Opinion

As the people of Mennonite Church Eastern Canada, we’re going on a journey of courageous imagination. Over the course of the next year we will dream, imagine and listen to each other’s stories of faith as we seek to hear God’s voice and discern together where God is calling us in the years ahead.

Some years ago, the person who shares my life experienced a blip in her physical well-being. This resulted in Holly spending several days in hospital.

I love watching my kids twirl endlessly around at the park on those self-propelling spinners. It reminds me of my childhood spinning on tire swings until we were nearly sick, and then quickly jumping off and attempting to walk, looking like underaged drunken sailors.

“Reconciliation is dead.” 

A few years ago I was trekking through a desolate, snow-filled forest, enjoying the spacious tranquility of a crisp winter hike, when I came upon a tree buzzing with activity and life. There were well over a hundred little birds gathered in and around a relatively small tree less than 10 metres ahead of me. It was striking both visually and audibly. Surreal even. 

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.

My first season of a church in an intentional pastoral transition process was as an associate pastor with my home church in Surrey, B.C.

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. . . .”

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.

Might Jesus have really said ‘Our Mother’?
Re: “Gendered images of God,” Nov. 23, 2020, page 23.

The committee that worked on the new hymnal, Voices Together, says that “the decisions made about the language used for God may be unsettling for some.”

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.