‘I eat your garbage’
I am a thief. I steal our food system’s waste. Let’s be clear. Grocery stores throw edible food into their dumpsters. I go to those dumpsters and jump in. I dig through boxes and bags, and salvage everything I can find. I take it to my house and painstakingly sort through it. I cut and…
Called to live in hope
In his own words, Reverend Ibrahim Nsier, a pastor of the Arab Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Aleppo, tells about his ministry in Syria. Mennonite Central Committee, through the Fellowship of Middle East Evangelical Churches, supports the work of Nsier’s church as it addresses the urgent needs of the most vulnerable. This morning I woke up…
Psalm 130
A mini-retreat this week for me, with a couple nights spent at a local camp while my spouse leads the Bible time. Good time for reflection, writing, thinking, reading scripture, walking… and swatting mosquitoes. A poem from one evening… I watch the sun steeping In soggy evening clouds Of grey-blue wisped with orange, pink.…
Circles of Sabbath
My hand rested on the shelf of books and I looked at the title of the volume under my palm. It was the same book that I’d remembered. Another time, in the same small library, I’d pulled the book off the shelf and read it straight through in one evening. I’d resolved to live…
Seek the Peace of the City
The view was breathtaking. On a clear day, from the 52nd floor, they said we should be able to see Mount Fuji. It was too hazy that day, though. All we could see were the blocks and blocks of concrete, towering buildings, and grids of traffic. Ah. I miss the city. While I love connecting…
A “Wasted” Life
Easter this year felt special. I guess it does every year, but I thought a lot this Lent and Easter season about the meaning of all of this in a way that I haven’t before. In our reflection time on Sunday, I wrote: “What does Easter mean to me? I don’t really know exactly.…
A Good Place to Be
A new year begins. It’s such an exciting and fun time of the year. So many expectations, plan, and ideas for how the year will go. It always ends up completely different. Sure some of the big things, work, school, study, people in the community will be fairly predictable, but people really have no…
At the corner of comedy and tragedy
About ten years back I was the caretaker of an apartment block that a church had renovated to provide low-rent stable apartments in Winnipeg’s West End. The visionary and work-horse of this and many other projects was the late Harry Lehotsky. I can still remember coming back to the apartment one evening seeing two faces…
A Prayer Week Reflection
To start off the school year, I decided to make the first week a personal prayer week. Although I usually prefer this kind of commitment together with others, like Will’s efforts with reading through the Bible, the crazy-ness of getting back to Harrisonburg, starting a new semester teaching, and trying to finish off data collection…
