Our fathers
Mother’s Day is past, and Pentecost and Father’s Day are still ahead. In this in-between time, I’ve been considering the ways in which we describe God. Humans long to know, to understand and to name God. But how can mortal imaginations grasp the Eternal One? In the Hebrew Scriptures, the Divine Presence manifests itself as…
Open to us a door
When Hymnal: A Worship Book came out in 1992, “What is This Place” was chosen to be the lead hymn in the collection. The first line describes the church building as “Only a house, the earth its floor, walls and a roof . . . , windows for light, an open door.” But when the…
Readers write: May 25, 2020 issue
CM writers are fitting followers of innovators in religious toleration Re: “Out of holy weakness, mysterious power arises,” March 2, page 4, and “Making things right,” March 2, page 10. These recent articles in Canadian Mennonite demonstrate the reality of commingling two viewpoints that appear completely different but are closely connected. The writers, Will Braun…
A column about plague columns
If you’ve travelled in central or eastern Europe, you may have come across a plague column holding a prominent place in a town square. Plague columns were constructed in the 17th and 18th centuries as a display of public faith in the church and in God. At the time, the Catholic church was experiencing pressures…
J.J. Thiessen
J.J. Thiessen of Saskatoon served in many leadership roles at the congregational, provincial, national, and binational levels most of his adult life. He is quoted in A Leader for his Times: “What is the chief need of present day humanity? Depth! Truly, if anything increases from year to year, it is superficiality. . . . …
Sunday morning on Zoom
Church is about to start and the Zoom link doesn’t work! For some reason it keeps sending me to a YouTube video of “Seek Ye First,” and I can’t find my church! I quickly text my pastor husband, who not only leads the service and preaches every Sunday morning, but is also the lone manager…
Too much news?
These are days of information overload. There is so much news to follow! Local, regional, national, international, from this part of the country and from that part of the world. It is hard to cope with how much news there is, and with how overwhelming it feels. News stories with an emotional catch lead me…
Embrace the paradox
In 1993, my friend Myron Penner introduced me to Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. I haven’t been the same since. Kierkegaard enlightened me to the power of paradox. At that time I was ready to walk away from Christianity. It had been a long time coming. Then Kierkegaard breathed life into the dry bones of my…
104-year-old reader likes to ‘keep in tune’ with the church
Lydia Ann (nee Horst) Bauman may be Canadian Mennonite’s oldest reader. At 104 years of age she still reads the magazine in her assisted-living suite at Fairview Seniors Community in Cambridge, Ont. She gets the magazine through nearby Preston Mennonite Church, where she attended until the COVID-19 pandemic closed churches. She misses church and she…
