There’s been no shortage of headlines involving protest in recent years. The events surrounding the 2010 G20 Summit in Toronto, the Arab Spring that began that same year, and the Occupy Movement, whose gatherings first began taking place in the fall of 2011, all saw thousands of men and women engage in public demonstration.
What does it mean to think of the Bible as our story, or to think of faith as entering into God’s story? In Adult Ed. at my church, we’re currently looking at the Bible studies from last July’s Mennonite Church Canada Assembly, so I’ve been thinking more about the implications of what I heard there.
The following is an outline of a piece that I would someday like to write.
For those of you who may know me, you know that my roots are pure prairies --- something I am proud of. While I do struggle with aspects, one thing I can always count on is the absolutely beautiful generosity given out, often unceasingly.
Consider, for example, the response of some Saskatchewan Mennonite farmers to Ontarian farmers in the east dealing with drought.
If you’ve been reading my blog since last year, you might remember my first article on technology, which was part interview, part opinion piece. I thought I’d revisit the topic and try to articulate the way my mind has changed about it. It’s not a drastic change – I’m not an avid fan of gadgets now (as evident by the picture I chose, found here) and I still don’t have a cell phone (though my husband has one)!
I had an experience of God’s presence at St. Benedict’s Monastery in St. Joseph, Minnesota, in July at the Bridgefolk conference. “Bridgefolk is a movement of sacramentally-minded Mennonites and peace-minded Catholics,” says its mission statement. Every year Bridgefolk holds a gathering of Mennonites and Catholics to celebrate, explore, and honour each others’ practices and traditions.
This past August, my friend and I hosted our 10-year high school reunion. It was fun to reconnect with a number of the 60 people we graduated with from Westgate Mennonite Collegiate in 2002.
Now, if you ask me about math, science, history or language arts, there are only about three things I can easily remember that I learned while attending Westgate from Grades 7 to 12:
On June 10, Gabriella Neufeld, Sarah Pries, and I were put to work preparing supper for 100 people in Pauingassi First Nation (PFN). It marked the start of a three-day fishing derby put on by Child and Family Services (CFS), and to celebrate CFS was planning a supper at their community cabin.
The streets are packed. Hordes of people move at once, criss-crossing over the smooth stone streets and deftly navigating down many stairs. Vendors shouting in Arabic call from all sides, selling vegetables, clothes, toys, herbs and household goods. The air is heavy with the smell of people and spices.
My friend once wrote me an email, saying that she had been praying for me. While she had been praying for me, she saw a vision, and wrote to share it with me
She saw a picture of me skating on a river. It was a long river, where it was cold and the ice was hard. I kept skating and skating, even though it was cold and hard work.
Since we’re getting near the end of wedding season (which has been far less hectic for me this year – I was only invited to one wedding!), I thought I’d bring up this topic again. For me, it’s an endlessly fascinating topic, not only because I’m married, but also because within the past few years, I’ve moved from a context where most of my friends are married to my current context in Toronto, where most of my friends are single. It’s been an interesting shift to make.
I believe that one of the great joys in life is meeting strangers. Sometimes strangers are kindred spirits. Sometimes strangers are a window from a world you don’t understand, but get to glimpse into, just for a moment. Sometimes they are shadows of who you were, and again other times they are glimpses of who you want to be.
Let me tell you the story of one stranger in particular that I met early this month in Waterloo, Ontario.
Last year, a few of my cousins and a bunch of the friends I made growing up in church, in high school and during my time studying at Canadian Mennonite University got engaged. And when I say “a bunch,” I mean 20. Ten couples, all planning weddings for the spring and summer of 2012.
All the anticipation in the world cannot prepare someone for the experience of leaving home to live in a foreign country for a period of time, even though one understands that it will be a difficult undertaking and different from one’s expectations. This was the case for Shina Park and Laura Dueckman, who both attend Emmanuel Mennonite Church in Abbotsford, BC.
“To live in the Holy Land, you must be crazy, or you must believe in miracles,” farmer Daoud Nassar tells our group assembled in a cave just outside of Bethlehem. He is sharing the story of his family’s land and their struggle to keep it. Yet the man sitting in front of us does not seem crazy. He has quiet, intense eyes and a resolute tone. There is fire behind those eyes, but not insanity.
I’ve been impressed with the campaign begun earlier this summer by several Canadian Mennonite University and Canadian School of Peacebuilding students in response to the government’s plans to cut funding to refugee health care. As you may know, they worked out how much it costs each Canadian per year to provide this health coverage. The answer? 59 cents. So, in a clever video, they explained these costs and asked people to find 59 cents in change and mail it to the office of the Prime Minister.
From Vacation Bible School to Bible camp, many children participate in a variety of different activities during the summer. This year, Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) Manitoba offered a program in the hopes of fostering global awareness among young people.
It’s fairly common for young Canadian Mennonites to attend one of the Mennonite institutions for their undergraduate studies, but many young Mennonites are heading back to school to pursue the newer graduate programs at the Mennonite institutions.
Rachel Halder started Our Stories Untold to explore the topic of sexual violence in the Mennonite church (Photo courtesy of Rachel Halder)
Hannah Heinzekehr, 27, dedicated a week of posts on her blog to discussing sexual violence in the church. (Photo courtesy of Hannah Heinzekehr)
In Canada 1,397 sexual assaults occur every day, according to the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women. In the United States nearly one in five women reported experiencing rape or attempted rape at some point in their lifetime says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Since I no longer live in one of the Mennonite “centres” like Winnipeg and Waterloo, I find myself sometimes feeling cut off from the larger Mennonite church. Earlier this month, though, I was sent as a delegate to Mennonite Church Canada’s Assembly, “Dusting Off the Bible for the Twenty-First Century,” which was held in Vancouver. I’d never been to one of these gatherings before, so I didn’t quite know what to expect, but I ended up having a great time, and left feeling refreshed and reconnected to the larger church.
In her book The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Anne Fadiman describes an autobiography that eighth-grader May Lee completed for school. Lee, a Hmong girl living in California’s Merced county, recalls fleeing war-stricken Laos in 1979 to reach refugee camps in Thailand.
Growing up in a pro-military culture like Mesquite, Texas, meant that Kimberly Rivera never thought she would leave the army. “I was pro-war, pro-life, pro-death penalty,” said the 30-year-old.
“I thought it would be like a good thing as far as I will be serving my country, I’ll be, you know, doing the patriotic American thing.”
A Guatemalan man named Byron took a political stand against the injustice in his country. As a result, his family was murdered before his eyes. Byron managed to escape to Canada, but upon arrival, he was told that he could not receive health care coverage because his country was not considered a designated refugee state.
As someone in my late 20s, I don’t really consider myself a “young adult” anymore, yet I keep encountering that ambiguous label. In a recent CBC Doc Zone documentary about young adults entitled, “Generation Boomerang,” a psychologist talked about a new category that has emerged in our society in this particular generation.
A new kind of Christianity is spreading across the globe, and the Mennonite church can be a leading voice in discerning what that means for how Christians pass on their faith to their children, according to a researcher of children’s spirituality.
