Seeing clearly
I saw a commercial during a hockey game recently that ended with an image of an Uber Eats bag sitting beside a bowl of macaroni and cheese and a Kraft Dinner box. This struck me as odd. I wondered, what’s the connection between Uber Eats and Kraft Dinner? A few minutes later, the same commercial…
Readers write: March 8, 2024
To pay the price of peace Thank you for the February 21 webinar with Maoz Inon. He reminds me of the many Israelis who work for peace by embodying forgiveness, hope, justice and reconciliation. Their witness affirms my commitment to Anabaptism. The three Abrahamic religions clearly value the sacredness of life. The Qur’an states: “Whoever…
‘Stuck together’ at MCBC AGM
With the theme of “Stuck Together,” delegates from all 23 congregations rejoiced together, wrestled with a budget deficit and welcomed a new church plant at the 2024 Mennonite Church B.C. annual meeting. Prayers were offered throughout the day in various languages spoken in MCBC congregations: Spanish, German, Hmong, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese and Chinese. The…
A mother’s ‘yes’
Part I: For Junia Grace, 2017 Photo by Taylor Summach I don’t like to write sermons. I am, at best, an unlikely preacher in our small Mennonite church. I languished through theology courses in college, earning mostly high C’s. I feel easily overwhelmed when researching scripture, and I have no knowledge whatsoever of…
Gathering matters more than you think
I am a huge advocate for the local church. It is the gathering of people around the life, teaching, death and resurrection of Jesus that frees our imaginations and forms our hearts to be a different kind of nation on the earth. Yet, it seems we often are pulled into the sexy idolatry of the…
Fifty years of listening to poets
A new book celebrates the work of one of the foremost scholars of Mennonite literature. On Mennonite/s Writing: Selected Essays is the first collection of work by Hildi Froese Tiessen, professor emerita of English and peace and conflict studies at Conrad Grebel University College in Waterloo. Edited by Robert Zacharias and published last December by…
Longing for transformation
I recently attended the Mennonite Church Manitoba annual general meeting (AGM) in Winkler. I find those events both energizing and demoralizing, which is why I have attended only a few in my life. You visit with good people, listen to inspiring words, weather the budget anxiety, then leave with the hollow feeling that key realities…
The maize of peace
By avocation, I am an historian with a strong interest in global geopolitics, so it feels odd to be a subsistence farmer. I spend much of my time just meeting my daily needs, while hearing about wars in Ukraine, Gaza and elsewhere. Does my life ignore others’ pain? Could I do more? I constantly seek…
Life in the 80s
From southern Manitoba to B.C., and from Idaho to India, Bill Block had a long and varied career as a pastor. Along the way, he and his wife Dolores, who died in 2019, raised four children. Block, who is a founding member of Hope Mennonite Church in Winnipeg, spoke with Canadian Mennonite four days after…
One more on unity and diversity
I’ve been writing this column for four-and-a-half years, and I’m sure I’ve used the same ideas more than once. In this, my last column, I return to the two core ideas that I get passionate about the most often. There is plenty of danger in a single story, and yet my story is not dissimilar…
