We can be sure that the children and youth around us are observing our money habits, sometimes in surprising detail. On a shopping trip with my then young children, one of them was pestering me to buy something that they all wanted. After using a lack of cash as an excuse not to buy the item, my child pressed me, saying, “You know you can pay for it. You have that card.”
With its 225 congregations, Mennonite Church Canada has more “franchises” across the country than Future Shop and Best Buy combined, making us our own best resource.
Original CIDA model is dead and buried by Harper government
I pulled out my bike for my first spring ride a few weeks ago. It was invigorating to feel the cold air hit my face, dodge the ice puddles and feel the strain in my legs as I propelled myself along.
I was watching my son’s baseball game with a bunch of other parents on a beautiful spring afternoon. The loud “snap” of ball in glove, the distinctive “clink” of bat making contact, took me back—way, way back—to my own playing days. Nostalgic longing crept over me. Oh, to stand in there, push that scrawny tween out of the way and swing for the fences!
Living a life of witness among our neighbours is what the church is about. Because only a small percentage of Canadians attend church regularly, we Mennonites have put energy into figuring out how to live in a secular society. Most assume globalization creates a huge secular force in the world community, but that was not my experience as a mission worker in Burkina Faso.
Conscientious tax objectors look for more support
Re: “Are you paying for peace or war?” Jan. 21, page 12.
American theologian Harvey Cox wrote a book called The Future of Faith, in which he presents three major stages in church history. The first was the “Age of Faith,” when Christians focused on following the way of Jesus more than believing certain things about him.
Penner
It’s Easter and as Christians we celebrate the resurrection of Christ. God sent his Son to us to be crucified, to die and then to be raised from the dead. He gave us the gift of his Son so that we can have eternal life. As a Mennonite people we have a tradition of giving:
Weddings are natural places where we think and talk about love. At the two weddings I attended recently, love was all over the place—in the words of the preacher, in the warm support of gathered family and friends, in the vows exchanged by the bride and groom, and especially in their radiant faces, beaming as they sealed their commitment with a passionate kiss.
It seems like generosity is all the rage these days. Many retail outlets support one or more charities and invite their customers to join in by giving an extra dollar or two. We receive mailings, phone calls and door-to-door requests for support. We can even give a few dollars instantly by texting with our cell phone.
Several years ago, a former colleague asked a group of lay leaders in the church what they would expect to hear if their pastor ever talked about money in the church. One person quipped, “Money is evil. Give it all to the church!”
Sex reserved for heterosexual marriage partners
The author’s grandparents’ Peace River, Alta., homestead (circa 1940s) featuring a garden full of poppy flowers.
With spring just around the corner, most of us are looking forward to seeing the last of the snow disappear as we savour warmer temperatures, longer days and shorter nights, and search for those first green shoots of crocuses, daffodils and tulips to emerge from wintry gardens.
Browsing through the Nov. 26, 2012, issue of Canadian Mennonite, Dick Benner’s review of Red Quarter Moon on page 30, and Kholoud Al Ajarma’s “Banana trees and justice” piece in Young Voices on page 43, piqued my interest, helping me recall two previous events and their connection to each other, to me and to us as Canadian Mennonites.
What are you wearing right now? What does the label say? Chances are, it boxes you somehow—possibly in your own eyes, but definitely in the eyes of others. The labels can be a measure of your status, or betray what you wish others believe about it.
I watched shaky video footage on the Internet. A person in a forest in Texas walked out in front of a dinosaur-like machine that was biting large trees and ripping them out of the soil. With giant jaws, the tractor operator held a tree near the activist and dropped it at his side, brushing the activist and causing the camera operator to yelp.
When people ask me how my work is going, I often begin my response with the phrase, “This is an interesting time to be the church!”
Indigenous believers must be equals in the church
I addressed the “priority problem” of Bible reading in the lives of many Christians in my last article.
(Artwork by eisenbahner/ Flickr Creative Commons)
Will Braun.
The customary practice of self-sacrifice during Lent carries tinges of earnest piety and religious compunction. It can feel like a moral “heavy.” But it also has a certain appeal.
“What are your vices?” Now there’s a conversation starter.
Summer camp had a very significant influence on my life. I remember being nervous before attending for the first time at age six, and I found the idea of going to camp very scary. I didn’t want to leave home to spend a week with strangers! But after the first couple of days, I began to develop friendships with some of the other kids.
In the 1930s, Woody Guthrie took a song by Albert Brumley and adapted it for fellow Oklahomans fleeing the “dust bowl.”
How to stretch our ‘peace’ taxes
Re: “Are we paying for peace or war?” by Ernie Unger, Jan. 21, page, 12.
