Archive for the 'Rebecca Janzen' Category

Yes, there’s more action at MWC

Published on July 17, 2009 by Dick Benner. Closed

Apolo­gies for not keep­ing my promise of report­ing in daily from Asun­cion.  What with the inten­sive activ­i­ties, the spo­radic inter­net con­nec­tion and the demands on me as a con­fer­ence reporter, this activ­ity, though well-intentioned, got pushed to the bot­tom of the daily routine.

What an amaz­ing expe­ri­ence!  The gath­er­ing of nearly 6,000 Men­nos from around the globe, includ­ing the diver­sity of tongue and nation­al­ity, is truly an uplift­ing and life-changing event.

It is dif­fi­cult to put into words–the wor­ship inspi­ra­tion, the singing, the drama of scrip­ture pre­sen­ta­tions by per­sons with national garb and ges­tures, the whirl­wind of activ­i­ties, includ­ing stim­u­lat­ing work­shops, musi­cal groups per­form­ing in the chapel, chil­drens’ parades, local tours and the expe­ri­ence of eat­ing in the mass din­ing hall in the base­ment of this large complex–hospitality of the local Paraguayan churches.

There are the moments of seri­ous his­tor­i­cal reflec­tions, like the work­shop I attended where Larry Miller, exec­u­tive sec­re­tary of MWC, had six pre­sen­ters from the “churches of the world.”  I was espe­cially struck by the rep­re­sen­ta­tive from the Vat­i­can, who jok­ingly intro­duced him­self as “the guest from Baby­lon,” but who, in a more seri­ous vein, named the divi­sion we have nursed for nearly 500 years as a “sin” by both sides of the conflict.

In another post I will describe my feel­ings about the obvi­ous dis­con­nect between our “talk” about peace and jus­tice being our high­est pri­or­ity at the moment and look­ing across the street to hous­ing and liv­ing con­di­tions of the worst pos­si­ble kind.  And to see the street ven­dors hawk­ing their food out­side our “court” is another reminder that within these walls of priv­i­lege and power we have a long way to go to address what is right under our eyes–not only Paraguay, but in Canada and the US, Europe, Africa, Asia and other Latin Amer­i­can countries.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JMYovPxE-0[/youtube][/youtube]

An introduction

Published on October 5, 2008 by Dick Benner. Closed

An intro­duc­tion: Last year I really enjoyed writ­ing a per­sonal blog for friends and fam­ily (shame­less self pro­mo­tion: http://blogs.mcc.org/salt/rebeccaj1/). So, I was sur­prised and delighted when invited to write on this blog. This blog, and year, how­ever, are dif­fer­ent. In this blog I am meant to talk about the rela­tion­ship between faith and my life. So here I go

Sun­day Med­i­ta­tion
On Sun­days peo­ple seem to come together. This morn­ing, for instance, on my walk to church, I passed sev­eral groups of walk­ers and run­ners and on my way out I saw peo­ple gath­ered in cafes and restau­rants and one group in a knit­ting store. I seek com­mu­nity too — after all, I went to church. I entered, and despite hav­ing only attended a few times, was greeted by name and with warm smiles and hand­shakes. In the first moments of the ser­vice, I learned, was World Com­mu­nion Sun­day. Since most Chris­tians cel­e­brate com­mu­nion with some level of fre­quency, I imag­ine many peo­ple “communion-ed” together today. In my new church (new to me) we took com­mu­nion in a some­what non-traditional way, in small groups. We broke bread and drank wine (or grape juice) and then shared the peace of Christ with one another. We were reminded of and united by our shared faith com­mit­ment in this solemn moment. We con­tin­ued this time of “communion-ing” with very friendly chat­ter and cof­fee in the foyer after church.

Yet upon return­ing to the more every­day, less solemn, world, we seem to for­get one another. Despite the incred­i­bly gen­uine friend­li­ness of the con­gre­ga­tion that never ceases to amaze me, I won­der how it trans­lates into our daily lives. As I walked out onto the street to take the street­car down­town after church, I saw sev­eral peo­ple I thought I rec­og­nized. They walked by me, but no one acknowl­edged me, nor I them. I am new and they prob­a­bly don’t rec­og­nize me quite yet, and I am some­what shy. Still, this inter­ac­tion made me won­der how we as Chris­tians can learn to trans­form the shared faith, a faith shared by many around the world, into some­thing that we can live out together.