Facing death, rethinking life
I find myself in the middle of living and I am faced with death. Although it was expected, I was still surprised when a friend of mine died earlier this year.
I find myself in the middle of living and I am faced with death. Although it was expected, I was still surprised when a friend of mine died earlier this year.
“I spy with my little eye, something . . . .” Most of you probably know the game. It’s one that has become a fun and important little ritual for me and my three-year-old daughter while I drive her and her sister to daycare in the mornings before work.
Sara Garnet and I were cleaning out the Sunday school classrooms of Faith Mennonite Church in Leamington, Ont., with heavy hearts one Wednesday afternoon. We had put it off for a long time. It felt like we were cleaning out a home after a death had taken place.
A drone photo of the old red brick and the new Shantz Mennonite Church. Erb’s Road goes east to St. Agatha and Waterloo, Ont. (Photo by Chad Bender)
Lukas Winter introduces a slideshow chronicling the two-and-a-half-year construction process underway during COVID. (Photo by Ken Ogasawara)
Mike Shantz, co-chair of the build team, speaks to the congregation in the new sanctuary of Shantz Mennonite Church. (Photo by Ken Ogasawara)
Dwight Baer, Mae Baer and Norma Shantz enjoy the celebratory lunch in the new church gym. (Photo by Ken Ogasawara)
Shantz Mennonite Church held a dedication service on Sunday, June 5. It was intended to be for our new facilities, but in truth, it was primarily a rededication of ourselves. Like other followers of Christ, we have been aware that God is calling the church to a new beginning—one that reestablishes its centeredness in a way of life where all are beloved, welcome and authentically known.
I once memorized Romans 12, and verse 18 always stuck with me: “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.” As Christians, shouldn’t we be at peace with everyone? Shouldn’t we make all efforts to mend relationships and right wrongs?
Well, maybe it doesn’t always work out that way.
Yet again, I read last month about another pastor, an Anabaptist leader at that, being accused of sexual misconduct. It was Bruxy Cavey, pastor of The Meeting House, a Be in Christ megachurch. I thought to myself: “yet again.”
The recent floods in southern British Columbia have wreaked havoc in many ways, devastating towns and roads, and deeply impacting communities.
I’m not naturally a morning person; it usually takes a lot to get me started at the beginning of my day. But this last Wednesday, I set my alarm a little earlier and bounced up from bed like a child on Christmas morning.
This year marks a devastating milestone. It is the 10th anniversary of the war in Syria. This dreadful war has resulted in the deaths of a half-million people and is the largest displacement crisis since the Second World War.
Expectations. We all have them. We have expectations of others, and expectations placed upon us. Meeting expectations can be especially conflicting when navigating between different cultures.
Following current physical-distance guidelines, the fifth annual Walk in the Spirit of Reconciliation was held in various parts of British Columbia over the final weekend of May.
Although we walked apart, we did so in solidarity with our First Nations brothers and sisters whose families have been affected by the residential school system for many generations.
A stained glass window in Ascension Catholic Parish in Calgary. (Photo by Abe Janzen)
The eight-hour world-wide One World: Together at Home concert ended the other day with this line from an African proverb: “For tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.”
My older sister met her best friend at Conrad Grebel University College in Waterloo, Ont., in 2013. They were paired together as roommates for their first year, and lived together in their second and fourth years as well. I remember my sister coming home from school on the weekends and telling amazing stories about the fun she and her roommate were having at Grebel.
In the last few months with Mennonite Central Committee’s Serving and Learning Together program, I have thought often about how we all use stories to communicate. And how sometimes I have found myself wishing I could politely use a bookmark to pause someone’s story when I wasn’t that interested in it.
I often get asked what draws me to work at a small private Christian school in Gretna, a small rural town in Manitoba. The answer is quite simple: because of the people. It’s not always easy, but I can always find ways to point towards God at work.
"We all carry more profound debts than car loans and credit cards." (Image by Mohamed Hassan/Pixabay)
One of the terms I heard repeatedly at Gathering 2019 from June 29 to July 1 in Abbotsford, B.C. was “institutional church.”
As in, “The institutional church would do things that way, but I’m different.”
Or, “The institutional church is dying, but thankfully my friends and I have our own thing going.”
Or, “Don’t blame me, I’m only on the fringe of the institutional church.”
‘Just because we take a vacation from ordinary daily life does not mean that the events of ordinary daily life vacate us,’ Gareth Brandt writes. (Image by David Mark/Pixabay)
To “vacate” means to “leave a place once occupied.”
In North America, summer is the time many people choose to leave home and travel somewhere else in order to rest and relax from ordinary work and home responsibilities. This summer we did our usual trip to Manitoba to visit extended family but we added 12 days on the east coast to explore Cape Breton Island and Newfoundland.
I have many fond memories of attending our annual national events over my lifetime, beginning in my youth at Great Treks and then as a young adult at assemblies. I remember creative and inspiring worship; animated, even heated, business meetings; and, most significantly, making personal connections with my faith community from across the country.
Leah is a lifer, and I like her.
I love Christmas. The tree, the lights, the music, the food, gathering with family and friends, special church services. I look forward to all of it.
I still go with my siblings to the mall so that we can have our picture taken with Santa, and I’ve even dressed up as the jolly old elf a time or two (or three) myself.
“Wait watchfully,” wrote Rainer Maria Rilke in a prose poem he penned around 1895, which my husband and I read on an autumn morning during our quiet time a couple of years ago.
I was born in Santander in north-central Colombia. My husband and I married when he was 17 and I was 15, and we decided to come to Bogotá to look for a better life.
On the weekend of May 11, Jennifer Symonds, a participant at the Westview Centre4Women, shared her story as part of a conference hosted by the Niagara churches of Mennonite Church Eastern Canada. Held at Westview Christian Fellowship in St.
When I was first hired as a disability support worker at enVision Community Living in Steinbach, Man., I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t know many people with intellectual disabilities and I certainly didn’t know what it meant to support someone with intellectual disabilities.
Donning my biology lab coat and goggles, I push through the bustling crowd of eager campers who are anxiously waiting to sing for their lunchtime mail delivery, and I raise my hand in the air. “Ready?” I ask. “One, two, three!” And the crowd of 80 bursts into an enthusiastic, barely organized uproar.