For discussion
1. What are some of your warm “waiting for Christmas” memories? What is it about Advent and Christmas family traditions that make them so special? Do you have negative memories mixed with the nostalgia? What role does gift-giving play in Christmas nostalgia? 2. Why do we go to so much effort to get families together…
Coming home
In my first year at Canadian Mennonite University, my first year away from home, I kept a running countdown to the Christmas holidays on the whiteboard stuck to my dorm room door. Only 12 days until I fly home, 19 days until Christmas. Each day I would update the number with red or green markers,…
A father’s perspective on Advent
Our childhood returns to us through our children—especially in the season of Advent.
What Advent means to me
Advent means memories, traditions, plans, lists, emotions and thoughts. In my youth in western Canada, growing up in a Mennonite Brethren (MB) community, Advent was a season. It was not marked by a number of Sundays, but by particular songs sung or lessons read. The first MB hymnal (in German) the Gesangbuch, lists six appropriate…
Advent hymns and texts are disturbing.
“O come, O come Emmanuel,” a stock dirge of Advent, comes from a house of pain that once was, still is, and shall be again. The hymn is haunting. (HWB #172)
Practice the peace we proclaim
While I appreciate the widespread support for Canadian Mennonite when we broke the story in our last edition regarding Canada Revenue Agency reminding us about “political partisanship” cited in two editorials and four articles, I want to clarify and correct some misinformation reported by the public media. I also want to appeal to our readers…
Reconciling our vision of holiness with the reality of sin
If the grim historical associations with words like “purity” and “cleansing” are any indication, then Sider is right to suggest that the church has had trouble reconciling the messiness of life with its concept of holiness. To See History Doxologically is a direct engagement with the tendency to sever holiness from the difficulty of life.…
First female Mennonite missionary went down with the Titanic
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. Throughout this commemorative year there has been much in-depth coverage of the Titanic but a little-known part of that story will hold particular interest to Mennonite readers. Among the more than 1,500 people who died in the icy Atlantic waters during the dark…
New assignment in Burkina Faso
Nancy Frey and Bruce Yoder are building a new home in Burkina Faso with their children Jeremiah and Deborah. In the capital city of Ouagadougou, the Frey Yoders connect with and help support the Foyer Evangélique Mennonite de Ouagadougou (FEMO), a congregation primarily comprised of young adult university students, 24 of whom live in the…
