Opinion

In my work with high-risk single mothers, I’ve been meeting one-on-one this summer with women, as our weekly group program was put on hold due to the pandemic. Over and over, I’ve seen the positive effects that a caring community has on individuals and how vastly important it is.

This summer, our neighbours had a total of four trees taken down that bordered either side of our property. I really miss those big, beautiful trees. One tree was at least 50 years old, the other three were probably closer to 100, but it took only a few hours to reduce them to small piles of stump shavings scattered on the ground.

“Find us empty and wandering . . . find us in the wilderness, and fill us with your feast.”

This lyric by Phil Campbell-Enns, pastor of Home Street Mennonite Church in Winnipeg, is from a song that was chosen for the first Mennonite Church Canada online worship service on March 22. At the time, it perfectly described where we found ourselves and how we felt.

A story in Genesis 28 describes the patriarch Jacob stopping for the night while on a journey. His sleep includes a dream of a visit from God. In the morning, Jacob awakes and offers the profound observation, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I didn’t know it! This is none other than the house of God!”

As a result of that experience, Jacob names the spot “Bethel.”

“Return, O Israel, to the LORD your God” (Hosea 14:1).

In this final chapter of Hosea, God bids the Israelites return to God and acknowledge their waywardness, but also to be assured they will find compassion and fruitfulness in God.

What follows is a companion piece to "White Mennonite static" by American scholar Tobin Miller Shearer.

To read

Since I was a young boy, I’ve been fascinated by words, stories and ideas.

So when I heard that I had an opportunity to be a regional representative for Alberta on the Canadian Mennonite Publishing Service (CMPS) board of directors, which acts in an advisory capacity for the direction of the Canadian Mennonite periodical, I took them up on it.

Dandelion cover inspires flower arranger

Re: Dandelion front cover, June 8. 

I laughed out loud when I saw the dandelion on the cover.

The Conference of Mennonites in Canada annual session was held in July 1975, in Swift Current, Sask. Hot weather put participants’ “cool” to the test. The assembly was not only about business but also about relationships and, as such, there was time for work and play, including a game of volleyball, pictured.

I am listening these days to stories of how people and their churches are responding to the physical and emotional needs around them due to COVID-19. Every congregation is finding ways to help those around them who need food, assistance with their rent, connecting digitally or some other kind of accompaniment.

When H.S. Bender came out with The Anabaptist Vision in the 1940s, he offered a Mennonite theology that was different from the evangelical fundamentalism widely accepted in the church at the time.

Today’s society is a progression of Canada’s colonial past

Re: “ ‘Decolonize’ and ‘settler’ meaningless terms” letter, June 8, 2020, page 8.