kar0ling

Do you have nightmares about not knowing what to do? Is the thought of not knowing when to stand or sit paralyzing? Are you uncomfortable when you don’t know what to say? Usually, I’d say yes to all of those, but when it comes to spiritual tourism, I’m reasonable blasé about the whole thing. It’s not my tradition. I’m there to experience the service and to worship alongside as well as I can. That’s enough for me. But I was struck at the difference it makes without a bulletin/program. The prolific paper output required for their multi-page handout at the Anglican churches I frequent is always slightly disturbing from an environmental point of view, but I greatly appreciate being able to follow along with the above variables. However, at the cathedral tonight, there was no program. So I just stood quietly when the mass mumbling arose (except for the Lord’s Prayer where I’m always thrown that Catholics stop before “for thine is the kingdom....”). The song numbers were listed on a...

“All my relations.” It is a key phrase for indigenous people. It could be a key that opens Mennonite hearts to warm to Indigenous stories, for Mennonites love their genealogies. (“The Mennonite Game” is what we call it when we spend the first few minutes with a new acquaintance figuring out how we’re related to each other.) “Treaty is so much more than $5 a year,” said Niigaan Sinclair at CMU’s Face 2 Face event on the Mennonite Privilegium and Indigenous land in Manitoba. “It’s about how we share space together.” It’s about bonding ourselves together as family – meaning unhookable – not merely friends. We ought to know that too, as Mennonites. We ought to understand the sense of covenant from our reading of the Bible, and the importance of relationships with each other from our theology of community. But perhaps it has been too eroded by capitalism and the market economy. Mennonite historical land settlement patterns were done in a communal way, said Hans Werner. One reas...

Please stop using refugees as an excuse to offload the old and buy new. I shudder slightly at how easy it is to collect used stuff for poor people. Everyone is happy to help (themselves) by getting rid of old/worn-out/uncool/low-tech/dowdy objects so they can replace them with something newer and better. And how convenient for these “needy” people to make the whole transaction guilt free because it was for charity! It’s not that it’s so wrong to do this, but I daresay it IS wrong to call it virtue rather than convenience. If you really want to be generous, keep the old thing for yourself and donate the new one instead.  Please stop repainting that church in Mexico. It is waning, but I still hear of church groups going on the classic “mission trip” to Mexico where they have great fun painting a church, usually getting as much paint on each other as the building. They have such a great time and the people were so grateful . Except the people are polite is what they ar...

Antshillvania was my breakout performance: a seven-year old flower who brought the wrong colour tights and had to stand out in front of everyone white-legged instead of brown in my green plantsuit, head bewigged with oversized yellow petals, but I gave my “Go away!” to the marauding weeds on cue, projecting and enunciating with as much expression as I was able, despite my shame. Theatre of some sort – much of it wooden and prosaic, rotely recalling lines and following stage directions – was my constant extra curricular pursuit til my college years. A college professor with a long history as a jock who joined our little band of supposed creatives (on my part) surprised me with his observation that in all his years of team sports, he’d never experienced as profound a sense of team as in doing theatre. I’m not sure if my lack of understanding was due to an over-hyped ideal of sportsmanship bred by inspirational movie scenes, or my familiarity with theatre, or perhaps my failure to ...

*warning: half baked moralizing to follow.* “___ did what?!?! How could s/he....?!?” Oh, the outrage. You can’t turn around with finding something or someone to be outraged about. First off, I’m guilty. Secondly, there actually is plenty to be genuinely upset about. However, I don’t respond well to being yelled at. I don’t like the worst being assumed of me. I don’t appreciate being judged on the basis of very little information. And it’s probably fair to assume others feel the same way. There are plenty of injustices and just plain bad practices in the world worthy of being remarked on.  But quite possibly it will be more constructive if we stay calm, avoid insults, and try to understand the motivations behind the actions we are quick to denounce. I daresay we might find a bunch of teachable moments – for all of us. So, I’m trying to learn to check my instinct for indignation.  What is being reported and by whom?  What other perspectiv...

“I’m trained in poetry and rap; it’s all about brevity,” said Shad. His formal contribution to the Slater Maguire lecture series at St Margaret’s was probably the shortest speech one of their presenters had ever given, but it left much time for questions and a bit of a relaxing evening left over. No need to belabour the matter. Brevity may have also led Shad to his catchy title for the talk...which he confessed to having later realized may have sounded threatening. “What are you afraid of?” wasn’t mean to be a belligerent challenge but a gentle call to examine whether the things we fear will kill us or disappear as illusion. After offering the answer “everything” to the first question, “mostly imagination, to be sure,” is my answer to the second. But that doesn’t make the fears any more surmountable. It’ll either kill you or free you, he says. Cold comfort. Sometimes freedom is as frightening as death. The safety of shackled mundanity does not easily relinquish its grip. ...

Suspended and the art of forgiveness Andrew Wall, writer director Refuge 31 Films This documentary about the father of a murdered teenager is punctuated with a surprising amount of laughter. To call it light-hearted would suggest a flippancy does not seem possible for someone who has gone through such pain. Yet, the spontaneous laughter of this man who has endured so much is not harsh and cynical but gentle and free. And that is the true purpose of forgiveness. It’s not about the other person; it’s about freeing yourself from bondage to the other person’s actions. It’s ironic the film is called “suspended,” for that suggests a kind of captivity that is absent from this story. Cliff and Wilma Derksen are local celebrities. In 1984, their 13-year-old daughter Candace didn’t come home from school one winter’s evening. The whole sleepy, provincial city stirred with fear and speculation. When Canadace’s body was found 7 weeks later, the Derksens, steeped in Mennonite ...

Grunts, bellows, and moans. That characterized the commute home from CMU during a spring blizzard at the beginning of bike month. The weather folk had mentioned it’d be less nice this evening than it had been yesterday, and the weather app indicated there’d be some snow this evening but despite having my eyes pelted with snow pellets that turned to gentler flakes just as I arrived, I really wasn’t expecting full-on spring blizzard on my way home. So the grunts came from rumbling over crusty icy chunks concealed under fresh snow, the bellows from jarring into huge curbside potholes that couldn’t be avoided without veering into traffic, and moans from the misaligned parts of my shoulder grinding together. April biking is always interesting; I maintain that whoever chose April as “get out and ride your bikes, everyone!” month does NOT live in Manitoba.

“Kindness is the key to everything; the key to reconciliation.” The Anishinaabe people have a saying: “I want to be a kind man.” That is what Indigenous teachings are all about, says Justice Murray Sinclair – “as are yours”, addressing the crowd at a CMU event who one can assume to be largely of Christian, specifically Mennonite, affiliation. “If you are a kind person, there is nothing you can’t do, nothing that can happen to you that you can’t overcome because others will be kind to you and help you.” You believe it when the Canadian senator says that. He has had challenges in life, as, sadly, do most of the Indigenous people of Canada due to the violence perpetuated on their people by majority culture. He has heard more than his fair share of heartbreaking stories of pain and grief and suffering, as a lawyer, a judge, and a TRC Commissioner. He has reason to be angry, and bitter – and tired. But the senator exuded a calm and gentle presence as he addressed a crowd at CMU ...

Is there an intrinsic connection between being Mennonite and being a farmer? The question may not have been raised by Ode Production’s documentary, 7 Points on Earth, but I heard an answer. Paul Plett’s film rooted in a multi-year research project of the Centre for Transnational Studies had its world premiere screening at the Winnipeg Reel to Real Film Festival Feb 21, 2018. Being a Christian is far less about believing the right things – or even doing the rights things/living the right way, as Mennonites are often tempted to think – than simply about trusting God. To take a page from Islam, to be a follower of Christ is about submission. Farming, said featured subjects Dave Yoder of Iowa and Jeremy Hildebrandt of Manitoba, is also about trust. It’s a risky business, but you keep going out there and doing it, hoping and believing that should it all go to pieces, someone will be there to help you pick them up. Farming in Manitoba “We don’t pray about the weather,” said Hild...

This is a moral issue.  That’s how panellist Tom Denton, longtime refugee advocate and co-executive director of Hospitality House, responded to the audience question, “Why are you here tonight?” The panel of experts speaking on “Refugee Resettlement in Canada: Moving Forward from Lessons of the Past ” was convened by Menno Simons College. It started with MSC professor Stephanie Stobbe sharing her own story of risk and danger, leaving Laos to come to Canada, and facing a very unhappy first 6 months (living in a three-room house without running water or electricity, next to a graveyard [terrifying for a Buddhist family with deep belief in spirits of the dead]) in an unnamed rural location before being discovered by concerned friends and moved to a town where they were much better supported. She also shared some shocking facts that were new to me. For example, the U.S. dropped bombs on Laos every 8 minutes 1964–1973, and there remain some 80 million unexploded cluster munitio...

An appeal for humility and diversity characterized the respondents at tonight’s Face2Face community panel event entitled “The Bible Tells Me So...Or Does It?” But what stood out to me most – what, in fact, surprised this cynical girl the most – was the love of Scripture that emanated from the various respondents. “I cannot separate my academic study of Scripture from my devotional work through it,” one panelist beautifully framed what the others also hinted at. Each of the students on the panel had an Anabaptist connection – one or more of the following: a current affiliation with a Mennonite (or Hutterite) church, a name that could be classified as ethnoculturally Mennonite (or DGR/S, as Bruce Guenther likes to say), or a childhood spent in a Mennonite church (because I’m getting old and I know their parents) – but they represented a diversity of traditions: MB, MC, Catholic, Pentecostal (and Anglican dilettante). And each spoke of the importance of wrestling with Scripture, in...