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Vignettes from the waiting room
“How do you like my gown? Don’t I wear it well?” “You look amazing!” Smoothing the creases of her gown, she flutters her eyelids, strikes a pose, and smiles with the confidence and sass of a runway model. “I’m not going in there with you.” “I know. When you hear me scream you can come…
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Acknowledging outrage, stepping toward love
I’ve spent the past weeks sifting through the rhetoric that is being used to describe the Israel-Hamas conflict, and it’s been confusing, to say the least. At the time of this writing, officials say that more than 10,000 Gazans are dead. As vested interests try to control the narrative, try to justify, try to capture…
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Can we talk about capitalism?
Do you celebrate Buy Nothing Day? For me it’s like a holy day, a short version of Lent—that disruption of the ordinary that makes me notice the taken-for-granted and the practices of the gospel. The intent of Buy Nothing Day is that for a single day one does not purchase anything. No economic transactions. Live…
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My extended season of Advent
“Let all that has breath praise Yah. Hallelujah!” (Psalm 150:6) This is the last verse in the book of Psalms, and it was the last verse I read to complete a more than five-year journey through the Hebrew scriptures (Old Testament). It is wild for me to think about where this Bible reading challenge, given…
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Part IV: Telling, re-telling, re-storying
This six-part series draws on Kara Carter’s PhD studies, for which she conducted five focus groups with Mennonite Church Eastern Canada pastors. Metaphors and images provide vivid word pictures which help God’s people make meaning and make sense of a complex and changing context. Jesus routinely drew upon the ordinary and mundane from his surroundings…
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Part III: Succession
John and Jean—not their real names—had long made plans to retire once John turned 65. They had dreams of travelling and spending more time with family, who lived far away. Plus, it simply was time to let go of their farm operation. John’s retirement was two years away. The farming operation was held jointly with…
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Consider the roots
Over the past two months, our household has spent a lot of time preparing root crops for storage: digging, trimming the tops and packing them in boxes of dry leaves to go in the cellar. As we’ve worked with the autumnal flood of garlic, onions, potatoes, beets, kohlrabi, turnips, rutabagas, winter radishes, carrots, parsnips, leeks…
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‘They are like angels’
“It was help from heaven. When I talk about it, I want to cry. Nobody has ever helped me like this. They are like angels.” That’s what a homeowner in Grand Forks, B.C., said in 2019 about Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) volunteers who had come to the community to repair and rebuild following a devastating…
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Hold tenderly to death
The day before writing this marked three years since my sister died of cancer. We gathered as a family at her grave to mark the occasion. We talked about the day she died, things that remind us of her and how proud she would be of the two young boys who will always be her…
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WWII Alternative service camp
These men visited an alternative service camp in 1942. From left: D.P. Reimer (EMC, Steinbach), Jacob F. Barkman (Holdeman minister, Manitoba), David Schulz (Bergthaler bishop, Manitoba) and George DeFehr (Holdeman minister, Alberta). During WWII, Schulz supported men applying for conscientious objector status, advocating for those whose applications were denied. When the workload was too much,…
