campus in the fall of 2011, Berg was ready for new, exciting challenges. But the first ones she encountered were not what she expected.

Military vs. pacifist orientations

Yorktown is very different place from EMU and the surrounding community. Berg lived a few minutes down the road from Langley Field. Her dad was in the Air Force, her boyfriend – who became her fiance in March 2014 – was (and is) in the Air Force, her cousins were in the military, and pretty much everyone around her growing up was connected in some way to the armed forces. Supporting the troops, individually and collectively, and the jobs they are asked to do was a given among practically everyone Berg had ever known.

She didn’t know that the American flag doesn’t fly on EMU’s campus, and she had no idea that the patriotic pins she wore on her backpack would invite criticism from her classmates. She would never have guessed that one of her professors would make disparaging remarks about the military.

All of this amounted to a huge shock. Berg had barely heard of Mennonites when she enrolled, and was completely ignorant of the centuries-long Mennonite tradition of pacifism. Early on, she didn’t always respond gently when her views were challenged. She had angry exchanges with some other students. She had angry exchanges with God. College was supposed to be the best four years of her life, right?

EMU had just magically bubbled up out of nowhere and had seemed so perfect. And yet, here she’d ended up, stretching herself to the financial limit to be at a school where she felt like an outcast and where people seemed unwilling to give her perspective a fair chance.

“That’s what I feel like EMU really struggles with,” Berg says. “People come in so whole-heartedly believing things, because of how they were raised, that when they meet somebody who believes differently, they’re like, ‘You’re wrong.’”

Stubbornly staying at EMU, eventually glad she did

She realized she was part of the problem – her first reaction to criticism of the military was figuring that the criticizers were wrong. She wanted to leave, but her stubborn streak kicked back in.

She thought about her great-grandmother, who’d died during Berg’s difficult first year at EMU, and who had always prayed that Berg would go to a Christian college. Berg stuck with it for her. She took a spiritual formation class, which included a one-on-one spiritual advisor, who proved a good listener as Berg struggled to find her place on campus.

Things gradually turned around. In the fall of 2012, Berg joined other students who set up a display of 200 pairs of empty boots, worn by Virginian soldiers killed in the past decade’s wars, . Berg began feeling empowered to take risks and to be more outspoken about her beliefs. She began developing a better ability to listen to others. She decided that she’d been led to EMU to make her different voice heard. She stuck with her interest in theater, appearing in three full-length productions on campus.

Looking back, all of it falls into place as part of God’s plan for her life, Berg says.

Berg says her thoughts about the military haven’t changed much since she came to EMU, but she has developed respect for different opinions. She hopes that the people with those different opinions can say the same from interacting with her.

‘What higher ed is all about’

“Hattie serves as an excellent example of what higher education is really all about,” says EMU’s vice-president for enrollment, , who became a mentor of Berg’s.

“Hattie came to EMU with a singular perspective and a strong inherited value base, and is now leaving with a deep and rich understanding of a multiplicity of viewpoints. She worked through the challenge of having her value base questioned and came out more knowledgeable, and more equipped to work, serve and lead in a 21st-century society. I could not be more proud of her today.”

Berg will graduate in April 2014 with degrees in theater and and, at least as important, a new grasp on how to communicate better, how to live beside people who have very different ideas about the world, and how to not let those differences define or diminish one’s relationships.

“I love EMU,” Berg says. “I’ve struggled a lot being here and there were times when I thought I hated EMU. But I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”

EMU grad MJ Sharp at chapel on Wednesday. Photo by Jim Bishop

When M.J. Sharp graduated from EMU in 2005, his conscientious objection to war was “merely academic.”

But over the last two years, all that has changed, he said.

Since leaving the Friendly City, Sharp has worked as a counselor with the Military Counseling Network in Heidelberg, Germany. When soldiers question their desire to fight, they call Sharp and his crew to talk about it.

The work, he said, has made war “personal” to him, and has helped him understand and embrace his faith’s pacifist views.

“Every time I hear about the realities of war and how [the soldiers] experience it, my objection is not so much academic any more,” Sharp said. “It’s not just a theological argument. It’s real.”

On Wednesday, Sharp, now 25, returned to EMU to make the first of dozens of planned stops across America where he will share his work experiences. For the next seven weeks, Sharp will visit schools and churches – many of them Mennonite – to raise money for the network and also to help build the bridge between “Peace People” and “War People.”

“When we hear the stories and when we see the faces of soldiers, we might actually start to feel something,” he said. “We might decide we want to do more than just talk about it.”

The Stories

On Wednesday, Sharp told the 150-member audience stories from two of his clients.

The first was a story about a 23-year-old soldier, Sharp’s first client on the job.

The young man was working two jobs and taking classes at his local community college. One day, a military recruiter approached him, offering $40,000 for college. Short on cash, the man took the offer and joined the U.S. Army.

Then, while serving in the Middle East, the soldier had to kill someone, Sharp said.

“Killing someone is a personal thing,” Sharp said the soldier told him. “You have to live with it afterwards. And you don’t do it for college money.”

Sharp’s second story was similar.

This man, a 20-year-old soldier who also served in Iraq, came to Sharp to talk about the first time he saw a dead civilian, who had been run over by a tank. The soldier also talked about the first time he killed someone.

“It was personal to him,” Sharp said. “Despite his training, he wasn’t able to make it nonpersonal. He knew he was done [serving in the military].”

“War has the power to transform,” Sharp said. “It doesn’t matter if you are in the military or not, doesn’t matter if you’re Mennonite or not. War has the power to transform you.”

Audience Reaction

Several audience members commented they liked hearing Sharp’s perspective.

“I appreciated learning about how war is a personal thing and how violence affects people,” said Lars Akerson, a 21-year-old EMU senior.

Luke Drescher, 72, of Harrisonburg, said Sharp’s presented the faith’s nonresistant pacifism well.

“The military finds the Mennonites unpatriotic and the Mennonites find the military ungodly,” said Katie Zook, a 19-year-old freshman, who says she is not a Mennonite. “I liked how he talked about a great middle ground of working with the military. Jesus himself worked with the military.”