MCC Manitoba 50th gala
It’s a bit disheartening
that we’re still saying things like this today when we’ve worked so hard to
convey that a Mennonite is someone who subscribes to an Anabaptist perspective
on faith, not a person named Penner who likes farmer sausage. But is does make
a good story – and the Right Honourable Joe Clark handled it with aplomb.
“I am a Mennonite by aspiration,”
he said.
Amid the many definitions
of Mennonite, this statement might still be discouraging, but in the context of
Mennonite Central Committee’s 50th anniversary gala, it was just
right. Especially as the former
prime minister remembered how Mennonite churches, with the help of MCC, “did
more for the boat people” than anyone else in Canada during the refugee crisis
of the late 1970s, early 1980s.
Clark praised several other
noteworthy MCC responses to world problems, like its work through the CanadianFoodgrains Bank to not only provide food relief during the Ethiopian famine but
to stay long-term, managing distribution and rebuilding. He named MCC reps Ken
and Linda Stucky who welcomed dignitaries into their home in East Jerusalem as
Canada talked with Palestinian leaders about their right to self-determination.
And he praised MCC – an organization
driven by Christian faith (“in the name of Christ” being an imperative part of
every iteration of its tagline) – for extending care as readily to people of
other faiths and those with no faith. He commended this impulse to work outside
our zones of familiarity.
Here was his challenge to
us. That we continue. “In a world where examples of conflict are grievous and
expanding, we Canadians need to give higher priority to humanitarian dimension
of our character,” said Clark. The peace and development emphases that have
consistently been MCC’s gift to the world are needed more than ever.
“Positive change can happen
– does happen – where people work for the common good.”
This is the kind of world
Clark was asking us to see as he invited us to “get on a bus” we’ve never been
on before. He was referring to a story he told of taking a bunch of foreign
dignitaries up the Banff-Jasper highway by coach when snowstorms cancelled air
travel. He’d remarked to the prince of Brunei that it was probably the first
time the man had been in a snowstorm. A dignitary from Indonesia leaned over and
told Clark, this is the first time His
Highness has been on a bus.
“We simply have to learn more about the lives of people who’ve been on a
different bus,” said Clark.
Here, he explicitly
mentioned practitioners of Islam who are both frustrated by co-religionists who
do violence and atrocities in the name of truth faith, and mistrusted by
neighbours of other or no faith who fear all expressions of Islam. Yet the Syrian
refugee families we welcome now are not so very different than the refugee Mennonites
from Russia for whom in large part MCC was started to help.
Our assignment for the next
50 years? “The challenge of a strong reputation is the expectation that you
keep on earning it.”
Amen. Mennonite Central
Committee and constituents, may we not rest on our laurels, but continue to see
new people and places that need intervention; may we “get on different buses,” have
new experiences, and never stop learning.
2 POST-SCRIPTs
1. Little mention was made of
the fact this event was held almost 6 months after the original date due to a
last minute cancellation. The original venue had pulled the plug a day before
the event when it was discovered that one of the performing groups, an Aboriginal
healing drum circle, intended to hold a smudge ceremony on the premises. In a
city famous for marginalizing its Aboriginal citizens, MCC Manitoba chose to
bear the cost of cancellation rather than sideline these performers, no matter
how little their role.
2. Glancing through the
program, I felt a twinge of sadness. How can you have a Mennonite event without
congregational singing? Clearly, my sentiment was shared because an impromptu
hymn, "Be Thou My Vision," was added to the program after the offering.
Unfortunately, the venue’s hymnal wasn’t available to all singers, so between
potentially faulty memories and multiple versions of familiar verses, we weren’t
always singing the same words, but it was gratifying nonetheless so be singing
together -- a picture of community.
In fact, congregational singing
had not entirely been forgotten. The closing song, an original piece Timothy Corlis commissioned
for the event, interwove a hymn of creation with Aboriginal songs, a German
hymn, and congregational singing on verse 2 of “Come Let Us All United to Sing.”
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