-
Reclaiming dignity after leaving sex work
Barsha, whose real name isn’t being used to protect her identity, was 11 when her mother started forcing her to traffic drugs between India and Bangladesh. She was caught several times by police and was afraid of her mother, so she ran away from home and lived in a railway station. During that time she…
-
Reading the Bible with ‘the other’
Mary Magdalene’s Easter discovery of the empty tomb is the greatest news possible for Christians. But for one group of Peruvians studying the account in John 20, it came shrouded in tragedy and terror. Thousands of people “disappeared” in the 1980s and ’90s, when the country was devastated by armed conflict between government forces and…
-
Mennonites, Lutherans, Catholics discuss baptism
Representatives of the Catholic Church (Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity), the Lutheran World Federation, and Mennonite World Conference met in Augsburg, Germany, February 9-14, 2017, for the fifth meeting of the Trilateral Dialogue Commission on Baptism. The meeting in Augsburg concluded a five-year dialogue process. The commission discussed and developed its final report, entitled…
-
Senator urges friendship and solidarity
We had gathered in Ottawa—eight MCC staff, along with 30 students and young adults from across the country—for our annual MCC Canada student seminar. The topic of the seminar was Gender, peace and conflict: Exploring the intersection. One of our guest speakers was Senator Mobina Jaffer. Jaffer has been active in promoting the women, peace…
-
‘I’m pretty earnest about living responsibly’
“I’m kind of anti-passion,” says Brenda MacDonald. “I don’t feel I have a passion. I have a lot of interests, and I’m interested in living responsibly. I’m not goal-oriented, but I’m pretty earnest about living responsibly.” For the retired schoolteacher and her husband, Wayne, living responsibly means doing what they can to protect the environment…
-
Living with a carbon footprint conundrum
Jane Fonda received lots of criticism last year for travelling to Alberta to criticize future pipeline construction. Media outlets, including the Winnipeg Free Press, noted the apparent inconsistency between her comments about fossil-fuel extraction and how she flew to Alberta, used a helicopter to tour the oilsands, had her voice amplified by a microphone powered…
-
‘I like how we roll’
For Christina Bartel Barkman and her son Cody, switching from a car to scooters has pumped new energy and insights into their morning commute. Mother and son used to endure an hour-long, stress-filled drive through “crazy” Manila traffic to cover the 1.3 kilometre distance between home and school. They tried walking, but it was equally…
-
Catalysing mission
Chemistry uses the concept of a catalyst to describe a substance that, when added to another substance, promotes a reaction without being used up itself. Bernard Sejour is Mennonite Church Eastern Canada’s mission catalyst in Ottawa and the Province of Quebec or, as he puts it, area church mission minister “Brian Bauman’s representative.” Sejour was…
-
Sharp among confirmed dead in DRC
Michael J. “M.J.” Sharp, a United Nations official kidnapped with five others in the Democratic Republic of Congo two weeks ago, has been confirmed as deceased by the Congolese government, according to Reuters. The bodies of two Caucasians, a male and female, were found in the Central Kasai region, where Sharp and a female colleague went…
-
Mennonite observes Lent with ‘Fast for Healing Justice’ and tweets to Trump
In preparation for his 40-day fast, which began on March 1, Ash Wednesday, Daryl Byler made a few changes to his recreational reading. This lawyer, ordained minister and executive director of the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University favors non-fiction and legal thrillers. Recently, however, Byler has been meditating on the Presbyterian daily lectionary—the faith tradition of President…
