Opinion

Pain and potential

(Photo: flickr.com/Jennifer)

After a long period of waiting, we learned in December that a COVID-19 vaccine had been approved and distribution was beginning. We were told that, by the beginning of September, we all should have received the vaccine, and life can begin to return to “normal.”

Epp sisters

(Photo from Mennonite Heritage Archives)

Epp sisters Anna Klaassen (1904-1976) and Maria Nickel (1903-1957) work together on the family farm in Saskatchewan stooking sheaves of grain. Stooking required workers to gather the cut grain into sheaves and then to stand the sheaves upright to help dry the grain before it is threshed. It was back-breaking work.

Gary Snider

(Photo: Mennonite Archives of Ontario)

In 1984, a local reporter interviews Gary Snider, dressed in clothes his grandfather wore when he arrived as an immigrant from the Soviet Union 60 years before. Three hundred people took part in this commemorative walk, retracing the route of a group of 1924 Mennonite immigrants from a railway siding in Uptown Waterloo, Ont., to Erb Street Mennonite Church.

‘Our framing story’

(Image by Reuben Juarez/Unsplash)

The Jan. 10 bulletin at Tiefengrund Mennonite Church included the following church family news: “Ed Olfert has officially retired and is now living the good life! In other news, Ed was taken to hospital on Wednesday and was subsequently diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and now has to alter his diet and take pills/insert needles for the rest of his retirement. . . .”

Living in the middle

(Photo by Luke van Zyl/Unsplash)

Life is full of spectrums, and I often struggle to find my place on them.

Some spectrums, like the light spectrum from infrared through the visible colours to ultraviolet, although fascinating, aren’t highly controversial. Other spectrums, like our political or theological views, can harbour very passionate and divisive lines.

The crowd

(Image by Gerd Altmann/Pixabay)

Many of us are taking crowds very seriously these days and avoiding them as much as possible. For the sake of public health, I cannot encourage this enough. But there’s a crowd we have been avoiding since long before the pandemic started.

Jacob Kroeker

(Photo: Mennonite Heritage Archives)

Scarlet fever, cholera, diphtheria, smallpox, typhoid and whooping cough were some of communicable diseases that plagued communities in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Jacob Kroeker (1836-1914) came to Manitoba in 1876 and settled in the village of Schoenweise. From 1881 to 1885 halskrankeit (diptheria) was a significant communicable illness that affected many.

Connections

"We attended regional, nationwide and international conferences in person, where we learned to know people from 'out there.'" (Mennonite Church Canada photo by Matt Veith)

I believe it is important that we are called to belong to a faith community that is beyond our own congregation. My main question today is: “How do we belong, how do we connect with the people in our Anabaptist church (regional, nationwide, international) beyond our congregation? 

Losing freedom?

'I’m learning to pay attention to my gratitude level as a measure of my attunement with truth.' (Photo by Greg Rakozy/Unsplash)

I’m writing this on Jan. 18 and I’m wondering how tone deaf my article will seem by the time you read it. I have no idea what the world will be like in a few days, let alone a few weeks. Who knows what catastrophic event or pivotal moment in history will have occurred between now and early February?

Gesangbuch

(Photo: The Canadian Mennonite / Mennonite Archives of Ontario)

Why go to all the trouble of producing a new hymnal? The Gesangbuch commission of the Conference of Mennonites in Canada faced this question in 1961. The 1942 version, it was felt, lacked readability and a variety in tunes. Furthermore, the world of the early 1960s “demanded a broader witness,” with more vocational, youth and gospel songs. The conference needed a unifying hymnal.

Launched into oblivion

(Image by Rachel Benn/Pixabay)

My youngest daughter Ruth can be a little firecracker. We say that she’s sweet and spicy.

Sometimes she can get into a real funk, though, and I can feel lost as to how to help her. I am thankful for my wife, who often sweeps in to save the day when my strategies are failing miserably. Sometimes our strategies work and sometimes they don’t.

Good graces

(Photo by Stanley Zimny/Flickr)

As human beings, we’re generally pretty lousy at grace. We long for it in our deepest and truest moments, and we desperately need it, God knows. But we often struggle to receive it. We’d prefer to earn, to justify, to merit. Grace is for the weak, and that’s not us.

Year of wonders

A cottage in the historic 'plague village' of Eyam, England. (Photo by Michael Beckwith, bit.ly/cclicence2-0)

I read with great interest the many articles about how different churches are responding to the pandemic and government restrictions. There are many! Because there are many ways for churches to respond both to the pandemic and to the restrictions.

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