young voices

A note from the underground

I can understand how the underground can inspire a song. Or this Winnipeg underground at least. Suites attempt to pass by the filthy without brushing them with their delicate fabrics. Most walking through have the air of those who do so everyday, there are few tourists or casual underground dwellers. They have become oblivious to the charm the place may posses, as is like to happen when we are confronted with anything for long enough. It doesn't so much loose it's meaning as it's meaning changes to something largely unnoticed.

Remember the blood

I sit in a small French house in a small village in the countryside of northern France, having stopped to stay with a local family on my prayer pilgrimage through Europe. Having just returned from the sea, and from the expansive beaches that run longer than the eye can see, I am full of gratitude and questions of darkness and hope.

Man alive!

One of my favourite things about the popular T.V. show Mad Men is its fascinating portrayal of how gender was understood in the 1960s. For the most part, the ideal men’s and women’s roles were really clearly defined – men were the providers, working outside the home, while women looked after housework and children. Things have obviously changed a little since then, and we mostly assume it’s for the better. I’ll tackle femininity in my next blog post, but for this one I want to focus on masculinity – not that one can really talk about one without overlapping with the other…

That annoying friend

Another realization on the walk of faith:

We all have that annoying friend. Not the one that whines too much or the one that cancels plans last minute, but the one who is annoying because they are so darn good at everything they do.

Music? Check! They can play guitar, piano, and they have a beautiful voice.

Athleticism? Double check! They somehow managed to play every sport possible while still having time for friends and doing well in school. Which leads to…

The gap in Mennonite literature

Since the 1960s, Mennonite novels and poetry have graced the Canadian literary scene. Writers such as Rudy Wiebe, Miriam Toews, Sarah Klassen, and Patrick Friesen, to name just a few, are well-known within and beyond Mennonite circles. Aside from the numerous published books of prose and poetry, there are now academic departments dedicated to the study of this phenomenon, journals, websites and conferences focusing on Mennonite writing, and the Mennonite literary magazine Rhubarb. To continue in the spirit of back-to-school, I thought I’d bring up this topic.

Are youth pastors the problem?

Nothing, in my mind, can be healthier for a youth group than a church that cares about them and wants to know them. The first part is the easier one. Most churches care about their youth. However, the way in which churches care does not always correspond with the second part of my original statement; getting to know the youth. Lots of churches care about the youth in that they grow up making the right choices, become influenced by the right people, and eventually becoming full and active members of the church community themselves.

Do young adults want their own Christian community?

Ana Loewen knows what it’s like to feel disillusioned with the church. As a teenager, a negative experience in the church she grew up in led her to seriously question the Christian beliefs she had been raised with.

“That affected how I viewed church and how I viewed Christianity,” says Loewen, now 30, of the negative experience. “So I didn’t want to have anything to do with it.”

Jack Layton inspires young people to vote for change

“My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.” (Jack Layton)

In Canada, there is a low turnout of young voters. In fact, according to a 2008 study done by Elections Canada, only 38 percent of young people are heading to the polls to vote.

A review of 2666 by Roberto Bolano

I bought 2666 by Roberto Bolano in the discount bin at McNally Robinson based almost solely on the cover. I read the inside jacket to be sure that this was something I wanted to read, but that cover really was enough. It is a dense jumble of vaguely religious symbols that wouldn’t look out of place in a church or on the wall of a sanatarium. Bold colours and images piled on top of each other, almost seeming to fight for their place on the page, promised a dark, complex world. This did not disappoint.

A place for rebels

If you’re reading this blog, the chances are pretty good that you or someone you know attended Canadian Mennonite University or another Mennonite post-secondary institution. My whole life, I’ve had ties to one of the founding colleges of CMU, Canadian Mennonite Bible College, where my parents met as students, and where they both later worked. I graduated from CMU myself a few years ago, and am still in the midst of processing everything that I learned there; it was such a profound experience, inside the classroom and outside of it, in residence life on campus.

Thoughts on a train

In August I took a train trip from Manitoba to B.C. Here are some of my thoughts during and about that trip.

I ride the rails of my grandfather and a generation of the unemployed eighty years ago, swaying through seas of green, yellow and blue. This train, the Number One, the Canadian, is taking me across the prairies, through the Rocky Mountains and to the coast, where I will visit my extended family for the first time in four years.

Politicians are people too.

Early last week, NDP leader Jack Layton passed away after a courageous battle against cancer. We were in Ontario, visiting my in laws, and after brunch on the deck my father-in-law told us the news. My jaw dropped. I knew from seeing Jack on TV that it didn’t look good – poor Jack looked like a skeleton of his former self. And yet his passing was so sudden. And so…real.

I come in peace

Even in Christian circles, murderers, rapists, child abusers and hardened criminals are viewed as some of the most reprehensible people in society. They are left to rot in jail and then chased out of communities when they are released from prison.

Getting over my Mennonite stereotypes

Earlier this month, I had the chance to attend a graduate student conference at Conrad Grebel College, hosted by the Toronto Mennonite Theological Centre (the “Mennonite club” of my department in the University of Toronto). The conference focused on issues surrounding the land – farming practices, rural life, ecological issues, etc. – from a Mennonite perspective, so one of our activities was to visit a conservative Mennonite farm just outside of Waterloo, Ontario.

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