Jacob D. Reimer’s tombstone discovered in Ukraine
On a tour in Ukraine in October 2006, Gert and Katherine Martens experienced an emotional moment when a farmer in Oktaybreskoe removed a few planks from his wall and uncovered the tombstone of Jacob D. and Wilhelmine Reimer. It didn’t take them long to decipher the deep etching on the large granite stone and realize…
Rape culture from a Mennonite perspective
On Friday, May 23, 2014, Elliot Rodger killed six people at the University of California Santa Barbara before he turned the gun on himself. In his manifesto, he stated he did so because women wouldn’t sleep with him. The murderer was active on men’s rights awareness forums, where women are often highly objectified. They are…
Why politics needs lament
Over the past year, the COVID-19 pandemic crippled the strongest economies around the world and caused countries to flounder. Yet, for many countries, hope is around the corner, and governments are vaccinating their populations at historic rates. Dates for opening cities and ending mask mandates have moved up swiftly. Once most are vaccinated, surely we…
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…
Communities come together when the earth breaks apart
Katrina Labun is an MCC SALT participant serving in Kathmandu, Nepal. She shares about her experience following the April 25, 2015, earthquake. I was with my host family in a church service in Kathmandu when the 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck. At least two hundred people were packed into the meeting hall on the third floor…
I didn’t share the Bridge Diagram with her
She sat on the sidewalk of the busy street corner, five months pregnant and without a place to call home. We sat there with her on the cold concrete, listening to her story of unwarranted eviction and the seizure of all her possessions. She didn’t know how it would work out, but she expressed certainty…
About CM
Mission: To educate, inspire, inform and foster dialogue on issues facing Mennonites in Canada, sharing the good news of Jesus Christ from an Anabaptist perspective. We do this through an independent publication and other media, working with our church partners. Canadian Mennonite serves primarily the people and churches of Mennonite Church Canada (link is external), which is…
MC Canada working groups call for sanctions against Israel
The following letter was drafted by representatives of the Mennonite Church Canada network of regional working groups on Palestine and Israel, and sent to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s foreign affairs minister, on May 2, 2018. It is being published in Canadian Mennonite at the request of the working groups. In July…
My soul brother
The sky was a deep blue, the sun shining brightly as we gathered in the Zion Memorial Gardens to bury the ashes of a beloved family friend, my brother-in-law Frank R. Keller, in the community of our birth—Souderton, Pennsylvania. We all knew him as “Butch.” Somehow the familiar words of Psalm 90 read by Pastor…
Fifty Shades of Grace offers counterpoint to best-selling novel
A smoke-filled hookah bar in Syria. A tense meeting with Israeli soldiers on a “Jesus Walk” in Nazareth. A classroom in the deep south of the U.S. in the 1970s. Standing by a hospital bed. On the streets of Calcutta. In a park full of playing kids. These are the kinds of settings where grace…
