Making peace with policing
Mennonite teachings tend to promote complete nonviolence, stating or implying that all else is wrong. Officially, we live by nonviolence alone, but in reality, we live about the same as others. The more dangerous or violent circumstances become, the more pragmatic we become. Most of us think practical steps should be taken to protect people…
Mennonites respond to recent military spending
From Dirk Willems loving his enemy in 1569 to Colombian Mennonites building peace today, Anabaptists have offered a bold peace witness. But being a peace church is complicated. Anabaptists got violent in Münster in the 1500s, they mounted armed self-defence units (Selbstschutz) in Ukraine in the early 1900s, many enlisted in World War II and…
Rethinking police and policing
The Winnipeg Police Service shot and killed three people in less than two weeks earlier this year. More than ever we need to take care about when we as citizens call the police. More than ever we need to think about the relationship between peace and policing. I have performed many of the ‘criminal’ acts associated with…
Celebrating 50 years in Canada
My husband Sam and I went out for lunch at the end of October to celebrate Sam’s 50th anniversary of arriving in Canada as a Vietnam-era draft resister. Back in Indiana, I had been part of what we would now call an intervention. We his friends implored Sam to immigrate to Canada. We did not think his spirit…
Nonviolent action in history and today
“In the Second World War there were over 10,000 loyal Canadians who served Canada without weapons. What were they called?” This is the question Conrad Stoesz has been asking students at the Red River Heritage Fair for more than a decade. War has long been the popular narrative throughout history and it continues to be…
Follow the money
What is the real cost of the things we buy? That’s the question I asked myself during Uprooted, a three-week learning tour for young adults through Mexico, Guatemala and Arizona that took place in May. Organized by Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) Alberta and MCC Saskatchewan, the tour looked at issues surrounding migration in Central America…
Remembering the mothers of the ‘disappeared’
When I was a young child, my family lived in Chile, where my parents worked at an inter-Protestant seminary. We happened to be there to witness the end of the brutal, U.S.-backed military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, as he was peacefully voted out of power in the late 1980s. Even as a child, I knew…
Gelassenheit and power
I got into an interesting discussion with a friend from my church recently. In adult ed., we were talking about liberation theology and its view of sin. (You can read about liberation theology and sin here.) Basically, I was affirming the feminist, womanist, and liberation view that sin does not only mean pride or the…
Making meaning of the attack
When I shared the story of my attack, I got a wide variety of responses from my friends, family, and co-workers. It is difficult to know what to say to people after things like this happen, so I was grateful whenever someone attempted to talk about it with me or to give me advice. That being…
Akido and The Jesus Way
Akido is sometimes described as a nonviolent martial art. At the Northeast Asia Regional Peacebuilding Institute in Hiroshima, Japan, I had the privilege of learning a bit from a Japanese Mennonite professor and akido practitioner. I remember a few key points that seemed a fitting metaphor for following Jesus’ nonviolent way. Our sensei (teacher) talked about…
