If all the earth…
Nature has always been a source of inspiration for Mennonite children’s author, Aimee Reid. Several years ago, she took her dog for a walk while camping at Valens Lake Conservation Area in Hamilton, Ontario. She returned with a phrase in her mind: If all the earth were forests green and you were the nest. “I…
Seeing beauty and injustice
Since her death in 1943, Simone Weil’s philosophy has impacted dozens of writers, thinkers and theologians. T.S. Eliot named her a saint. Simone de Beauvoir envied her spirit. Now, in The Literary Afterlives of Simone Weil: Feminism, Justice, and the Challenge of Religion, Cindy Wallace examines how nine writers, including Adrienne Rich, Annie Dillard and the Mennonite…
Author imagines a way forward amid environmental upheaval
A new book offers practices for leaders and communities to foster healthier cultures during a time of ecological devastation. In Tending Tomorrow: Courageous Change for People and Planet, Leah Reesor-Keller shares her own journey of meaning-making amid environmental and social upheaval with the hope that readers will use it to make sense of their own experiences,…
A summer of page-turners
Are you browsing the library shelves aimlessly, uncertain as to which book to take home? Did you spend the entire summer gardening or at the lake, unable to find time to read? Or are you looking for a wonderful story to carry you through the gloomy winter? Look no further! Avid readers from across Mennonite…
Humble confessions, compelling stories
As Neill von Gunten and his Black companions departed an increasingly volatile Chicago rally at which Martin Luther King Jr. had taken a brick to the head, KKK members and other whites attacked their bus at a red light. Bricks flew through windows. Rioters rocked the bus. Amid panic, the driver ran the red…
Author launches her new children’s book
Mennonite author Barbara Nickel of Yarrow, B.C., launched her new children’s historical novel, Dear Peter, Dear Ulla at the Mennonite Heritage Museum in Abbotsford on Nov. 6, following a virtual book launch in October from her home province of Saskatchewan. The book tells the story of two 12-year-old cousins at the start of the Second…
The story behind a 500-year-old book
The Mennonite Library and Archives (MLA) at Bethel College in North Newton, Kan. is inviting the public to view the oldest book in its collection, which celebrates its 500th birthday in 2022. The 1522 edition of the New Testament in Greek and Latin, edited by Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536), is currently displayed prominently upon entering the…
New book explores God’s vision for the church
In his new book, The Baby and the Bathwater: Aspiration and Reality in the Life of the Church, Robert J. Suderman, former general secretary for Mennonite Church Canada, makes a case for the importance of the church at a time when its relevance is in question, even by its own members. Published by MC Canada,…
Mennonite recipes with a plant-based twist
Jo Snyder has moved around Canada pursuing a career in communications and toured across Europe playing punk music, but a new project has brought her back to her Mennonite roots in the Waterloo Region. Snyder is the author of The Vegan Mennonite Kitchen, a new cookbook published by Pandora Press. Subtitled Old Recipes for a…
Heinrichs launches online book club
Mennonite Church Canada’s Indigenous-Settler Relations program is running a five-week online book club beginning this April. The chosen text is Beloved Amazonia, a courageous collection of documents from the Pan-Amazon Synod, including an “apostolic exhortation” to the church from Pope Francis. “Carrying the wisdom cultivated from consultations with more than 80,000 people in the Amazon,…
