An ‘Easter Fools’ Day’ rant
When I first heard that Easter falls on April Fools’ Day this year, my mind immediately thought about how many people think I’m a fool for believing in the Easter story. I can hear them scoffing, “Do you believe in the Easter bunny too?” This brought to mind all the people I’ve known over the…
Giving the bucket list a ‘deeper’ meaning
Deepening. The word resonated throughout Mennonite Church Saskatchewan’s 2018 annual delegate sessions. While a budget and elections were most definitely on the table, delegates at the March 9 and 10 sessions also witnessed the culmination of the yearlong Refresh, Refocus, Renew process, in which the regional church engaged consultant Betty Pries to help them set…
Evangelical social justice
I find the Catholic process of declaring saints un-Anabaptist and weird—especially the part about verifying miracles–but the Vatican’s latest candidate for sainthood is someone who has shaped my Mennonite faith. In February 1977, the established powers in El Salvador, a nation of death squads and deep church-state-oligarchy ties, settled on Oscar Romero as a safe…
Psalms of lament in times of violence
What do we do with Psalm 137? While “Sing us one of your songs of Zion” (verse 3) rings in Christian minds as a sign of deep grief, the accompanying “Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!” (verse 9) strikes most as exceedingly difficult. Don E. Saliers,…
‘That’s the Spirit’
Talking birds, paper and rose petal beads, walking jewellery, found-art sculptures. With these and other works, Carolyn Good’s recent show at the WalterFedy-Architecture, Engineering, Construction offices on Queen Street in Kitchener showed off her Mennonite roots of reusing and recycling. Good, a member of First Mennonite Church in Kitchener, has long worked with paper beads…
The Anthrocene revisited
Annemarie Rogalsky, a member of First Mennonite Church in Kitchener, Ont., had a solo show of her landscapes at the Minto Gallery in Harriston during the month of February. Of her images, she says: “I am interested in nature that is accessible to everyone. That is, nature in the city or the bits of parkland…
Gospel songs with an edge
Jess Reimer recalls the first time a friend told her about Jeremy Hamm, the man who would become her musical partner and husband. “I remember being excited there was a guy who wasn’t a senior citizen who was into bluegrass like me,” she says. When the two met in 2002, they connected immediately. “Within 10…
A biblical call—to justice and peacebuilding
Jessica Reesor Rempel enjoys bringing people together and helping them find meaning. She recalls an incident just before Christmas a few years ago, when she was thinking about going into ministry. She was home with her siblings and their partners on the family farm in Markham, Ont., and everyone was about to go for a…
Christian media production done right
When The Fantasy Makers, a new documentary, premiered at Winnipeg’s Real to Reel Film Festival last month, the credits included the name of a young Canadian Mennonite University (CMU) student: Josh Heida. Heida, 24, worked as an assistant editor on the documentary that explores the impact fantasy pioneers C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and George MacDonald…
