The church has left the building
Recently seen online: a quote on a black T-shirt: “The church has left the building.” The worldwide spread of the latest coronavirus has drastically changed the way we live and move in these days. We avoid public gatherings, including weekly worship and other church activities. People across the world are hunkering down at home in…
Love in the time of COVID-19
Thursday, as I sat down to a board meeting for the Micah Mission, a restorative justice organization in Saskatoon, I got the news that the Juno Awards show was being cancelled in an effort to curb the spread of COVID-19. For months I’d been hearing the Junos hyped on CBC Radio 2 and seeing advertisements…
Readers write: March 30, 2020
MC Canada’s ‘limbs’ are letting its ‘torso’ down Re: “A call to strengthen our core,” Feb. 17, page 4. I am disappointed by the responses of the “limbs” to the cry of the “torso.” We must do better. Doug Klassen, Mennonite Church Canada’s executive minister, was very gentle. Some congregations and nationwide church bodies are…
Beautiful and terrible connections
“Know we are connected in ways that are terrible and beautiful.” Last week I lingered over this line in a poem by Lynn Ungar on Facebook as I pondered the COVID-19 crisis. I am living into this crisis in Germany, where the pandemic has struck ahead of North America, and have struggled between hunkering down…
Old photo
Photography in generations past was a very deliberate, expensive and intense hobby. Special equipment, such as chemicals, film, lighting and the camera itself, was needed. Photographers often had to develop their own photos, which meant they had to have a dark room. In this photo, the people were dressed for the occasion, and a rocking…
Thrift shopper, peacebuilder
I was walking to church for an event a few weeks back and stopped by our local Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) thrift store for my usual weekly peek and to say hello to the dear ladies who faithfully volunteer their time. I thought I might actually be leaving the store empty-handed for the first time…
Being the church in risky times
As relatively privileged people living in Canada, there aren’t too many times that we think about whether this action or that action might result in our death. Living in these pandemic times, though, reminds me of our years living in southern Africa near the end of official apartheid. We thought often then of whether doing…
Fear not
I watched in disbelief as people feverishly filled their carts with toilet paper and bolted before someone could steal their treasure. In less than a minute, the toilet paper was gone and the mob dispersed. Except for one lady standing in front of a stack of six packages of toilet paper, protecting it from the…
‘Greater love has no one . . .’
“Greater love has no one than to lay their life down for their friends,” said Jesus. That’s an amazing thing for anyone to do. But what about a whole village laying down its life for people it doesn’t even know? That would be extraordinary. Yet that’s what happened more than 350 years ago when a…
