Opinion

“Life can be real / on a snowmobile,” croons Canadian music legend Stompin’ Tom Connors in one of his many songs about Canadian life and culture. As someone who occasionally dabbles in songwriting myself, I have often had a chuckle when I hear that line with a bit of forced rhyme. What does “life can be real” mean anyway?

In my federal voting life, I have voted only for the Liberal party.

When I suggested that as the opening sentence for my next Canadian Mennonite column, my two eldest granddaughters, 17 and 20, immediately began guessing at the percentage of readership that would immediately condemn me to the lake of fire.

As I read through long lists of descendants in the first chapters of First Chronicles, some names are familiar, like the sons of Jacob and other names I’ve encountered in Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus.

Thank you for sharing Janzen tribute
Re: “Simple wonder, peculiar generosity,” Jan. 24, page 4.

I recall meeting Annie Janzen for the first time at an event hosted at/by Canadian Mennonite Bible College in Winnipeg in the late ’60s or early ’70s.

At the 1970 Conference of Mennonites in Canada annual sessions in Winkler, Man., Waldemar Janzen, a Canadian Mennonite Bible College professor, gave a report on young people, stating: “Not everything is wrong with young people today. There is a great openness and honesty among youth today. There is a remarkable depth of insight into self and society.

I’m not sure what happened over the past two years. Maybe I finally accepted that it’s over. We’ve passed the point of no return. Climate change; democracy collapse; and the death of common sense, dialogue and civility. This is our reality and it seems beyond repair.

MC Canada executive ministers release statement on ‘freedom rallies’

This is a photo of the home of Bernhard Klippenstein (1880-1973) and Maria (nee Dyck) Klippenstein (1882-1956) in Waldheim, Northwest Territories. They moved from Altbergthal, near Altona, Man., to Waldheim around 1902. They returned to Altbergthal around 1907.

The organization formerly known as Christian Peacemaker Teams has changed its name, replacing the meaning of that first letter with “Community.” I have two reactions. First, the name change is good for the organization. Second, it shows that the broader church has not caught the vision of the peacemaker Jesus.

Writers speak out in support of sexual-abuse survivor
Re: “A survivor of sexual abuse speaks out,” Jan. 10, page 13.

I love that phrase that you use to describe yourself: “a fierce pacifist.”

Cree chief, lawyer and author Harold Cardinal speaks at a symposium on “Native Peoples” at the University of Waterloo, Ont., in 1976. The event was planned by Conrad Grebel College students, and attracted Indigenous students from other universities, as well as Dene and Haudenosaunee participants and civil servants.

Almost 400 years ago, the French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote, “All of humanity’s problems stem from [people’s] inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

Pascal was probably being hyperbolic, but he was making a profound point, one that aligns with something I discovered and wrote about during my own recent season of solitude: