Monthly Archive for October, 2008

My fair share of the world’s chocolate?

Published on October 30, 2008 by Cheryl Woelk. Closed Tags: , , .

Dark squares, shad­owed in glis­ten­ing cocoa, softly thunk as they break apart in my eager fin­gers. The mouth­wa­ter­ing aroma draws my com­plete atten­tion as I slowly place one chunk in my mouth. As it hits my taste buds, the bitter-sweet rich­ness seeps into me, to the tips of my fin­gers and ends of my toes. The sweet­ness climbs up my flushed cheeks to my ears, and the warmth of the melt­ing vel­vety syrup radi­ates through me. I swal­low and savor the smooth stick­i­ness left in my mouth. I love chocolate!

Choco­late is my weak­ness. I see myself as a strong-willed capa­ble per­son, until it comes to choco­late. I’d never hes­i­tated to sat­isfy my crav­ing, until I heard a com­ment about some­one “eat­ing more than their fair share of the world’s choco­late.” Fair share? Hmm. I won­der what that means. Fair? Fair choco­late? How is choco­late not fair?

This caught my inter­est. I started to learn about the small por­tion that the actual farm­ers received from my over-priced choco­late bar, and the incred­i­ble process it takes to get from the nat­ural world to my mouth. I real­ized my desire to love God and love my neigh­bour can even affect my choco­late buy­ing habits.

Although crit­ics of the fair trade alter­na­tive show prob­lems with any global trade model, I decided it’s bet­ter than not pay­ing atten­tion to issues of jus­tice in my pur­chases at all. If can even con­sider buy­ing as much choco­late as I do, I can also pay a lit­tle more to give my neigh­bours in Ghana, the Ivory Coast, and Ecuador a more fair wage for their work.

Liv­ing in Korea two years ago, where fair trade cof­fee prod­ucts were just start­ing to become avail­able, I decided to try a fast from unfair choco­late. I promised myself I would only buy fair trade choco­late prod­ucts for one year and use the money I would have spent on other choco­late for sup­port­ing a par­tic­u­lar MCC project.

Choco­late became a spe­cial treat again. I dis­cov­ered a fair trade choco­late sup­plier only an hour bike ride from my home. I would delib­er­ately take a nice after­noon, go for a bike ride to the store, re-affirm my deci­sion, and think about how good that choco­late would taste!

After the year fin­ished, I real­ized that unfair choco­late just didn’t taste as good any­more. I wanted to keep on this choco­late fast. Once in a while, I give in to the temp­ta­tions of adver­tis­ers and care­fully placed prod­ucts in stores, but for the most part I con­tinue to prac­tice choos­ing to buy fairly traded chocolate.

Now in Canada, I’ve found more places with fair trade choco­late avail­able. I’ve also learned that Octo­ber is fair trade month. This is great! I won­der, should I now just eat as much as I want because it’s fair trade? Or do I push myself to a new com­fort level by think­ing beyond sim­ply sat­is­fy­ing crav­ings with­out guilt to imag­in­ing more just ways of liv­ing? What about reduc­ing my con­sump­tion of choco­late over­all? What about find­ing out what IS my fair share of the world’s choco­late? What about find­ing other fairly traded prod­ucts and chal­leng­ing myself to think of jus­tice in more pur­chases that I make? To always try to go one step more? Not out of guilt or oblig­a­tion, but out of a hunger and thirst for right-ness and jus­tice for all, cen­tred in my love of God and my neighbour.

I will con­tinue to enjoy eat­ing choco­late. At the same time, I will give thanks for each neigh­bour and each piece of cre­ation that has touched it along the way. I pray that we will con­tinue to ask uncom­fort­able ques­tions about our economies until together every­one can enjoy their fair share of the world’s choco­late (about 450g of cocoa per per­son in the world per year)… and all the other gifts of God’s creation.

Why Spanish?

Published on October 25, 2008 by Dick Benner. 2 Comments

When I think of the stereo­typ­i­cally “best” pro­fes­sions for Men­non­ites I think pro­fes­sion where peo­ple are help­ing oth­ers. Nurses and teach­ers def­i­nitely come to mind. Maybe the peo­ple I know are not a good rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­ple, but the major­ity of them are teach­ers or some­thing sim­i­lar (sim­i­lar in my mind, not in the actual work). Where does that leave me? I’m cur­rently (a word I used twice in my bio­graph­i­cal information-oops) study­ing Span­ish lit­er­a­ture, and this term I am tak­ing courses in sec­ond lan­guage teach­ing, com­par­a­tive medieval lit­er­a­ture, medieval lit­er­a­ture from the Span­ish penin­sula and a course called Affini­ties: Read­ings of Real­ism and Rad­i­cal­ism. They are all inter­est­ing, but where do they leave me? What could the pos­si­ble pur­pose of this study be?

To say that I am study­ing sim­ply because I find it inter­est­ing seems some­what self­ish. That cer­tainly isn’t a Men­non­ite virtue. I could say that since my study forces me to read and try to under­stand West­ern lit­er­ary and philo­soph­i­cal his­tory it gives me a bet­ter per­spec­tive on the world. I could also say that read­ing about Medieval Spain lets me learn about a place and time when Mus­lims, Chris­tians and Jews lived in rel­a­tive har­mony and this could have mod­ern polit­i­cal impli­ca­tions. Unfor­tu­nately, my study gen­er­ally begins and ends with Medieval Spain. The one way I can think of, and I won­der why I didn’t arrive at it ear­lier, is that read­ing lit­er­a­ture let us under­stand the human con­di­tion. Read­ing Anna Karen­ina, for exam­ple, gave me the chance to look at how dif­fer­ent groups of peo­ple com­mu­ni­cate, the lim­its of spo­ken lan­guage and about Rus­sia imme­di­ately after the abo­li­tion of Serf­dom. Read­ing this novel along­side the writ­ings of rad­i­cal com­mu­nist and anar­chic thinkers helped me under­stand Rus­sia “fraught” polit­i­cal atmos­phere, allow­ing me to under­stand the roots of the 1917 Russ­ian Rev­o­lu­tions. Read­ing medieval texts from a fem­i­nist per­spec­tive (in my comp lit class) has shown me books and col­lected writ­ing I never knew existed: texts writ­ten in defence of women at the turn of the 15th cen­tury. On a lighter note, read­ing French and Span­ish poetry gave me the chance  to try and under­stand what peo­ple find impor­tant and what they find funny. These are price­less glimpses into another time.

Still, I won­der. At the end of the day it’s eas­ier to keep all this to myself. To say this is for me and me only (and now, of course, for you read­ers). But is that really enough?

A Confession; Or Mixed Martial Artists and Hebrew Scholars

Published on October 24, 2008 by David Driedger. 1 Comment

On occa­sion we run across blog entries that give us a glimpse of the all-too ordi­nary lives of the blog­gers. The blog­gers begin with some shame in their con­fes­sion won­der­ing if the few read­ers they have could pos­si­bly respect them after such a con­fes­sion. Per­haps it is pro­fes­sor of soci­ol­ogy admit­ting they watch (and are addicted to) American’s Next Top Model or an admit­ted film snob con­fess­ing his guilty plea­sures. Well any­way, with some hes­i­ta­tion here is my con­fes­sion.
I grew up enjoy­ing wrestling. I had two older sis­ters and so I never got many chances to wres­tle grow­ing up and so I watched the WWF or bush league AWA and wres­tled with pil­lows in my base­ment. Now, for­tu­nately, over time I drifted away from the wrestling enter­tain­ment busi­ness and in 1993 I came across some­thing else. I am not sure if I heard about first or sim­ply saw the VHS cover in a small cor­ner store in my town that rented videos. It was called the Ulti­mate Fight­ing Cham­pi­onship.
Royce Gracie getting the upper hand from the bottom
And for four sea­sons I watched fight­ers with back­grounds as diverse as box­ing to Samoan Bone Crush­ing come together to test their skills. And for four sea­sons (except one due to dehy­dra­tion) I watched the 165 pounder Royce Gra­cie beat them all (in white pic­tured above).
In ret­ro­spect I see some­thing actu­ally quite beau­ti­ful in that con­ver­gence. It was a truly inter­dis­ci­pli­nary step (though it was of course admit­ted that it favoured some). I lost track of UFC for years until this year. In our recent move we now get some chan­nels that play some UFC matches. Things have changed. There are now time lim­its and rounds and they stand up the oppo­nents if there is not enough ‘action’. The shift has moved away from pure free-style and is geared now towards a more ‘excit­ing’ fight. Plus nearly every­one is now trained in the style Gra­cie intro­duced.
This being said I started see­ing pre­views for UFC 87 and got swept up by the hype. The day after the pay-per-view event I scoured the inter­net look­ing for high­lights. I found my body tensed through each round and my emo­tions shift­ing from exhil­a­ra­tion to fear and con­cern. I wit­nessed respect and sports­man­ship (among most). And heard the sto­ries of those who left Wall Street to fight or how grew up home­less and found this as a way out. And highly antic­i­pated the main event for the night the wel­ter­weight cham­pion (and Cana­dian) George St. Pierre vs the scarper Jon Fitch (if you really want to you can see the fight here).
So any­way, what can I say I really enjoyed the fights. I do not trans­late this directly into a pop­u­lar mas­cu­line spir­i­tu­al­ity. How do I jus­tify or under­stand this expres­sion? To be hon­est I am not sure. I actu­ally find these matches more respect­ful than most other sports. In other sports there is always the temp­ta­tion to ‘cheat’ in order to gain an advan­tage. In the UFC I believe the only rules are no bit­ing, eye gaug­ing, punches to the back of the head and groin shots (though they wear cups) and I have never seen some­one try to use these things to there advan­tage. I don’t think these guys are saints, but I do think the nature of the sport allows for more ‘hon­est’ com­pe­ti­tion.
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I sus­pect at bot­tom the allure of these com­pe­ti­tions is the basic desire to be King of the Cas­tle to be capa­ble of some expres­sion in which we are able to con­trol our envi­ron­ment. In this way I can relate my inter­est in mixed mar­tial arts to my inter­est in Hebrew in col­lege and philo­soph­i­cal the­ol­ogy now. In col­lege I held firmly that the Bible was the final author­ity on truth and prac­tice and so in order to best con­trol the play of inter­pre­ta­tions I stud­ied the bib­li­cal lan­guages. In this way I could use this author­ity to legit­imize or under­mine inter­pre­ta­tions (and thus con­trol the play­ing field). This gave way to the study of hermeneu­tics and its role in phi­los­o­phy. I began to think that there were philo­soph­i­cal assump­tions that guided my inter­pre­ta­tions and so I needed to mas­ter that field in order to remain in con­trol. Our actions are almost always in the ser­vice of sta­bil­ity.
… Wait! This is sup­posed to be a con­fes­sion! Only guilt and shame, no excuses! Any­one else? The pas­tor is in …

Intercultural Encounters

Published on October 23, 2008 by Cheryl Woelk. Closed Tags: , , .

In a cross-cultural encounter, two peo­ple from dif­fer­ent cul­tures meet, notice the dif­fer­ences between each other’s cul­tures, admire some, dis­like oth­ers, then go on their own ways car­ry­ing this new knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence. In an inter­cul­tural encounter, how­ever, two peo­ple from dif­fer­ent cul­tures meet, immerse them­selves in the chal­lenges and inspi­ra­tions of dif­fer­ing cul­tures, strug­gle with destroyed par­a­digms, cre­ate end­less ques­tions, and head out in new direc­tions, their iden­ti­ties trans­formed by their experiences.

My six years in Korea was undoubt­edly an inter­cul­tural encounter. If I didn’t know about the major impact on my iden­tity of spend­ing most of my twen­ties liv­ing in another cul­ture before com­ing to Canada, I real­ize now as I try to go back and find that I can’t. I’ve become a new per­son of the inter­cul­ture, nei­ther Cana­dian as I was, nor Korean as I tried to be. I face the chal­lenge of relat­ing to fam­ily and friends who have not accom­pa­nied me in this trans­for­ma­tion. I feel uncom­fort­able, even in what used to be home. I try to call it home, to cre­ate that sense of con­nec­tion again. Much seems famil­iar, but has new mean­ing or has lost what mean­ing it had. Much has changed. I search for bal­ance, but I feel dizzy.

I know that ques­tions of home, iden­tity, and belong­ing will fol­low me through­out my life. Although dis­ori­ent­ing and con­fus­ing, I give thanks for this gift of liv­ing in the ten­sion. Just as inter­na­tional can mean both between and beyond nations, I see inter­cul­tural as a place between and beyond cul­ture. A para­dox that gives energy in its ten­sion. A para­dox to which Jesus called his fol­low­ers, liv­ing in the world and not of the world. Res­i­dent aliens to our cul­tures. Jesus mod­eled this para­dox by liv­ing com­pletely within human cul­ture yet cen­tred in his rela­tion­ship to the Cre­ator and the Spirit, tran­scend­ing all culture.

I want to live in this para­dox, gain strength from the ten­sion, and wel­come the Holy Spirit’s trans­form­ing power in the midst of confusion.

From monks’ cells to wedding bells

Published on October 20, 2008 by Will Loewen. Closed

I’m addicted to research­ing Ref­or­ma­tion his­tory.  Even though I’m not for­mally study­ing it any­more, I still make up rea­sons for read­ing about it.  Lately, I’ve been sat­is­fy­ing my curiosi­ties by read­ing about old monasteries.

Now I’ve never been inter­ested in monas­ti­cism for myself, even in my bleak­est days of bach­e­lor­hood.  I really can’t say I even remem­ber hav­ing met a monk.  Still there is some­thing remark­able about a man who is will­ing to give up all of the same things that a priest is, with­out get­ting any of the pres­tige that comes with the high office.  The monas­tic call­ing may have become unfash­ion­able now, but at its peak, it would have been one of the most com­mon pro­fes­sions of Euro­pean men.

As for the build­ings, they dot­ted the land­scape, tak­ing many shapes and sizes.  They could be found in cities, attached to grand cathe­drals, within the cas­tle walls, they may have pro­vided the sole place of wor­ship in small vil­lages, or they could have been hid­den away in some for­est, a moun­tain side, or along a remote sea coast.  They ranged from sim­ple and mea­gre to cushy and elab­o­rate.  Until the 16th cen­tury, they ran essen­tially uncon­tested, free to oper­ate how they pleased.

Five hun­dred years later, these var­i­ous build­ings have met dif­fer­ent fates.  Henry VIII seized the assets of England’s monas­ter­ies, and sold off the land and build­ings.  Like­wise in the Ger­man and Swiss reforms, most of these build­ings were ordered closed.  In land that stayed Catholic, they fared bet­ter for a while, but hundred’s of years of polit­i­cal change cou­pled with sec­u­lar­iza­tion means that they too fell into dis­use.  Often they were aban­doned and some­times fell into ruin, a process occa­sion­ally sped up by the many wars that rav­aged the con­ti­nent, but some­times the build­ings were con­verted for other uses, like schools or churches.

More recently though, investors have been more cre­ative.  Many old Euro­pean monas­ter­ies have been redesigned to func­tion as resort hotels.  It really makes a lot of busi­ness sense, given that many of them would have been on prime real estate.  Now that I know about them, I may even look into stay­ing at one if I am trav­el­ling through Europe again.  I think this is a great way to keep these old build­ings in use.

I did start to won­der, how­ever when I saw infor­ma­tion about San Domenico Palace Hotel.  You can see the pro­file and some great pics here.  By all accounts, the trans­for­ma­tion has been an astound­ing suc­cess.  It is now a five star resort, cater­ing to all sorts of groups and func­tions.  This web­site details it’s poten­tial use as a wed­ding facil­ity, adver­tis­ing that

“The rooms used to be the for­mer cells of the monks but don’t worry…there is noth­ing monas­tic here, this is a lux­ury hotel.”

They’re not kid­ding.  Does any­one else see the irony?  This was once a place where vows of celibacy and poverty were made and it is now being adver­tised as a place where wed­ding vows could be made in lav­ish cer­e­monies, and then con­su­mated in lux­u­ri­ous accomodations.

The his­tor­i­cal real­ity how­ever was that monas­ter­ies were not always havens of piety.  Men often entered because they had no other career options.  It shouldn’t be a sur­prise then that these men didn’t faith­fully keep the vows forced upon them.  It was not uncom­mon for monks to visit broth­els, keep girl­friends, main­tain assets, and extort extra tax money from the cit­i­zens, all in con­tra­ven­tion to their vows.  This cor­rup­tion was part of the rea­son that reform­ers attacked these insti­tu­tions so vis­ciously.  Given this hypocrisy, maybe it isn’t so ironic after all.

Still, it makes me won­der, if any of our churhces are still stand­ing five hun­dred years from now, in what ways will they be used?  Will we be rolling in our graves to find that our once “proud” Men­non­ite churches have been con­verted for use as dance halls or mil­i­tary bar­racks?  Is our present wit­ness strong enough that future com­men­ta­tors will rec­og­nize the irony?  Food for thought, perhaps.

Toronto Tourism

Published on October 18, 2008 by Dick Benner. Closed

This week­end I had the oppor­tu­nity to enjoy one of Toronto’s many attrac­tions. Actu­ally, one of the University’s many attrac­tions, specif­i­cally a con­fer­ence called Learn­ing Democ­racy by Doing. This con­fer­ence was really a series of pre­sen­ta­tions, work­shops and con­ver­sa­tions about Democ­racy — how to best teach it and how it is being learned today around the world. Not sur­pris­ingly, the con­fer­ence and con­ver­sa­tions were full of aca­d­e­mics (as con­fer­ences often are). The excit­ing addi­tion of this con­fer­ence, though, were the activ­i­ties, bal­anc­ing out the the­ory with practice.

As far as I could tell, at this con­fer­ence there was only one other Men­non­ite there (besides myself). This is not entirely sur­pris­ing given that a. as a con­fer­ence it had pub­lic­ity only within cer­tain realms and b. the activists and aca­d­e­mics pre­sent­ing don’t inter­act with Men­non­ites on a reg­u­lar basis. It’s not bad that there were not many Men­non­ites, just that it seems as though many Men­non­ites believe in social jus­tice (it turns out the con­fer­ence was more about social jus­tice and peace than democ­racy, which was fine by me.) Just that this con­fer­ence would have been a great learn­ing oppor­tu­nity for many social-justice-minded Mennonites.

It’s not as though no one knows about Men­non­ites, though. On an inter­na­tional level, our very own MCC seems to have a good rep­u­ta­tion. Maybe I’m biased or mak­ing sweep­ing state­ments based on anec­do­tal evi­dence. Sill, in the one con­ver­sa­tion I had with a fel­low pan­elist (that’s the anec­do­tal evi­dence) it seems that Men­non­ites (and those who choose to affil­i­ate them­selves with Men­non­ites when serv­ing over­seas) have a very good rep­u­ta­tion (in this case it was work­ing with dis­placed people).

But should we be more widely known? I’m not propos­ing a brand or any­thing, that seems tacky, but I do won­der if Men­non­ites really do any PR work for them­selves. If other Men­non­ites are any­thing like me, when they are out and about in the real world, they kind of keep quiet about being Men­non­ite. Some­times sit­u­a­tions call for Men­non­ite his­tor­i­cal, cul­tural or reli­gious exam­ples, but out­side of these cir­cum­stances, I don’t talk much about being Men­non­ite. It raises too many annoy­ing horse and buggy related ques­tions. At the same time, I think Men­non­ites as a group have some­thing to offer. Maybe we should talk about who we are and what we believe to peo­ple who aren’t Men­non­ite a lit­tle more often…

Oh Canada

Published on October 14, 2008 by Dick Benner. Closed

I thought that kinds of title might be appro­pri­ate for today, elec­tion day (please see the post below for actual infor­ma­tion about the elec­tion). My post is more about some first re-impressions about Canada.

When I left Nicaragua and came home I thought I would be return­ing to a land of plenty. I knew that there was poverty here but I didn’t expect to see it. I didn’t expect to see peo­ple sell­ing things on the street, things that had been cleary res­cued from the garbage. Or see­ing peo­ple in my local thrift store shop­ping there because they can­not afford any­where else, not because they are attracted by the cheap prices or because they want to reduce their eco­log­i­cal foot­print. Or real­iz­ing that I can eat out so cheaply only because the worker isn’t being paid on the legal pay scale. Some­how, see­ing poverty here, in the face of th eman who is sell­ing news­pa­pers as I get out of the sub­way in the morn­ing (that I could prob­a­bly obtain else­where free of charge) or in the man attack­ing his sleep­ing bag near the Ontario Leg­is­la­ture, is jarring.

In Nicaragua I expected to see poverty and even­tu­ally saw so much of it in pub­lic that I grew immune to its effects. But in my reverse cul­ture shock I am shocked. Like in Nicaragua, I won­der, what can I do? Can am I doing that con­tributes to this? What should “we” as a soci­ety, do? It is not just those “back­wards” “third-word” con­tries and “une­d­u­cated” “poor” peo­ple that need change. Our coun­try and we as a peo­ple do too.

A Way Through

Published on October 14, 2008 by David Driedger. Closed Tags: , .

Polit­i­cal, social, and eco­nomic events sur­round­ing us seem any­thing but clear.  One would not get that impres­sion if they were to lis­ten soley to the polit­i­cal cam­paigns of our fed­eral elec­tion. The method employed in these cam­paigns is to clearly polar­ize the issues and the par­tic­i­pants (which of course makes it all the more inter­est­ing as we have more than two par­ties). Churches often get crit­i­cized for being to lit­eral or sim­plis­tic in its think­ing but I sus­pect it is the politi­cians who cre­ate a much more dis­tinct uni­verse of black and white. For the con­ser­v­a­tives the plan is sim­ple. If you want shaky unsta­ble lead­er­ship then vote for the Liberals.

If you want calm steady lead­er­ship then vote for the Con­ser­v­a­tives (hey didn’t I see that guy at my thanks­giv­ing dinner?).

I was lis­ten­ing to a brief speech made by NDP leader Jack Lay­ton and he told us that in this elec­tion we have two choices. Well actu­ally we have a series of choices with two options (most of which I can’t remem­ber). He said that we can choose a prime min­is­ter who favours the board­room table or one who favours the kitchen table. You can choose wrong-headedness or pro­gres­sive alter­na­tives. In sum­ming up the two options Lay­ton says that you can choose pol­icy or peo­ple. You can choose some­one who is down to earth and con­nected to people.

Or you can choose the power-hungry lackey of the United Sates admin­is­tra­tion (that’s ‘Steph All-Mighty’ at the bottom).

In the end I sus­pect this sort of rhetoric has left many of us feel­ing as though there really is no choice at all.

This past Sun­day we took com­mu­nion and the text that I preached on the Passover in Exo­dus 12.  In approach­ing this text I was won­der­ing to what end this meal nour­ished the peo­ple.  It was of course the meal and the blood on their door­posts that saved them from the finally plague of death in Egypt and we often look to this part of the story to address the sub­si­tu­tion­ary aspect of redemp­tion.  I am not try­ing to deny this only to con­tinue to see how the story unfolds.  The Passover event is not a sim­ple act of deliv­er­ance in which the peo­ple enter imme­di­ately into the land of milk and honey.  The peo­ple them­selves likely felt that they were finally saved from slav­ery but as they encamped by the Red Sea they soon found that the Egypt­ian army was already bear­ing down on them.

It was this sce­nario that I felt some sim­i­lar­ity to the type of choices we often find our­selves given in polit­i­cal cam­paigns (okay so the anal­ogy may be a lit­tle stretched but bear with me). What the Exo­dus rep­re­sents is the ulti­mate expres­sion of being caught between a rock and hard place. This par­tic­u­lar moment of stand­ing between the Red Sea and the Egyp­tians speaks to us about many of our sit­u­a­tions in life. Many times we feel that we are left with no real redeem­ing or life-giving choice in life. The options for the Israelites seem clear, fight or drown; death by sword or death by asphyx­i­a­tion. Gov­ern­ment by untrust­wor­thy con­ser­v­a­tives or gov­ern­ment by untrust­wor­thy lib­er­als. Cloth­ing that’s made in sweat­shops in Bangladesh or cloth­ing that’s made in sweat­shops in China. Unhappy mar­riage or lone­li­ness. Unful­fill­ing job or lower stan­dard of liv­ing. Try to be some­one your not or be unpop­u­lar. These choices, are not unlike the logic of polit­i­cal cam­paigns giv­ing us the choice of oppo­sites. Be suc­cess­ful or be unsuc­cess­ful. Be attrac­tive or be ugly. You must make money or you will have a mis­er­able life. You must be strong or peo­ple will think you are weak. Too often we feel these choices reflect the way the world is. We think they are the only choices we have.
Cel­e­brat­ing the Passover meal (and I would argue com­mu­nion), set­ting the table of God is to be called out from the pow­ers of the world. And it is not only to reject the pow­ers but also to face them. To face your fears of lone­li­ness, to face your fears of being rejected or humil­i­ated, to face your fears of aban­don­ment, to face your fears of weak­ness and vul­ner­a­bil­ity. To face the destruc­tive pow­ers that arise in our fam­i­lies. To face the destruc­tive forces that rise up in our con­sumerism and the face phys­i­cal and men­tal abuse and mil­i­tary force. To face injus­tices at home and abroad. To face what can often be the par­a­lyz­ing force of the unknown. To be able to stand on the bank of the Red Sea, on the brink of destruc­tion where it feels like there is barely room breath, where there looks like there is no help in sight and then to hear the beau­ti­ful words that Moses spoke to the Israelites, “Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliv­er­ance the LORD will bring you today. The Egyp­tians you see today you will never see again. The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still.” Then God made a way, another way. God made a way through heart of the pow­ers and with this God undid the false choices of the world’s powers.

This is the call the of our com­mu­nion meal. It is a very dif­fer­ent meal than the one’s we gath­ered around this past week­end. It is a meal that will not make us stronger but will make us weaker and more vul­ner­a­ble. It is a meal that is not cel­e­brated with com­fort and ease but a meal in which our shoes must remain on for we will be called out at any moment. This is a hard meal but it is the only meal which will nour­ish us for the heal­ing of lives and over­com­ing of our fears. It is the only meal that will end the divi­sions in our world for no priv­i­lege is allowed at its table. This is the meal that reclaims our bod­ies from the pow­ers around us and nour­ishes them for ser­vice in God’s King­dom.
Amen. Now go vote (or know why your not).

For any­one inter­ested here is a video I put together to show after the ser­mon. I viewed this song as some­one who rec­og­nized the pow­ers that he was caught between and is call­ing out for a way through them.

The drama of Mennonite history

Published on October 11, 2008 by Will Loewen. 2 Comments

In the Sep­tem­ber 29, 2008 issue of the Cana­dian Men­non­ite is an arti­cle, writ­ten by me, about the spir­i­tual lessons that I learned in research­ing Anabap­tist his­tory, and in par­tic­u­lar, the story of Con­rad Grebel, George Blau­rock, Felix Manz, and Felix’ mother Anna.  The arti­cle was part of ser­mon I wrote, partly to jus­tify to my con­gre­ga­tion why I had spent so much time lately work­ing on this musi­cal.  So the pub­lished arti­cle was the ser­mon ver­sion.  There are other lessons I think we could learn and I may be more com­fort­able to share them drinks at a local cof­fee shop.  You may con­sider this blog post as the cof­fee shop ver­sion of the same article/sermon.

Grace

These early Anabap­tist fig­ures would have objected to us uphold­ing them as heroes.  Besides strong spir­i­tual con­cerns about idol­a­try, they would have made clear that in many ways they were seri­ously flawed individuals.

In their own time they would not have been viewed as uphold­ers of fam­ily val­ues: Felix Manz was an ille­git­i­mate child of a “celi­bate” priest, George Blau­rock was a for­mer priest who had renounced his per­pet­ual vow of celibacy and taken a wife, and Con­rad Grebel did not have the sup­port of his wife in his counter-church activ­i­ties.  Blau­rock was well-known for his wild tem­per.  In his Uni­ver­sity Col­lege days, Con­rad Grebel was sex­u­ally promis­cu­ous, drank heav­ily, and par­tic­i­pated in bar fights.

* (Con­rad Grebel also later devel­oped a the­o­log­i­cal oppo­si­tion to vocal and instru­men­tal music in church wor­ship, but not only have we named a school after this fail­ure of a stu­dent, that school has a thriv­ing music pro­gram with a choir that reg­u­larly tours local churches.)

We leave these things out of the Sun­day School sto­ries of their lives and we talk about them as mar­tyrs, with­out spot or blem­ish.  The early Anabap­tist com­mu­ni­ties around them were well aware of their weak­nesses.  These details were not hid­den to glo­rify them, they were cel­e­brated as a way of glo­ri­fy­ing a God who would accept such fallen crea­tures into the King­dom.  In an era where the priests pro­jected an aura of unap­proach­able piety it would have been refresh­ing to hear these guys speak openly about their faults.  It was partly this kind of down to earth sin­cer­ity that made their move­ment so appealing.

When the out­side world thinks of the church, what kind of peo­ple come to mind?  If we more resem­ble the preists who hid their sins from the world then it is no won­der that they are not inter­ested in join­ing up.

Ques­tion­ing Commercialism

The early 16th cen­tury was a time of increased com­mer­cial­ism.  Inter­na­tional was becom­ing more com­mon and the mer­chants of that time were becom­ing more plen­ti­ful, more influ­en­tial and more wealthy.  A medieval mar­ket place would have been filled with farm­ers sell­ing their crops, var­i­ous crafts­men adver­tis­ing their build­ing and repair­ing ser­vices, and butch­ers, bak­ers and can­dle­stick mak­ers hawk­ing their wares.  Into that mix were th mer­chants, re-selling things that they nei­ther grew, pro­duced or repaired, at prices far higher than what they had ini­tially paid to acquire them.  The mer­chants were viewed with sus­pi­cion for a few rea­sons; first they were adding cost with­out adding value, and sec­ond they often had to cre­ate a demand for their for­eign prod­ucts.  Today we rec­og­nize that bring­ing a prod­uct to a place that I am shop­ping is adding some ele­ment of value.  We don’t so much crit­i­cize that the mark-up price is too high, but that the ini­tial acqui­si­tion price is too low, so that farm­ers and fac­tory work­ers often in much poorer coun­tries than ours can­not pos­si­bly be fairly com­pen­sated for their work.  We are much more com­pla­cent how­ever with the gen­er­a­tion of demand for a par­tic­u­lar prod­uct.  Much of our econ­omy is dri­ven by peo­ple buy­ing things they don’t need with money they don’t have, and which they will only use a few times.  Chris­tians, includ­ing Men­non­ites, not only get sucked into it just as bad as any­one else but they are just as likely to com­mit the same crimes.

An early Anabap­tist writer the­o­rized that per­haps there were some mer­chants in heaven, but only because God’s grace was so great.  We need to adopt some of their skepticism.

Unity and Division

The pre­vi­ous two points, and the ones in the printed arti­cle would fall under the cat­e­gory of “Lessons we should have learned but didn’t”.  This point should then be filed under “Lessons we’ve learned but shouldn’t have.”

Mar­tin Luther wanted to cor­rect the errors of the church using solely the words of Scrip­ture.  He believed that if only peo­ple would read the Bible for them­selves, rather than hav­ing doc­trine dic­tated to them from Rome, the prob­lems of the church would be cor­rected and every­one would agree and live peaca­bly with each other.  Zwingli, Calvin, and other church reform­ers, includ­ing the early Anabap­tists also believed this.  I am quite con­vinced that they were wrong.  Luther declared that com­mon peo­ple should be able to develop an under­stand­ing of God and the world around them by hav­ing the scrip­tures preached to them clearly.  Soon after that, he was declar­ing many of the com­mon peo­ple as evil-doers for the way they were act­ing out their new­found understanding.

The Anabap­tists too hoped that the Bible would give them unity, but these early Anabap­tist com­mu­ni­ties were often as divi­sive as the state churches they left.  Those with dif­fer­ing under­stand­ings were labelled as heretics and argu­ments about church purity raged on.  We may have left excom­mu­ni­ca­tion behind, but many churches still strug­gle with the divi­sion and pain caused by all kind of argu­ments, name call­ing (labelling) and an all around lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion.  We can cel­e­brate the Anabap­tists’ courage to break away from a cor­rupt church, but we have car­ried on that legacy of first cor­rupt­ing and then break­ing up our churches.

Really?

Sure, I under­stand.  You’re prob­a­bly a lot like me.  I don’t hyp­o­crit­i­cally hide my sins.  I am a respon­si­ble con­sumer.  Of course I haven’t bro­ken up any churches, but …

  • when some­one shares a strug­gle with me, do they feel sup­port or judgement?
  • what por­tion of my gro­cery bill/credit card state­ment is actu­ally necessities?
  • am I reward­ing hon­est, eth­i­cal busi­nesses or am I reward­ing myself?
  • how many peo­ple in my faith cir­cles have I writ­ten off or labeled as different?
  • how many close friends do I have that vote for dif­fer­ent par­ties, oppose me on con­tro­ver­sial issues, or sim­ply have a dif­fer­ent world view?

I’m on a Listening Tour

Published on October 8, 2008 by Cheryl Woelk. 1 Comment Tags: , , .

Just as I set­tled on the city shut­tle bus to the air­port, an elderly woman got on. I auto­mat­i­cally shoved my lug­gage over so she could sit in the near­est seat. She thanked me repeat­edly and I thought of how nat­ural it had been for a young per­son to move over for some­one older on Korean buses. I lis­tened. She talked about the weather, dri­ving in ice and snow dur­ing the upcom­ing win­ter. She told me about an acci­dent she had once had. she hadn’t dri­ven since, but the bus has been great, she affirmed. She related the news of a series of beat­ings that took place over the week­end in her for­mer neigh­bour­hood. How shocked every­one was. How the world has changed. How she no longer knew what to think of it or any­thing else.

As she got off and wished me well, I reflected on the lis­ten­ing I have done so far on my trav­els. Pas­tors, bus dri­vers, fel­low pas­sen­gers on the bus, friends, church mem­bers, fam­ily, and taxi dri­vers. Since the begin­ning of Sep­tem­ber I have vis­ited dif­fer­ent churches, schools, and orga­ni­za­tions speak­ing about my involve­ment in Korean min­istry with Men­non­ite Church Canada Wit­ness. I have stayed with friends and mem­bers of churches. I have spoke with youth, seniors, large and small con­gre­ga­tions, in both Korean and Eng­lish. Some churches and indi­vid­u­als I have met showed inter­est in lis­ten­ing to me and to my sto­ries and asked excit­ing ques­tions, allow­ing me to share more and bring my pas­sion for Korean min­istry into the room. Many more, how­ever, had sto­ries of their own to tell and to be heard.

Ini­tially, I felt defen­sive. Isn’t this my time for shar­ing and story-telling? My time for pro­cess­ing and de-briefing the six years I’ve spent in Korea? This is my speak­ing tour! As I lis­tened, though, I rec­og­nized another place for me. Per­haps God can use this time for my reflect­ing and learn­ing, yes, but per­haps I need to serve. Why should my atti­tude of ser­vice end when I return to Canada? I decided to cre­ate space within me for the sto­ries of oth­ers and trust God to use those sto­ries for our mutual growth.

This space has become a gift to me. I hold each of the con­ver­sa­tions gen­tly in my heart, and look through them for gems of wis­dom and expe­ri­ence oth­ers have shared with me. I see now how God has been speak­ing to me through listening.

We all need some­one to lis­ten. Some­times, I am that someone.