Monthly Archive for May, 2009

What have we done?

Published on May 28, 2009 by Cheryl Woelk. Closed Tags: , , .

“Keep it to an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, if you have to, but really, God’s way is for­give­ness.” His expla­na­tion rang a bell from my Intro to the Bible class in my under­grad­u­ate days.

I heard more and more famil­iar con­cepts as the guest speaker, a pro­fes­sor of eco­nom­ics and Islam at James Madi­son Uni­ver­sity, con­tin­ued. “You will not be for­given and right with God until your neigh­bour for­gives you.” “Equal­ity, jus­tice and respect for all, espe­cially women, chil­dren, and for­eign­ers, minori­ties, and mar­gin­al­ized.” “Your belief is a way of life and it’s only ful­filled when lived out — faith with­out works is dead.”

After our class guest fin­ished shar­ing his under­stand­ings of Islam beliefs, as orig­i­nally lived out by the Prophet Mohammed and his com­mu­nity, it grad­u­ally it dawned on me. There is no reli­gious con­flict here. Vio­lent con­flicts between Chris­t­ian and Mus­lim groups can­not pos­si­bly be about basic under­stand­ings of the two faiths. Both reli­gions call for peace and liv­ing in har­mony with oth­ers. Islam in par­tic­u­lar calls for tol­er­ance and respect for believ­ers of the one God from other faith traditions.

So why all the fight­ing? Why the com­mon impres­sion that Mus­lims and Chris­tians can­not co-exist in peace? On closer inves­ti­ga­tion, some­thing else lies at the root of the so-called “reli­gious con­flicts” around the world. We use reli­gion as a mask to cover human greed for land, resources, and power. Mem­bers from all sides per­pet­u­ate stereo­types of the “other”, mis­in­ter­pret our own teach­ers, and then respond to each other’s mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tions with defen­sive­ness, anger, and vio­lence. If only we could keep it an eye for an eye at least!

A deeper under­stand­ing exists among those who study peace in all the major wis­dom tra­di­tions. An under­stand­ing which per­haps Jesus talked about when he referred to him­self as the “way.” This is the way to peace and the way of peace, a recog­ni­tion of human rela­tion­ships as inter­con­nected with all oth­ers, includ­ing the mar­gin­al­ized and oppressed. The laws of nature state that as long as peo­ple oppress oth­ers, no one can be free. Such com­mon knowl­edge, but our human minds get caught up in our own short term self-interests and for­get the way the world works. For­give us, for we don’t know what we’re doing.

When peo­ple finally exclaim “what have we done?” and then move from this to “what do we do now?” we have a place to meet with peo­ple from all reli­gions and all back­grounds. This meet­ing place does not deny our paths, nor ignore our dif­fer­ences or the hurts we’ve caused each other. In this space, we rec­og­nize a deeper human­ity to which each of the reli­gious tra­di­tions point. We real­ize we truly need each other from all our world reli­gions and per­spec­tives in order to become more fully human.

So I ask, “What can Chris­tians do to clear up this mis­un­der­stand­ing?” The guest speaker encour­ages me to read the Koran, learn about the wide com­mon ground of these two faith tra­di­tions and share it with oth­ers. He promises to encour­age his Mus­lim friends to do the same.

Our Father

Published on May 27, 2009 by David Driedger. Closed Tags: , , .

As part of a larger series on wor­ship last week I preached on prayer and used the Lord’s Prayer as my text.  I quickly real­ized in my prepa­ra­tion that it was dif­fi­cult to move past the first two words with­out address­ing the ever increas­ing polit­i­cal aspects of gen­der and lan­guage.  I decided to allow the the text sit with us as ‘Our Father’ and explore what that could mean.  I did this in con­text of the emerg­ing iden­tity and tran­si­tion of an infant to a child.  Here is an excerpt,

Con­tinue read­ing ‘Our Father’

The Lord is our shepherd, even in the desert

Published on May 26, 2009 by Hinke Loewen-Rudgers. Closed

A few weeks ago, Pope Bene­dict XVI vis­ited Amman and other places in the Mid­dle East.  I attended the open air Mass at Amman Inter­na­tional Sta­dium.  Chris­tians gath­ered from var­i­ous coun­tries in the region. The major­ity of those attend­ing were Roman Catholic but Ortho­dox lead­ers were also present at the meet­ing.  What struck me was the unity of pur­pose for the 30–40 thou­sand peo­ple gath­ered at the sta­dium and the fact that such a large num­ber of Chris­tians do not often gather together in one place in this land, a land that as Bene­dict said, “is the land of Moses, Eli­jah, and John the Bap­tist, the land where God’s ancient promises were fulfilled.”

The Lord as shep­herd is a theme that has come up at sev­eral dif­fer­ent events for me recently.  Here Bene­dict linked Jesus’ role as shep­herd to our call in the world. He reminded us that Jesus knows us even more deeply than we know our­selves and that he has a plan and that we will find our­selves and be ful­filled wher­ever he has called us in the growth of God’s king­dom. With Christ as our Shep­herd we are able to have courage we would not nor­mally have as we are con­tin­u­ally renewed in Him.  Here again Bene­dict spoke of unity over divi­sion in a land where Chris­tians are a small minor­ity, he encour­aged the, “courage of con­vic­tion born of per­sonal faith, not mere social con­ven­tion or fam­ily tra­di­tion; the courage to engage in dia­logue and to work side by side with other Chris­tians in the ser­vice of the Gospel and sol­i­dar­ity with the poor, the dis­placed, and the vic­tims of pro­found human tragedies; the courage to build new bridges to enable a fruit­ful encounter of peo­ple of dif­fer­ent reli­gions and cul­tures and thus to enrich the fab­ric of society.”

Wow…this call and other words on the impor­tance of women in soci­ety is a huge reminder to Chris­tians in this part of the world but is just as impor­tant to those from other parts of the world. Many who attended the open air mass were clearly excited about wav­ing their national flags, about the celebrity hype, about the energy involved with such an event.  It often seems so much more dif­fi­cult to be excited about the pos­si­bil­i­ties of king­dom here and king­dom to come that unite us and remind us of our voca­tion to work toward peace here on earth.  I hope that many heard the reminder and took it to heart as they are com­forted by the image of the Lord as their shep­herd in a land that often seems too devoid of green pas­tures or clear waters. 

Engaging the Next Dimension

Published on May 18, 2009 by Cheryl Woelk. Closed Tags: , , , .

As classes progress, I real­ize I study in two dimen­sions at once. On one level lies the con­tent as out­lined in the syl­labus. The read­ings, lec­tures, class dis­cus­sions, writ­ing assign­ments, and projects all inter­act mainly in this first dimen­sion. I have noticed another dimen­sion, though, which inter­plays with the first. The inter­ac­tion of the par­tic­i­pants and pro­fes­sor com­mu­ni­cate vol­umes over the course of sev­eral hours sit­ting in the same room, yet does not reach into our ver­bal expression.

This sec­ond dimen­sion fas­ci­nates me. Each stu­dent comes to the class with their own per­son­al­i­ties, back­grounds, wounds, habits, styles and agen­das. The nature of these aspects may actu­ally shape the flow of the first dimen­sion more than any syl­labus. I watch for when peo­ple choose to talk, how long they speak in a turn, the words they choose to express their ideas, and the non­ver­bal com­mu­ni­ca­tion they use both while speak­ing and lis­ten­ing. I notice my feel­ings in response to other par­tic­i­pants’ words and method of speaking.

Even in the first few classes, I have already run into my ego lay­ing bricks for walls between me and oth­ers, giv­ing excuses such as appear­ance, per­son­al­ity, cul­ture, speak­ing style, and even per­spec­tives about peace and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion! The true chal­lenge lies here. On one dimen­sion our class talks about the things needed for rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, the processes, how that has hap­pened in other places, but on the other dimen­sion we hes­i­tate to engage deeply enough in each other’s lives to actu­ally prac­tice a par­a­digm of peace and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion on this sec­ond dimen­sion of unspo­ken words and “ele­phants” in the room.

Yet I won­der about the min­istry of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion to which Chris­tians have been called. Did Christ mean rec­on­cil­i­a­tion for oth­ers only? To point out­ward and build our voca­tions and careers by form­ing the­o­ries and processes with­out really see­ing our­selves sit­ting in un-reconciled-ness?

I believe Christ calls us not only to tear­ing down walls that divide in places far away, but to the walls that divide me and the peo­ple in this room. I must look for oppor­tu­ni­ties to extend “for­giv­ing love” which reaches across the walls of fear that I build, bridg­ing my belief with action in a solid integrity. I feel inspired and chal­lenged. I can­not no longer ask myself when I will apply all this infor­ma­tion. I need it right now, right here, as I inter­act in class on this sec­ond dimension.

Prayers of Diversity

Published on May 14, 2009 by Cheryl Woelk. Closed Tags: , , , .

The Sum­mer Peace­build­ing Insti­tute ses­sion began with over 100 par­tic­i­pants from thirty-three dif­fer­ent coun­tries meet­ing together in the chapel for an open­ing ser­vice. Each per­son stood and spoke their name and home coun­try by region. My excite­ment grew as I real­ized the incred­i­ble mir­a­cle of our gath­er­ing together in one space. The leader wel­comed each per­son. She then lead in a prayer for this ses­sion spo­ken by six dif­fer­ent par­tic­i­pants in their own lan­guage. I rec­og­nized this reflec­tion of Pen­te­cost, “each in their own lan­guages” and remem­bered the Holy Spirit’s descend­ing on the sis­ters and broth­ers gathered.

The diver­sity in the body of Christ brings us to this place of meet­ing in the Holy Spirit. We need each other to expe­ri­ence this. When we refuse to open our hearts and our com­mu­ni­ties to the amaz­ing dif­fer­ences in cul­ture, lan­guage, the­ol­ogy, wor­ship, and belief, we limit our abil­ity to wor­ship fully in the body of Christ.

I expe­ri­enced a brief, but full moment this morn­ing, which car­ried into our class on the “Phi­los­o­phy and Praxis of For­give­ness and Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion.” We lis­tened to each other’s jour­neys, thoughts, and learn­ings and dis­cov­ered that peace among nations and around the world begins with each of my own trans­for­ma­tion and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion with myself and with God. If I can­not at least work at that, how can I pos­si­bly expect to help some­one else in their jour­ney of transformation?

Name that Cathedral

Published on May 14, 2009 by Will Loewen. Closed

I love vis­it­ing churches.  I some­times begrudge my com­mit­ment to the churches I’ve attended, because my con­vic­tions don’t allow me to devi­ate from reg­u­lar atten­dance in order to sati­ate my appetite for church tourism.  I’m not a church hop­per, and rarely have I been a church shop­per, I just like the expe­ri­ence of being in a new sanctuary.

Now, in keep­ing with my Anabap­tist spir­i­tual ances­tors, I don’t believe that the build­ings them­selves are any more sacred than any thing else.  Some of my most pro­found and wor­ship­ful “church” expe­ri­ences have been in movie the­atres, sports are­nas and com­mu­nity halls.  The rev­er­ence I feel when enter­ing a new wor­ship space  is in admi­ra­tion of those who designed and built the struc­ture and out of respect for those who wor­ship in that space.

I’ve gone to churches because they were sim­ply big and beau­ti­ful such as the Notre Dame Basil­ica in Mon­treal.  I’ve gone to churches that were tied to famous his­tor­i­cal church fig­ures such as John Wesley’s Chapel in Lon­don, Eng­land and George Fox’ orig­i­nal Quaker Meet­ing House just down the road.  Some of my favourite church vis­its have been to places of par­tic­u­lar Anabap­tist sig­nif­i­cance like the Stras­bourg Cathe­dral and the Gross­mun­ster.  Other peo­ple flock to more con­tem­po­rary church tourism des­ti­na­tions like the Crys­tal Cathe­dral or Yong-gi Cho’s Full Gospel Church in Seoul.

One thing that’s recently drawn my atten­tion is churches that have over­come some kind of hard­ship.  The cathe­drals in Mun­ster, Ger­many took on extra sig­nif­i­cance because of the tur­moil I know they under­went in the 16th cen­tury, but also because they had been rebuilt, vir­tu­ally from rub­ble, after WWII.  Some­day I hope to visit some churches in the south­ern US that were vic­tims of racial vio­lence and hatred.  There are also churches all around the world that bear the scars of gov­ern­ment sup­pres­sion and per­se­cu­tion, past or present.  Vis­it­ing these churches, I try to think of the evil that caused this suf­fer­ing, and I try to think of what has hap­pened or what could hap­pen to over­come it.  It’s impor­tant to mourn the loss of those who died in these attacks but also to think of con­struc­tive ways of respond­ing to these oppos­ing forces.

I recently vis­ited a church of this descrip­tion, but I’m going to get you to guess which church, or at least the gen­eral vicin­ity.  Are you ready?

  • This Asian coun­try has had a rocky rela­tion­ship with Chris­tian­ity. (so what Asian coun­try hasn’t, right?)
  • While the church has been rebuilt, within liv­ing mem­ory of some of its parish­ioners, it was essen­tially destroyed by a fireball/firebomb.
  • In the church park­ing lot/entrance there is a stone, on which a young mar­tyr was forced to sit, day after day until she recanted or died, the lat­ter hap­pened first.
  • This city was once believed to be almost entirely Chris­t­ian, but now the per­cent­age of Chris­tians nation-wide is some­where between 1 and 2%.
  • In the same city there are a few shrines and mon­u­ments to other mar­tyrs, includ­ing 26 who were simul­ta­ne­ously cru­ci­fied (they were later beatified).
  • The church has some­times been rec­og­nized as the largest Catholic cathe­dral in Asia.
  • Every­one in the  cathe­dral at the time was killed in the bomb­ing, includ­ing 3 priests and a num­ber of peo­ple who had come for con­fes­sion.  It wasn’t the  falling debris that killed them, but the immense heat from the blast.  One man came to look through the rub­ble for his wife, who he knew had gone to con­fes­sion at that time, and the only iden­ti­fi­able thing he found was her rosary, which had par­tially melted glass beads.

Have you fig­ured it out?  Maybe your knowl­edge of Asian Chris­tian­ity has given you a pretty good idea, but if you’re like me, you’re prob­a­bly won­der­ing about the polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion in this coun­try.  Who bombed the church?  Was it com­mu­nist rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies, local war­lords, won­der­ing rebel groups, or an invad­ing army?  I didn’t really give a lot of clues, but the immen­sity of the bomb may have given it away.

The plaques and brochures at these shrines were under­stand­ably writ­ten in such a way that high­lighted the blood­lust and narrow-minded gov­ern­men­tal poli­cies of the rulers who ordered the exe­cu­tion of these Chris­tians.  This is what I had on my mind as I approached Urakami Cathe­dral in Nagasaki, Japan.  (Did any­one get it?)  Sure we, the allied west, bombed churches in Ger­many and Italy, but there was some­thing dif­fer­ent about the bat­tle with Japan.  Amidst all their Emperor wor­ship and sui­cide bomb­ings, this was sup­posed to be a dif­fer­ent kind of enemy.  There is some irony in think­ing that the Japan­ese city with the great­est west­ern influ­ence hap­pened to be one of the A-bomb tar­gets.  This is of course gen­er­ally true, but these par­tic­u­lar vic­tims weren’t so dif­fer­ent from the peo­ple drop­ping the bomb.

How Nicaraguan Are You?

Published on May 14, 2009 by Dick Benner. Closed

I seem to find face­book quizzes very thought pro­vok­ing. Some of you may remem­ber a quiz I did a cou­ple of months ago called “How Men­non­ite Are You?” This morn­ing, I did another quiz, called how Nicaraguan are you. Nor­mally I ignore quizzes (or don’t pub­lish the results so that other peo­ple don’t real­ize the depths of my essay-induced pro­cras­ti­na­tion), but this one seemed inter­est­ing to me. It was sent to me by a Nicaraguan/Canadian friend who I met here in Toronto this past year.

In Nicaragua, I really tried to learn as much as pos­si­ble about the cul­ture and peo­ple and, as a result, ended up fit­ting in as best I could. I guess I did become, in my friend’s words, Nicana­dian, or, as the quiz this morn­ing told me, Nica de cora­zon. (Not that I truth­fully answered all of the ques­tions, I just answered them how I would if I were Nicaraguan.)

What does this mean? Does it mean that I am actu­ally Nicaraguan? Or, maybe it means, and here I quote one of my Nicaraguan friends, that I am Nicana­di­ense, or Nicana­dian. This strange nation­al­ity is some­how fit­ting. It rep­re­sents (the lit­tle I can grasp of) post­mod­ernism, and what I feel about labels in gen­eral: they are some­times use­ful but mostly mis­lead­ing. When I lived in Nicaragua, I was in the coun­try, but not from there, so I did what I could to make a good life for myself there. This is faintly rem­i­nis­cent of how I try, and fail, to live the admo­ni­tion to be in the world but not of it. An admo­ni­tion that, to my knowl­edge, does not come with a neologism.

What we remember

Published on May 12, 2009 by Dick Benner. Closed

Mem­ory is a funny thing. A few days ago, I left my house, final essay in hand, or rather, in purse, and I some­how got to think­ing of my Egypt­ian address. I haven’t though of it in years, but it all came back: 14 El Sobki Street 1, Man­sheyet El Bakri … Mem­ory is funny like that. You think that what­ever hap­pened to you in the past hap­pened in the past and stays there. Except for when it doesn’t.
On the other hand, we can try and re-create mem­o­ries to re-create happy moments of our past. There’s one taste that to me is so Egypt­ian. The taste of drink­ing water after eat­ing some freshly baked bread. I have never suc­cess­fully recre­ated this taste with any other kind of bread, nor do I have any idea what makes that com­bi­na­tion taste the way it does. This is not the only food I have tried to make in my memory’s image. Need­less to say, none of my re-creations have turned out per­fectly, some­thing I find frus­trat­ing.
It also makes me won­der why I am so dri­ven to re-create the past. I think some­times it’s hard to face the present because of mis­takes that I’ve made in the past. My long­ing for sec­ond chances makes me want to re-live the past but with a dif­fer­ent out­come. Unfor­tu­nately, this nos­tal­gia doesn’t change real­ity.
I would do well to remem­ber that Jesus offers us an oppor­tu­nity for redemp­tion. Unfor­tu­nately, Jesus is no time-machine who can help us re-live our lives with bet­ter out­comes. If only.

Book review

Published on May 9, 2009 by Dick Benner. Closed

This past year I have read many books. So many, in fact, that I don’t want to count them all. I guess this was bound to hap­pen since I am a stu­dent of lit­er­a­ture. Some of these books have been nov­els, oth­ers, col­lec­tions of poetry, and some have even been lit­er­ary the­ory. It’s hard to say what has really been my favourite. When I began my stud­ies I thought that con­tem­po­rary lit­er­a­ture was where it was at but, as far as I can tell, con­tem­po­rary lit­er­a­ture prefers strange, non-linear plots that ques­tion every tenet that was ever held. This makes for books that are inter­est­ing to study but not very enjoy­able reads. I also read books from the pub­lic library and friends and fam­ily in my free time. One of those books is called Some­where Else by Jan Guen­ther Braun. It is this author’s first novel, and was pub­lished a few years ago. It occu­pies a strange land in between read­ing for plea­sure and read­ing for study.

This novel is the story of a young woman’s coming-out process and her dis­tance from and then accep­tance of (?) her Men­non­ite back­ground. I think this book is good, in that it is part of a new gen­er­a­tion of Men­non­ite writ­ers. On the other hand, as a first attempt, it is not that well-written. Some of the novel’s state­ments about, say, Men­non­ite his­tory, are just that: state­ments. They are ‘plunked’ into the novel instead of being woven into the plot. I think this is the main prob­lem with the novel. It’s poten­tial is not fully reached. It seems like a fairly typ­i­cal teenage angst novel with the added inter­est of being about peo­ple and places I am famil­iar with. This is unfor­tu­nate, really, as the top­ics it deals with are cer­tainly rel­e­vant in our Cana­dian Men­non­ite con­text. Per­haps Guen­ther Braun’s  next attempt will con­tinue to be rel­e­vant, and writ­ten in a bet­ter way.

Pre-washing washing

Published on May 7, 2009 by Will Loewen. Closed

One of the joys of being in a young fam­ily is the process of cre­at­ing new tra­di­tions for var­i­ous hol­i­days.  This year, even though our baby is only six months old and no choco­late eggs are avail­able in this country’s reg­u­lar gro­cery stores, we still man­aged a candy hunt on Easter Mon­day and a num­ber of church out­ings.  We’ve got some time before we have to worry about whether we intro­duce the Easter bunny or not, but we were very pleased with how she sat through all of the ser­vices this weekend.

Get­ting her ready and a few other things on the agenda Fri­day evening meant that I almost didn’t have time to fol­low another reg­u­lar Easter tra­di­tion: the pre-foot-washing foot-washing.  For some, this is as impor­tant as the actual rit­ual.  Some churches find other times to wash each oth­ers feet, but many use the Easter week­end for the pur­pose, and many do it on Good Friday.

Wash­ing each other’s feet is prob­a­bly one of the strangest things that hap­pens in our churches.  Peo­ple of course under­stand how it works, but not nec­es­sar­ily why we do it.  But as strange as this rit­ual may seem, we make it stranger.  It would be really embar­rass­ing to have smelly feet when that fel­low brother or sis­ter within the con­gre­ga­tion held your feet in their hand, so most of us wash our feet at home first and also make sure to wear clean socks.  Then at the church we try to sit with and then pick a per­son that we already like and are friends with, so that we can min­i­mize the awkwardness.

Dur­ing the cer­e­mony, even the most sea­soned par­tic­i­pant shows a lit­tle dis­com­fort.  Not dur­ing the wash­ing though, that part is easy, the dis­com­fort is when we are being washed.  When we are wash­ing, it is easy to remem­ber that Jesus called us to serve.  When we are wash­ing it is easy to for­get how gross the task might oth­er­wise seem.  We knew we’d be wash­ing each other’s feet, and we came any­way.  It’s tough to explain, but we’re not awk­ward about wash­ing someone’s feet, we’re awk­ward about our feet being washed, even being touched.

This year, as I looked down at my feet that were being sprin­kled on, it struck me how I didn’t need the wash­ing.  Not only had I already washed them, but gen­er­ally if they get dirty I was them myself.  I almost asked my wife to stop (you can see how eager I am to ask other peo­ple).  Then I thought about the sec­ond most impor­tant com­mand­ment in the Bible, to “love your neigh­bour as yourself.”

God doesn’t com­mand us to love our­selves, not because we shouldn’t, but because we do it so nat­u­rally that we don’t need to be told.  See­ing this unnec­es­sary act was a reminder to me that other acts of ser­vice are much more nec­es­sary.  Per­haps this is in keep­ing with our Anabap­tist the­ol­ogy, but at a foot-washing cer­e­mony, I don’t actu­ally wash anyone’s feet, they’re already clean,  I sim­ply par­tic­i­pate in a sym­bolic obser­vance.  When I pour water over some­one else’s clean feet, that’s not an act of ser­vice, it’s a sign that I’m will­ing to do other more tan­gi­ble things.