Beauty from loss
It is indescribable, the feeling of losing a loved one, especially when that person is lost as the result of a murder. Cliff, Wilma and Odia Derksen have experienced this firsthand, having lost Candace, their daughter and sister, in 1985, when she was grabbed off the street, bound and left to freeze in an industrial…
Poet struggles with Mennonite identity
Ancestral worship for Mennonite writers is a great temptation, Julia Spicher Kasdorf told a faculty forum at Conrad Grebel University College on Feb. 17 as part of the award-winning Mennonite poet’s three-day presence on campus as a visiting scholar sponsored by the Rod and Lorna Sawatsky Fund. Spicher Kasdorf, currently teaching creative writing and women’s…
Mennonites can dance
At the age of 17, dancer Peter Quanz of Wilmot Mennonite Church was already living in Winnipeg on his own. Before heading to Winnipeg, he commuted to an arts high school in nearby Kitchener, instead of attending his local high school. His parents had always supported his interest in dance, although they all kept it…
Billy Graham meets the evangelist of outrage
I recently received two books by authors in their 90s: Nearing Home by Billy Graham, and Time for Outrage by Stéphane Hessel, a retired French diplomat and concentration camp survivor who helped draft the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. Each book conveys a strong sense of mission and each is made more compelling by…
Poetry, paintings bring Old Orders to life
Peter Etril Snyder is known the world over for his sensitive paintings of Old Order Mennonites in the Waterloo Region. Although he had just retired from his gallery and painting for health reasons, he was intrigued when Tundra Books came to him with Nan Forler’s poems of an Old Order girl’s life over the course…
Poetry, paintings bring Old Orders to life
Peter Etril Snyder is known the world over for his sensitive paintings of Old Order Mennonites in the Waterloo Region. Although he had just retired from his gallery and painting for health reasons, he was intrigued when Tundra Books came to him with Nan Forler’s poems of an Old Order girl’s life over the course…
The attraction of walking
In 1985, around 2,500 people walked the Camino de Santiago, a medieval pilgrimage route in northern Spain. Ten years later, the number jumped tenfold. The year that I did it, 2005, there were 95,000 of us. The popularity of this endeavour is one thing, but more surprising is the fact that most pilgrims profess no…
MCC story examined from various angles
Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) recently conducted a re-visioning process called New Wine/New Wineskins: Reshaping MCC for the 21st Century, to review various aspects of the organization. The essays in this collection continue this conversation of exploration of MCC’s work and purpose, and the relationship with its supporting congregations. In the second chapter, Esther Epp-Tiessen tells…
Learning about peace from those ‘who have gone before’
Mennonite Church U.S.A. executive director Ervin Stutzman believes people today can learn from those who faced challenges over peace in the past, gaining perspective and humility as they study history. That’s why he wrote From Nonresistance to Justice: The Transformation of Mennonite Church Peace Rhetoric, 1908-2008, published this year by Herald Press. In the interview…
A Christ-figure for a new generation?
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (DH2), the final instalment of the hugely popular eight-part Harry Potter film series, was released this summer to overwhelming acclaim. Like the first two Narnia films, DH2 focuses unnecessarily—and disturbingly—on a climactic epic battle between good and evil. Apparently, filmmakers are convinced that this is what filmgoers…
