Viewpoints
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Nancy Kube and Krista Loewen co-edited the new cookbook, One Big Table: Recipes from Friends of L’Arche Collective Kitchen.
The act of eating and preparing food is my greatest joy. Creating the dance of different flavours upon my palate is a spiritual experience. Robert Farror Capon writes in The Supper of the Lamb, “Food and cooking are among the richest subjects in the world. Every day of our lives, they preoccupy, delight and refresh us . . . Both stop us dead in our tracks with wonder.
Photo courtesy of the United Church Publishing House / Mennonite Archives of Ontario
The phrase “singing off the wall,” referring to singing from projected words rather than a hymn book, first appeared in Canadian Mennonite in 2010. This image shows that the practice went back much further. Stirling Avenue Mennonite Church in Kitchener, Ont., recently donated a collection of glass “lantern slides” probably in use circa 1924-45.
‘The Sermon on the Mount’ by Carl Bloch, 1877
“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?
More responses to Maple View’s paid supplement on sexuality
Re: “Honour God with Your Bodies” insert, Sept. 25, 2017.
Common knowledge helps to form our identity. It creates the basis from which to describe ourselves and helps us to understand others.
Change can create a crisis of identity. When what we thought to be fact changes, it can create a distressing cloud of confusion and uncertainty. We wonder if there is anything we can know. And we no longer trust what we think we know.
“Believe the best about each other.” When delegates met for the Mennonite Church Canada assembly this past fall, there were swirls of questions, confusion, caution and qualms. From the dense detail and multiple pages on denominational restructuring that we waded through, it was this phrase of hope and encouragement that jumped out at me, and others as well.
In the last few weeks, most of us have encountered some version of A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens’ classic tale of Ebenezer Scrooge.
Lubyanka Square (Photo by Aileen Friesen)
On the evening of Oct. 29, 2017, I found myself in Lubyanka Square by happenstance. This square stands in front of the Lubyanka Building. The vibrant yellow facade, delightful rather than imposing, disarms those passing by.
Troy Watson
In Luke 10:40, Martha complains to Jesus about having to do all the kitchen work by herself. Jesus responds. “Martha, you’re distracted by many things, but only one thing is necessary.”
Notice that Jesus doesn’t give Martha a list of seven or 47 things that are essential to life. Just one thing. If that doesn’t give focus to our spiritual journeys, I don’t know what will.
Mennonite Heritage Archives Photo
At the 1979 Conference of Mennonites in Canada (CMC) delegate sessions, David P. Neufeld, left, welcomed three new congregations into the conference by asking several doctrinal questions regarding their churches’ beliefs and understanding of CMC.
More responses to Maple View’s paid supplement on sexuality
Re: "Honour God with Your Bodies” insert, Sept. 25.
Ryan Jantzi
“All you gotta do is . . . .”
How often have we in the church uttered these words? We petition new committee prospects with this blasé plea. We invite people to faith in Christ saying, “All you gotta do is ask Jesus into your heart.”
“You can’t really talk about mission without talking about the End.”
Photo by Sarah Dyck, Mennonite Archives of Ontario
When Abraham Dick broke his back in 1938, the family struggled to keep up with the work on their farm near St. Agatha, Ont. Then one day in early November, they were surprised to hear the roar of tractors. Many neighbours had shown up unannounced to do the fall plowing.
More responses to Maple View’s paid supplement on sexuality
Re: “Honour God with Your Bodies” insert, Sept. 25.
Last weekend, I attended a wedding. The bride and groom asked their guests to register by highlighting their favourite verse in a Bible that they will carry into their new, shared life. A few days later, I sat beside my mother’s hospital bed and read to her from Psalm 121.
Although it is only November, my community is starting to put up festive decorations and the blank spaces on my calendar are filling up quickly. A list of gifts for family and friends will soon land me in checkout lines where I will almost certainly be asked perfunctorily, “How are you today?” Most customers will respond innocuously and some will be too preoccupied to respond at all.
It took me a while to find my poppy and peace button this year. I couldn’t remember where I’d stored them last November. “I guess I don’t have very good ‘remembrance,’ ” I joked to myself.
Pondering on the dock at Camp Moose Lake. After years of soul searching, Mennonite Church Manitoba has sold its Camp Moose Lake property located in the southeastern corner of the province. Since 1957, the camp has been an integral part of the regional (formerly area) church, congregations, young people and children. For decades, the camp enjoyed vigorous support from many rural congregations.
Manitoba church celebrates pastoral couple’s retirement
Carman Mennonite Church celebrated a retirement party on Aug. 27, in honour of Bob and Martha Pauls, who had served our church for 17 years.
Last week, Makai started Kindergarten at the same school in Metro Manilla as his older brother, Cody, who is now in his second year. Although we are very happy with the school—and Cody loves it—a complaint arose for me within Makai’s first three days, after his teacher played a television show during the 30-minute recess as students ate their snacks.
I wasn’t too sure about this idea of moving into a city. It didn’t seem much like the utopia I dreamed of.
There is no other food from our years in Africa that symbolizes community quite like injera, a type of flatbread.
Tsar Nicholas II, seated on a chair at centre of this photograph, is surrounded by patients, Red Cross workers and other staff at a hospital for wounded men in Ekaterinoslav, South Russia. Abraham Dick, a Mennonite non-combatant serving in the medical corps, was present that day. He carried this photograph with him when he emigrated to Ontario in 1924.
Do you remember any of the stories your grandma told you when you were little? I’m not referring to Bible stories, fairytales or super-hero stories, but stories about her life or the lives of other family members? Stories of memories about days gone by.
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