kar0ling

  What do you do when a creepy fun project on a little Nazi episode in your hometown uncovers an uncomfortable fact? If you’re Andrew Wall of Refuge 31 films, you make it your next project! Well, actually, about a decade and many other projects passed before Wall got to make this film about his great-grandfather’s Nazi episode. But the timing of the release of The Devil’s Handshake is perhaps exactly right for a film that asks what motivations, what history, what blinders lead us to support extremist movements that should be anathema to us. In the talk-back after the screening at U of W, Wall and several audience members concluded the point was that you can’t judge folks in history because they have all kinds of reasons for why they do what they do. But I don’t think that’s quite what Wall is doing. After all, he made the movie. It there was no valuation that something was off about what his great-grandfather supported, there would be no point to film. All that e...

Peace Train Canada painting by Norma Emerson To the leaders of Canada’s political parties: I write to you to echo Elizabeth May's call for Canada to endorse the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. “Although Canada does not possess nuclear weapons of our own, engaging with the TPNW is Canada’s opportunity to be a global leader in moving disarmament forward by influencing our allies with our decisions ,” she writes. “The threat of nuclear weapons being used once again is becoming more real every day.” “We cannot afford to sit on the sidelines any longer. ” Canada has a reputation for being a country that supports peace. We must not rely on reputation only but continue on many fronts with proactive statements, policies and initiatives to declare that violence solves no problems. At both individual and state levels, peoples of the world must recognize that human flourishing requires peace, not war. At this crucial moment in history, rather than raining destruction upon...

--Presented at a CAWG event in Altona -- In Living More with Less , Doris Janzen Longacre shares a story about envelopes from Marie Moyer, a missionary in India, who was studying Hindi with Panditji. Marie writes: “From his philosophic mind, which probed the meaning of events and circumstances, I learned more than Hindi.” Just before her teacher’s arrival one day before Christmas, she’d received and opened a pile of Christmas cards and discarded the envelopes as he walked in the room. She writes: “He sat down soberly and studied the situation, then he solemnly scolded me: ‘the reverberation of this wasteful act will be felt around the world’.” Marie was stunned. “What do you mean?” she asked him. “Those envelopes,” he said, pointing to the wastebasket. “You could write on the inside of them.” “Chagrined”, Marie apologized and rescued the envelopes with the help of Panditji, who “caressed each one” as he pulled it out of the garbage. This forever changed Marie’s relationship to p...

After a period of growing dis-ease, I broke up with my church in spring. In my experience, we fete new members of the church coming in the door and pretend we don’t even notice when the door closes behind those who walk out. When needed, we perfunctorily rubberstamp the withdrawal of membership, but there is no process beyond that. This troubled me long before I was considering being the one to leave. When it became clear to me during a time away from home that all I had for my church – not only the denomination, for which I long had a list of critiques, but also my local congregation, which I used to cherish as an antidote to the other frustrations – was anger, I decided “stay and fight” was no longer useful; it was time to leave. But I did not want to fade away like so many before. It is not fitting that a group that formally promises to love care for each other should close our eyes when a member walks away. Firstly, on the basis of purported care for each other’s souls, should w...

Have I fallen prey to my own pet peeve, defeating my own argument? Is four-part harmony singing "culturally" Mennonite, like paska and schmaunfat? I argue vociferously, no. It may be true that choral-quality congregational singing is a feature of mainly of North American churches populated mainly by socio/ethno/cultural or DGR/S Mennonites, but this is a tradition which, regardless of the original intent in its adoption, has theological value. In this age, we are re-learning to appreciate visual imagery in worship, but through most of Anabaptist history, the values of simplicity and humility stripped ostentatious beauty from our religious practice...except in our singing. And even that is a recent development, the four-part tradition only arising in the 19th century (I think). The tremendous importance I ascribe to singing fully harmonized hymns is not based in conservatism or tradition but in its living expression of our value of community. Through part-singing, sim...