Raising reconciliation from the dead
Categories: Opinion“Reconciliation is dead.” I saw that stark message on a sign at the Landback Camp in Victoria Park in Kitchener, Ont., in June 2020. Local Indigenous people established the camp as part of a larger effort to assert their presence…
Vaccine inequities
Categories: OpinionI struggle often with my relative wealth and privilege. Working with Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) for 20-plus years helped give me something “to do” to address inequities in our world. Working with Mennonite World Conference (MWC) makes me even more…
Speculating about berry-filled trees
Categories: OpinionA few years ago I was trekking through a desolate, snow-filled forest, enjoying the spacious tranquility of a crisp winter hike, when I came upon a tree buzzing with activity and life. There were well over a hundred little birds…
Pain and potential
Categories: OpinionAfter a long period of waiting, we learned in December that a COVID-19 vaccine had been approved and distribution was beginning. We were told that, by the beginning of September, we all should have received the vaccine, and life can…
Epp sisters
Categories: OpinionEpp sisters Anna Klaassen (1904-1976) and Maria Nickel (1903-1957) work together on the family farm in Saskatchewan stooking sheaves of grain. Stooking required workers to gather the cut grain into sheaves and then to stand the sheaves upright to help…
Readers write: February 15, 2021 issue
Categories: OpinionReaders weigh in on MCC’s research on National Socialism Re: “Committed to seeking a deeper understanding: MCC begins research into historical connections to National Socialism,” Feb. 1, page 13. Kudos, Mennonite Central Committee (MCC), for beginning to face part of…
Transition in leadership
Categories: OpinionMy first season of a church in an intentional pastoral transition process was as an associate pastor with my home church in Surrey, B.C. I joined the church when it was first planted and was called to be the youth…
Gary Snider
Categories: OpinionIn 1984, a local reporter interviews Gary Snider, dressed in clothes his grandfather wore when he arrived as an immigrant from the Soviet Union 60 years before. Three hundred people took part in this commemorative walk, retracing the route of…
‘Our framing story’
Categories: OpinionThe Jan. 10 bulletin at Tiefengrund Mennonite Church included the following church family news: “Ed Olfert has officially retired and is now living the good life! In other news, Ed was taken to hospital on Wednesday and was subsequently diagnosed…
The practice of Lent
Categories: OpinionI like Lent. I wonder how many Mennonites practise this season in the church calendar. And if so, what they do. For western Christians, Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, Feb. 17 this year, and lasts for six weeks (just over…
Living in the middle
Categories: OpinionLife is full of spectrums, and I often struggle to find my place on them. Some spectrums, like the light spectrum from infrared through the visible colours to ultraviolet, although fascinating, aren’t highly controversial. Other spectrums, like our political or…
Liberating and recovering Anabaptist theology
Categories: OpinionThe two most influential attempts at Mennonite self-definition in the 20th century were Harold Bender’s Anabaptist Vision and John Howard Yoder’s The Politics of Jesus. Both legacies have come under scrutiny, with Yoder’s more pointed due to the abuse he…
Readers write: February 1, 2021 issue
Categories: OpinionMight Jesus have really said ‘Our Mother’? Re: “Gendered images of God,” Nov. 23, 2020, page 23. The committee that worked on the new hymnal, Voices Together, says that “the decisions made about the language used for God may be…
Jacob Kroeker
Categories: OpinionScarlet fever, cholera, diphtheria, smallpox, typhoid and whooping cough were some of communicable diseases that plagued communities in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Jacob Kroeker (1836-1914) came to Manitoba in 1876 and settled in the village of Schoenweise. From…
Connections
Categories: OpinionI believe it is important that we are called to belong to a faith community that is beyond our own congregation. My main question today is: “How do we belong, how do we connect with the people in our Anabaptist…
Losing freedom?
Categories: OpinionI’m writing this on Jan. 18 and I’m wondering how tone deaf my article will seem by the time you read it. I have no idea what the world will be like in a few days, let alone a few…
Wise stories can build peace
Categories: OpinionIn the aftermath of last year’s Black Lives Matter protests, and the violence that boiled over in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6 of this year, it feels as though tensions are rising in our society. As fear escalates, we wonder…
Readers write: January 18, 2021 issue
Categories: OpinionSeeking a call to discernment Re: “Credentials terminated for theologian-academic-pastor,” Nov. 9, 2020, page 18. Last October, John D. Rempel joined John Howard Yoder, Karl Barth and numerous other theologians in the company of men whose personal wretchedness stained brilliant…
Refined, pared back, purified
Categories: OpinionIn his book Transforming Mission, missiologist David J. Bosch famously pictured the church’s mission as “a ceaseless celebration of the Feast of Epiphany” with our life together, our prayers, our programs always “pointing to God, holding up the God-child before…
Opinion/columns
