The strange case of the Amish beard cutters five years ago thrust a normally quiet American community into the national spotlight. The bizarre attacks seemed so out of character for a Christian community whose traditions emphasize nonviolence and forgiveness.
If a person has a body that is physically and intellectually disabled, is it ethically right to use technology to keep that body small and childlike so that it is easier to care for?
Poetry has always spoken to me. Whether it is the blank verse of Shakespeare, the doubling images of Hebrew scripture, or the lyrics of song, popular or otherwise. But I had not found the time for regular reading and contemplation until a spiritual director on an eight-day silent retreat suggested that my spiritual path sounded to her to echo the 14th-century Sufi poet Hafez.
All You Need is Love: Honoring the Diversity of Women’s Voices in Theology. Jennifer Castro, ed. Women in Leadership Project, Mennonite Church U.S.A., 2016, 195 pages.
Deuteronomy: Believers Church Bible Commentary. Gerald E. Gerbrandt. Herald Press, 2015, 600 pages.
In the 1940s, Mary Emma Showalter began a cookbook project, collecting old Mennonite recipes that were handwritten in notebooks because she feared that soon the notebooks would be discarded. As Mennonites began moving beyond their home communities during the Second World War, they were learning to cook new foods and were less apt to use the old recipes learned from home.
Author Carrie Snyder chats with the evening’s moderator Rob Zacharias before her reading at the 2014-15 New Mennonite/s Writing series at Conrad Grebel University College on March 4. (Photo by Dave Rogalsky)
John Siebert had two things to say to Carrie Snyder as she finished her readings from her latest book, Girl Runner, at Conrad Grebel University College on March 4.
Christian, Muslim, Friend: Twelve Paths to Real Relationship. David W. Shenk. Herald Press, 2014, 187 pages.
Maurice Martin signs a copy of I’m so Glad for Sunday . . . When I can go to Church.
Spurred by requests from his thoroughly modern children to tell them stories of his growing-up years in the Ontario Swiss Mennonite homeland of Waterloo County, Maurice Martin, a retired pastor and area church worker, wrote One Mile East of Edensville and self-published it in 2013. His home on the farm was “the centre of innocence,” as he remembers it.
Sue Clemmer Steiner’s recent publication crosses genres within autobiography. It is personal memoir and spiritual recollection. It is reflections on a life in pastoral ministry. It is a historical snapshot of a 1950s eastern Pennsylvania traditional Mennonite community and a Mennonite girl facing the social upheaval of the 1960s. Steiner offers poetry and evocative images.
