Peace more than pacifism
Every year at Remembrance Day and Peace Sunday, Canadian Mennonites are torn between honouring those who lost their lives through war and entering into a ritual that celebrates violence as a way of resolving international conflict. In doing one, do we negate the other? We have attempted compromise by wearing, instead of the poppy, a…
Incubating peace
Innovation is all the rage in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ont., the place I now call home. A day does not go by without stories about another high-tech start-up in the local paper, stories that regularly achieve national prominence. It is no longer enough to describe our community as being the home to “Canada’s most innovative university” for…
Readers write: November 23, 2015 issue
Leis family ‘victimized by tragedy Re: “Editors ‘lack . . . understanding on issues of clergy sexual abuse’ ” and “Readers disappointed in handling of the Vernon Leis matter” letters, Oct. 26, page 10. I personally feel that the family of Vernon Leis has also been victimized by this tragic turn of events. For them…
Ministry in diversity
“Lord, I am not what I want to be, I am not what I need to be, I am not what I am going to be, but, thank God Almighty, I am not what I used to be.” –Prayer from an African leader By its presence, teaching and action, the church is the salt and…
It’s a miracle
December 24. Late morning. I am in the kitchen, making a pot of soup, savouring its scents and colours. Lovely Christmas music pours from the radio. I’m hoping this domestic activity will centre me in the wake of the stormy currents that accompany the season. How do we ponder all these things, like Mary did,…
Sometimes you need to receive
Some time ago, during a morning walk, I found a wallet a few blocks from my house. I looked around, hoping the owner might still be close by, but there was no one. Just me. A peek inside revealed a library card, a health card and $25 in bills. That was it. No credit cards.…
Advent is life
The weeks leading up to Christmas brought an overwhelming spirit of anticipation to our household when I was growing up. In fact, the intensity of waiting to open our gifts on Christmas morn was too much for my brother and me to bear. Every December we searched our house high and low looking for our…
‘These records are unique’
The looping cursive script has turned brown, the yellowing pages are smudged with fingerprints and held together with aged pieces of tape. In the top left corner of the document, the faded blue ink of a rubber stamp reveals the date this document was written and signed: July 24, 1873. The letter is a significant…
‘We should do this again’
“We should do this again!” commented a Hmong young adult, a sentiment heard often after Kitchener First Mennonite Church’s Assembly Scattered weekend in early October 2015. Nearly 60 youth, children and adults from the congregation were privileged to gather with almost 8,000 Anabaptist believers from 77 countries in July at the Mennonite World Conference assembly…
