kar0ling

For an event centred around redress for horrific, sustained, systemic abuse of vulnerable people within a country, the tone was remarkably hopeful. The officers of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission were serious, unafraid of speaking hard words, firmly denouncing the cultural genocide and calmly but insistently calling Canadians to a better future. This is a Canadian story, not an indigenous one. That was repeated over again. Regardless of whether an individual is complicit in any way with the residential schools (e.g., affiliation with decision-making governments of the past or involved churches), all Canadians bear a responsibility to acknowledge our shameful history and seek a better way forward. Mayor Brian Bowman, unsurprisingly, spoke of the importance of moving forward, for the health of our communities, city and country, calling Canadians to take action to support positive change. We heard this from him after the Macleans article, and I have no doubt his...

Not even close. Ry Moran of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (established at the University of Manitoba to serve as an archive and continuing holding, research and service and education centre for materials around Canada's Indian Residential Schools) emphatically but without rancour asserted that it is almost offensive and certainly lacking compassion for members of majority culture to say indigenous people should just "get over it already." Moran gave a presentation on the centre at Bethel Mennonite Church, May 20, 2015, sponsored also by MCC and KAIROS. Housed in Chancellor Hall at the U of M (an ironically colonial edifice, but a building of honour on campus, located in a serene, wooded spot along the river), the centre's tagline is "built on integrity, trust and dignity." Moran's aspect conveys dignity and his impassioned presentation spoke of the need to establish trust between indigenous and majority peoples in Canada. One ...

In my job, I have opportunity (and feel slightly obligated) to attend other churches. The experience of walking into an unfamiliar worshipping community has become quite familiar. So there’s less raw emotion & fear of rejection, and more clinical detachment & analysis of patterns in my approach to the situation. Frankly, as a single person, I’m fairly accustomed to walking into places by myself, and as an ambivert, I’m equally comfortable with lurking around the edges without speaking to anyone and being greeted and dragged into conversation. As far as churches in my denomination go, I generally know a fair bit about the church and its pastor(s). So I recognize that my perspective may not be shared by others. I realized, walking into a strange church last Sunday, that I was kind of a “mystery worshipper” – a stranger who goes into a service and provides commentary on it. Perhaps unlike some mystery worshippers, there are certain theological emphases I look for in churc...

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...

“Clark – is that even Mennonite?!” 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 50 th 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 ...