Monthly Archive for November, 2008

In Crises, no East, no West

Published on November 29, 2008 by Will Loewen. Closed Tags: , .

As the cri­sis grows, peo­ple at var­i­ous lev­els are look­ing for solu­tions.  There is talk that many of the lead­ers of the var­i­ous strug­gling groups will be gath­er­ing to dis­cuss pos­si­ble options.  Some point to thois rare show of unity that some­thing con­struc­tive is pos­si­ble, while oth­ers say that it is far too late for these des­per­ate mea­sures to pay off.

While deci­sion mak­ers are scratch­ing their heads as to what to do next, the debate rages on as to what is the source of the cur­rent prob­lem.  Insid­ers have been say­ing that they are sim­ply vic­tims of a com­bi­na­tion of fac­tors; recent dras­tic changes, soci­etal shifts, eco­nomic fluc­tu­a­tions, poor gov­ern­ment pro­tec­tion, and a rash of other options that have sprung up on the “mar­ket­place” lately, cre­at­ing a hos­tile envi­ron­ment.  Crit­ics are say­ing that they’ve been pre­dict­ing this down­fall for a long time.  They point to a num­ber of bad deci­sions over the years and gen­er­ally plac­ing an empha­sis on the wrong things as the key rea­son that these once pow­er­ful insti­tu­tions have failed, and why they are now so inca­pable of meet­ing the needs of the peo­ple who once relied on them.

Do you rec­og­nize this news story?  If you fol­low the news, it likely rings a bell.  You likely have a strong opin­ion one way or the other about what is the appro­pri­ate goern­ment response.  It may have already affected the way that you spend and/or invest your money.  I wouldn’t even be sur­prised if you’ve sat in a church pew lis­ten­ing to a preacher talk about what the appro­pri­ate Chris­t­ian response is.  The size of the prob­lem is immense and the scope of the impact it will have on the world will not be known for some time to come.

But just which cri­sis is this news story talk­ing about?  The above “arti­cle” doesn’t specif­i­cally men­tion.  If there is some con­fu­sion, it isn’t because I so clev­erly assem­bled the words in the piece (yes I wrote it), but because so many recent busi­ness sto­ries have had a sim­i­lar slant to them.  For a long time com­pany execs hide bad news from investors and employ­ees, until some kind of break­ing point is reached and the prob­lems can no longer be hid­den.  Then the bil­lion­aires run­ning these com­pa­nies leave their cushy offices and fly in their pri­vate jets to Wash­ing­ton (or Ottawa) and meet in slightly less cushy offices with gov­ern­ment offi­cials to ask if some sort of assis­tance pack­age can arranged.  Mean­while, investors see their shares plum­met, cus­tomers are left stranded, and many staff, low-level ones of course, are out of work.  Air­lines, pro­fes­sional sports teams, bro­ker­age firms, banks and now auto-makers have all had their kick at the can.

With my upbring­ing, it is not sur­pris­ing that I am unsym­pa­thetic to the rich, refus­ing to see them as vic­tims.  In fact, as a guy with no invest­ments and no tie to the big three automak­ers, I gen­er­ally feel pretty removed from the cri­sis.  Sure many of my friends work at assem­bly plants sup­ply­ing parts to the once pow­er­ful North Amer­i­can automak­ers, but I also have a brother who is work­ing manda­tory over­time at his car assem­bly plant, because his Japan­ese employer is doing so well they can’t build the cars fast enough.  Most of the time, when peo­ple lose money by invest­ing in unsta­ble com­pa­nies or by build­ing infe­rior cars, it’s not called an eco­nomic cri­sis, but cause and effect.  It would almost be worth cele­breat­ing if it didn’t mean that the peo­ple suf­fer­ing the most are the ones whose jobs are now gone or whose homes are seized by the bank.

But instead of busi­nesses, I could have also been talk­ing about another fail­ing insti­tu­tion.  For decades, the church has been weak­en­ing.  The process is slower in the US and more devel­oped in Europe, but in Canada church atten­dance has been drop­ping, old churches are clos­ing down, and cler­gy­men are slip­ping from pub­lic view as their polit­i­cal influ­ence all but disappears.

I won­der what would hap­pen if this all came to a head like the other crises.  Who would go to Ottawa ask­ing for help?  What help would be offered?  Would the church learn its lessons and cor­rect its past mis­takes?  I really think that the prob­lem at the heart of the church and automak­ers sit­u­a­tion is very much the same: mas­sive insti­tu­tions rely­ing for a long time on brand loy­alty that they’ve for­got­ten to actu­ally make their prod­uct more attrac­tive and rel­e­vant to the mod­ern con­sumer.  I’m not hold­ing my breath for the big three to sud­denly become world lead­ers in fuel effi­ciency and I’m not antic­i­pat­ing mas­sive changes in the church to adapt to chang­ing times either.

The road to recov­ery won’t be easy.  It won’t be done by naysay­ers giv­ing up and preach­ing a defeatist mes­sage.  Rebuild­ing hap­pens slowly and when the peo­ple in the mid­dle of it make care­ful and wise adjust­ments.  The church will be rel­e­vant again, not because they receive a bailout pack­age, but because the peo­ple at the ground level need God and they need each other, and the insti­tu­tional stuff will have to accom­mo­date eventually.

Masculinity and the Churh — Intro

Published on November 25, 2008 by David Driedger. Closed

It was about a year ago that I became aware that as a man I am part of a prob­lem­atic expres­sion (or lack of expres­sion) in the church.  I found out that the church has been fem­i­nized and that most male church lead­ers (includ­ing myself) are actu­ally more girly mans than manly mans (here is a primer on the issue).  This all came as quite a shock to me and at first I wel­comed the vic­tim­iza­tion and thought yes the church has for­saken my mas­culin­ity and lim­ited my range of spir­i­tual expres­sions.  Then after brows­ing a view of the men’s move­ments online I quickly changed and thought that many of these men are arro­gant, ego­tis­cal, bor­der­line mysog­y­nists!  Now hav­ing let the issue sim­mer for a lit­tle while I do believe there is an issue to be addressed with respect to men in the church and their spir­i­tual health and growth but I sim­ply am not sure I have put my fin­ger on it.

In the fol­low­ing posts I hope to look at the issue of mas­culin­ity and the church by,

I. Fram­ing Gen­der Differences

II. Explor­ing the Evan­gel­i­cal Response

III. Explor­ing Richard Rohr’s Rites of Passage

IV. Under­stand­ing the Gen­erdered Jesus

V. Look­ing to What’s Next

Here is a intro­duc­tion by way of quotes,

“The first thing that strikes the care­less observer is that women are unlike men. They are the “oppo­site sex” (though why oppo­site I do not know; what is the “neigh­bour­ing sex”?). But the fun­da­men­tal thing is that women are more like men than any­thing else in the world.”
– Dorothy L. Sayers

“The num­ber 1 issue that doesn’t seem to be addressed in the United States in churches is men con­nect­ing with men. What we need, who we are, what moti­vates us and dri­ves us is com­pletely dif­fer­ent. We have a whole new idea and whole new con­cept some­thing that is so dan­ger­ous that to cre­ate a rev­o­lu­tion we can’t do it the same way any­more. That’s why we’ve cre­ated an event called God­Men where men can be fully men raw, unin­hib­ited and com­pletely free to express them­selves in the uniquely male way that only men under­stand.”
– Brad Stine founder of GodMen

“What I see as a man­i­fes­ta­tion of sex­ual lib­er­a­tion is God made a cou­ple: Man and woman and not sim­ply God made man. Might Christ be the har­bin­ger of this liv­ing real­ity? Why is his sex­ual incar­na­tion denied or else treated on a human plane alone?”
– Luce Irigaray

Subway

Published on November 22, 2008 by Dick Benner. 1 Comment

Every day, to go to school, I take the sub­way. Actu­ally, that is not strictly true. First I walk to the bus stop, wait for the bus (pray­ing that it arrives soon so I don’t freeze my still-adapted-to-Nicaragua body), take the bus, get to the sub­way stop, watch the sub­way go the other direc­tion, con­tinue to pray that I don’t freeze, then I get on the sub­way. I bring up my mode of trans­porta­tion, not only to com­plain about the ter­ri­ble sub­zero tem­per­a­tures we’ve been get­ting lately (is that Cana­di­ans’ national hobby?) but because it dove­tails nicely with David Driedger’s most recent post. On the sub­way, I see every kind of per­son. Or at least every kind of per­son who can’t afford a car (or chooses not to use it to get to work) or a down­town apartment.

This means that I see a lot of immi­grants. Toronto, I have been told, is North America’s most multi-cultural city. I would believe that. Some­times the amount of tra­di­tional dress that I see in one day is over­whelm­ing. It is so dif­fer­ent from what I wear and the lan­guages peo­ple speak are dif­fer­ent. I wish there were a bet­ter way for me to con­nect to these peo­ple. It’s not that I pro­pose talk­ing to them on the sub­way (that would be quite an affront to the illu­sion of per­sonal space most peo­ple carry with them, even on trains full of peo­ple all hop­ing to get to work by 9) but look­ing for oppor­tu­ni­ties to con­nect. Every­one I know in Toronto is my age, my level of edu­ca­tion and roughly my socioe­co­nomic sta­tus. I would say that the major­ity of them are Mennonite.

Last year, when I lived in Man­agua, most of the peo­ple I met did not share my reli­gious beliefs and socioe­co­nomic sta­tus. The cul­ture was much more family-based than friend-based. This made mak­ing friends quite dif­fi­cult. I was able to con­nect with some peo­ple my age who were some­how man­ag­ing to get an edu­ca­tion. Friends were a pre­cious gift. Now, they are almost a dime a dozen! The chal­lenge has gone out of friendship.

It is not that I don’t value my friends here (because I do) just that when it is so easy to find friends very much like me I don’t have to work at look­ing past the dif­fer­ences with peo­ple who are not like me and try­ing to find some­thing in com­mon any­way. Some­times I wish I still had to do that.

Practical Community

Published on November 21, 2008 by Cheryl Woelk. Closed Tags: , , .

 

I arrived in the cold Novem­ber prairie wind sweep­ing across a yard framed by sev­eral long, low build­ings. I looked closely and saw barns, houses, a kitchen and din­ing room, and finally the school. On open­ing the door , a boy wear­ing thick black pants, a dark blue shirt, a short black coat with snaps, and a black hat slightly too large for him imme­di­ately greeted me with a cheer­ful hello. His gen­uine smile warmed me from the out­side cold. I stepped inside.

Yes­ter­day, I vis­ited a Hut­terite colony for the first time. Grow­ing up in Swift Current,Saskatchewan, I had often seen peo­ple from the colonies nearby when they came into town, but I had never been to their homes. While their dis­tinc­tive dress and Ger­man accents caught my atten­tion, I had only heard neg­a­tive stereo­types  from kids at school, and even from my par­ents and oth­ers in the Men­non­ite church. I had never really con­sid­ered their rea­son for this dis­tinc­tive­ness, nor real­ized we might have much in common.

Oddly enough, I began to learn about the Hut­terite way of life in Korea. As the Korea Anabap­tist Cen­ter (KAC) staff talked about var­i­ous Anabap­tist groups, and their expe­ri­ence with the com­mu­ni­ties of Hut­terite Brethren, I dis­cov­ered that I might be more alike to these peo­ple than many other peo­ple I had met in Swift Cur­rent, par­tic­u­larly in terms of the­ol­ogy, his­tory, and val­ues. I explored the com­mon Anabap­tist her­itage of Men­non­ites and Hut­terites, and read the writ­ings of Hut­terite lead­ers trans­lated from Ger­man and Eng­lish into Korean. After hear­ing from my Korean pas­tor, who spent sev­eral months liv­ing together with a Hut­terite com­mu­nity in Canada last year, the doubt and sus­pi­cion that I had acquired in Swift Cur­rent began to dis­si­pate. Their way of life attracted me in a new way, and even more so after my brief visit.

I crave this sim­plic­ity of life in com­mu­nity. Basic tasks for liv­ing when done indi­vid­u­ally or for one fam­ily can become an over­whelm­ing source of stress. When lived out together in com­mu­nity, cen­tred in wor­ship and the value of work as a gift from God, these daily tasks become a source of life. My visit left me pon­der­ing the church as the body of Christ, and yearn­ing to expe­ri­ence more of this prac­ti­cal community.

Reading the Writing on the Bathroom Wall

Published on November 20, 2008 by David Driedger. Closed

We have all wit­nessed them but per­haps the range of expres­sions we have expe­ri­enced is lim­ited but the writ­ing one encoun­ters on the walls of pub­lic bath­rooms can be quite the cul­tural expe­ri­ence. I was recently reminded of my own expe­ri­ence with this strange cul­tural phe­nom­e­non of North Amer­i­can men (and per­haps women but I have not seen their walls). I went to a ware­house for a pick up when I was dri­ving truck for a green­house.  It had been awhile since I last encoun­tered a bath­room with such an elab­o­rate fresco. The usual sus­pects were there. Scat­tered were var­i­ous phone num­bers offer­ing var­i­ous ser­vices. There were sev­eral crudely drawn images of naked women with a bear min­i­mum anatom­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Then there were the penises (peni?). They were dis­em­bod­ied, sev­ered, pointed straight up. Then there were some that I had never seen before, some were given faces and a tur­ban (with a stereo-typical “East Indian” look). The cap­tion beside one read, “A new Canadian.”

Now were does one start in com­ment­ing on a bath­room wall? What struck me in that instance was just what men must think about their penises? I always got the impres­sion that as men we were rather fond of, and prized that par­tic­u­lar body part, but the way it was employed here or in deroga­tory lan­guage it appears that we actu­ally think very lit­tle of it.  Maybe we are even afraid of it.  Per­haps the ques­tion can be answered by turn­ing the per­spec­tive around. What do men think about immigrants?

Immi­grants often look and act dif­fer­ently than we are accus­tomed to. They may not deal with sit­u­a­tions as we think they should. This dif­fer­ence, viewed as a for­eign or unin­vited pres­ence, can eas­ily be treated with fear or mis­trust as we can­not pre­dict or con­trol all the actions of these peo­ple. This unin­vited guest poses no imme­di­ate threat but can affect var­i­ous aspects of our life.

Not being able to fully con­trol this pres­ence it is often a short step to out­right hos­til­ity fuelled by the belief that we are pro­tect­ing what is good and right in the face what may want to destroy us. The immi­grant, per­haps like the penis, can often be treated like the enemy within.

As the pub­lic bath­room wall demon­strates, sex­u­al­ity is intensely objec­ti­fied in our cul­ture detached from a holis­tic world-view. I do not believe that men (again it is dif­fi­cult to speak for women) have inte­grated their sex­u­al­ity and so, being for­eign to them, it often becomes the plane of vio­lence.  Sex­u­al­ity is so close to holi­ness, some­thing so inti­mate but so for­eign, so pow­er­ful, and so beyond con­trol.  I sup­pose the first step in deal­ing with our sex­u­al­ity or our neigh­bour is to address our fear.

Listening

Published on November 16, 2008 by Dick Benner. 4 Comments

For one of my classes I am read­ing George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda. For any­one who would like to read a fairly dense 800 page Vic­to­rian novel about pos­si­bil­ity, aris­toc­racy and the Vic­to­rian view of Judaism this is the book for you. My prof told us that instead of read­ing we could lis­ten to the book on lib­rivox (www.librivox.org; they have a col­lec­tion of audio books all part of the pub­lic domain). Lis­ten­ing to a book, she told us, would bring us closer to the orig­i­nal audi­ence, who would have read the book aloud as it appeared in monthly or bimonthly segments.

Last week, I could only lis­ten to about two chap­ters. My mind wan­dered after about five min­utes. This week, I was sick of read­ing and so after a hun­dred pages that I was not able to absorb, I decided to start lis­ten­ing. Some­how I was able to pay more atten­tion, as long as I con­cen­trated on the novel. Now I men­tion this not only to adver­tise some­thing I just found out about and thought was pretty cool, but because it brings to mind church services.

Each Sun­day, most if not all Men­non­ites lis­ten to a ser­mon. How many of them, like me, are unable to con­cen­trate on the mes­sage in these ser­mons because they are either unac­cus­tomed to lis­ten­ing, are impa­tient, or because their minds are pre­oc­cu­pied with other things. How many peo­ple blame them­selves for their inabil­ity to con­cen­trate? How many peo­ple blame the pastor?

Maybe, maybe, there is some kind of mid­dle ground. Lis­ten­ing is not part of our cul­ture any­more. Should more churches begin pre­sent­ing mul­ti­me­dia extrav­a­gan­zas each Sun­day? Should they really dumb down God to the atten­tion span of the TV/internet gen­er­a­tion? Or would that be dumb-ing down God, or would that be bring­ing God to peo­ple today? Shouldn’t churches chal­lenge the world we live in? How can churches live within the ten­sion of chal­leng­ing peo­ple with­out dri­ving them away?

Remembering

Published on November 14, 2008 by Cheryl Woelk. Closed Tags: , , .

Early this week, I began to see peo­ple walk­ing around with red pop­pies on their coats. After six years of for­get­ting, I remem­bered. Remem­brance Day. Sud­denly I saw them every­where. Feel­ing left out, I rum­maged around and found my old red pin “To remem­ber is to work for peace.”

What’s really dif­fer­ent, though? What do the words on the pin really mean for me and how I live this week? How do I work for peace?

The more I learn about peace, the more con­fused I become. What defines peace? If I start think­ing it’s not just an absence of war, but a sit­u­a­tion of right­ness and jus­tice, then that’s not just between coun­tries or large groups of peo­ple, but between me and my fam­ily and friends, every­one. It affects my deci­sions about what I read, where I go, what enter­tain­ment I choose, where my money goes…. I can’t get away from it! Where can I draw the line? When can I stop think­ing about build­ing peace and just do what every­one else does?

But I can’t go back. Once I’ve trav­eled this road, I can­not return. Work­ing for peace feels hard and uncom­fort­able, but not as hard as keep­ing with the sta­tus quo once I’ve seen a glimpse of the un-rightness for which we set­tle. I can’t help but ask, ‘how can I make this right?’

I can’t. I real­ize that I can try, I can choose, I can work, I can pray, I can lament, but I can’t bring peace and I can’t make things right. If peace is God’s gift, then I can trust God to use our efforts for peace, and con­tinue the work of trans­for­ma­tion and sal­va­tion that has already begun. I’m respon­si­ble for keep­ing on… and in a world of fear, vio­lence, in jus­tice and sor­row, remem­ber­ing the words of Julian Nor­wich as she expe­ri­ence the peace of God first hand. “Everything’s alright. Everything’s going to be alright. Every­thing is all going to be alright.”

Good Will Hunting on Relationships

Published on November 11, 2008 by David Driedger. 1 Comment

Good Will Hunt­ing was recently on TV.  The story is based around the life of Will Hunt­ing (Matt Damon).  Will is a nat­ural genius whose knowl­edge comes from pour­ing through books in his one room rental unit in the slums of South Boston.  Will is sur­rounded by his child­hood friends who grew up in the same neigh­bour­hood.  And as I watched Will’s child­hood gang go bar-hopping and street-fighting I was reminded of the mas­cu­line abil­ity to form inti­mate tribes between the ages of 17 and 25. Towards the end of the movie Chuckie (Ben Affleck) con­fesses to Will that he hopes one day Will won’t answer the door when he comes to pick him up because he has used his knowl­edge to get out of south Boston. Through most of the movie Will rejects oppor­tu­ni­ties at love and work guard­ing him­self and stay­ing safe with his gang. At the end of the movie Will finally leaves his tribe for both love and career mov­ing to the west coast to fol­low a job and Sky­lar (Min­nie Dri­ver). I can in many ways relate to leav­ing my tribe at around this age.  In the first few years of col­lege I formed a strong and inti­mate group of friends.  In time life seemed to pull us apart.  My hunch is that men (I can­not speak for women) become increas­ingly lonely after the age of 25. There may be a period from 25 to 30 where we are absorbed enough in our pur­suits not to notice it too much but it even­tu­ally sur­faces. Are the sorts of rela­tion­ships por­trayed in this movie only applic­a­ble to a cer­tain stage of life? Does our cul­ture of roman­tic love and pow­er­ful career sever these rela­tion­ships unnec­es­sar­ily?  We believe that our faith can call us away from close ties but is that what hap­pened to me?  Is it pos­si­ble to recover those sorts of pri­mal and often viril rela­tion­ships?  If so, where and how? Any­way, I miss my old tribe.

And in case you for­got, here is a great scene from the movie where the boys from the hood check out a Har­vard Bar.

(sorry a cou­ple of unsa­vory words dropped here, parental advi­sory encour­aged ;) )

[Nov. 17, 2008: We can now embed YouTube and other videos. –Tim Miller Dyck, Editor/Publisher]

Thanks Tim!

YouTube Preview Image

My Sabbatical Year

Published on November 9, 2008 by Cheryl Woelk. Closed Tags: , .

I’m on sab­bat­i­cal. I didn’t plan it, it just ended up this way. I even failed to real­ize it until after it started. The con­cept of Sab­bath has attracted me in the past, and I have often thought of build­ing a pat­tern of Sab­bath into my life. I had just never got­ten around to it. Now it’s here.

Until recently I spoke of this time as “a year in tran­si­tion” or “feel­ing lost.” Nam­ing it as a “Sab­bath year,” how­ever, has changed my per­spec­tive from con­fu­sion and anx­i­ety to inten­tion and mean­ing. I have a pur­pose and direc­tion for the year even if I won’t find it in the lit­tle rit­u­als and rhythms of a work­ing day.

For the last six year, I lived in Seoul, South Korea, serv­ing at the Korea Anabap­tist Cen­ter (www.kac.or.kr) with MC Canada Wit­ness (www.mennonitechurch.ca). My job as edu­ca­tion coor­di­na­tor stretched over a range of respon­si­bil­i­ties from devel­op­ing peace edu­ca­tion resources, to help­ing to start a lan­guage insti­tute, and train­ing teach­ers for peace edu­ca­tion in Eng­lish and Korean. I worked hard and gave all that I had. I enjoyed my work, grew as an indi­vid­ual and as a mem­ber of the KAC com­mu­nity, and lived fully for six years. In July, I left the bal­ance and com­fort I had come to know in Korea and now find myself in my sev­enth, “Sab­bath,” year, won­der­ing what this year means for me.

As I rest from work, first of all, I want to remem­ber who I am. Before I left, KAC pub­lished a Korean trans­la­tion of Walde­mar Janzen’s “Work and Rest.” Janzen writes about work as God’s com­mis­sion and bless­ing, but also the ten­dency for work to become idol­a­trous and oppres­sive. Sab­bath rest cel­e­brates God’s bless­ing, puts God back at the cen­tre, and redeems us from work’s oppres­sion. Even as a ser­vice worker for the church, I noticed my ten­dency to idol­ize my work. I would often seek my sense of impor­tance, belong­ing, or iden­tity in the tasks I com­pleted and the goals I achieved. My work became my cen­tre, and my self-worth depended on it. Dis­con­nected from any orga­ni­za­tion or job descrip­tion, I am free to recall my iden­tity with Christ as the centre.

Con­nec­tion is another mean­ing­ful word for this year. In the first part of my sab­bat­i­cal, I had the chance to visit churches and tell of my expe­ri­ences, to reflect on growth and strug­gles, and to start inte­grat­ing these six years into my life as a whole. Many of my rela­tion­ships with fam­ily and friends have taken sec­ond place to work and tasks that have kept me busy. Released from my idol­a­try of work, I am free to nur­ture rela­tion­ships with time and com­mit­ment, and to learn the depth of God’s love through com­mu­nity. I want to cre­ate space for the peo­ple around me and to lis­ten for ways that God is work­ing in their lives.

The most fright­en­ing part of the Sab­bath year for me, is the eco­nomic aspect. Instruc­tions to the Israelites tell them “you shall not sow your field or prune your vine­yard. You shall not reap the after­growth of your har­vest or gather the grapes of your unpruned vines: it shall be a year of com­plete rest for the land. You may eat what the land yields dur­ing its Sab­bath… all its yield shall be for food.” (Lev. 25:4b-7) How risky this seems! To not work or save up any food for the next whole year, but to sim­ple trust that God will pro­vide for all with the yields of the land.

With plans to study and ris­ing liv­ing costs, how will I pay for it all? Can I really trust that God will pro­vide for my needs? Isn’t it just naïve and irre­spon­si­ble to not work dur­ing this time? Per­haps. Yet I feel the need to stick with it. I want to trust that God knows what I need even more than I do. I want to trust God’s pres­ence with me and fol­low Christ in obe­di­ence, even if I feel my needs are not met. Could I pos­si­bly have that kind of faith? I want to learn.

So this is my jour­ney over the next year. This Sab­bath means rest­ing from work, cen­ter­ing myself in Christ, cre­at­ing space to nur­ture rela­tion­ships, prac­tic­ing trust in God’s pro­vid­ing even in the midst of eco­nomic vul­ner­a­bil­ity, and above giv­ing thanks and praise to the One who gives us life. I’m going to give it a try.

Sermons remixed or Catholics can be pretty neat

Published on November 9, 2008 by Dick Benner. Closed

Will Loewen, in his last post, said that blog­gers often com­ment on cur­rent events. I think that func­tion is per­haps the most impor­tant one a blog­ger can have. Unfor­tu­nately, I live under a rock oth­er­wise known as uni­ver­sity and my con­nec­tion to the news is often Metro, “Toronto’s num­ber one free daily news­pa­per.” So, many of my posts relate not to cur­rent events (which are unlikely to make their way into that so-called news­pa­per) but to events in my life, oth­er­wise known as books I’m reading.

Today, Sun­day Novem­ber 9th, was peace Sun­day. I went to church where we talked about remem­ber­ing not only the vet­er­ans, but every­one who suf­fers in war. The per­son who spoke this morn­ing gave a ser­mon in which he dis­cussed the pow­ers and prin­ci­pal­i­ties in today’s world. Then I came home and began doing my home­work. For one of my classes I am research­ing a col­lec­tion of poetry that was an out­growth of some work­shops on the Solenti­name islands in Nicaragua in the late 1970s. I am try­ing to prove that they are an exam­ple of a way com­mu­nity can be cre­ated. As I began read­ing some books that will help me prove my point, I came across a very inter­est­ing book.

The Solenti­name islands are an arch­i­pel­ago of approx­i­mately 38 islands in Nicaragua’s lake Nicaragua and in 1965 rev­o­lu­tion­ary poet and priest Ernesto Car­de­nal began a monas­tic com­mu­nity there. He wrote a book, or rather a col­lec­tion of ser­mons, called The Gospel in Solenti­name. At least, I thought he wrote this book until I opened it. It is not actu­ally ser­mons. As Car­de­nal points out in his intro­duc­tion, it is a col­lec­tion of dia­logues on Bible pas­sages! To bring the mass to the peo­ple Car­de­nal aban­doned Latin, used a pop­u­lar or common-language trans­la­tion of the Bible and invited peo­ple to par­tic­i­pate! Each week, some­one read a pas­sage and then the rest of the atten­dees dis­cussed it.

Imag­ine what would hap­pen if we did the same thing in our churches.