Hopewit

And it was very good I t seemed ironic to me that Harari’s Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind was first written and published in the Hebrew Language in Israel. Hebrew was also the first language in which creation narratives in the Bible were recorded. But what struck me with greater relevance was the uncanny feeling that the scribes who wrote out Genesis and Harari were grappling with the same story, and more importantly, were coming to similar conclusions. Take what Harari and others have called the Cognitive Revolution. As an evolutionary biologist Harari sees the road from the primitive through stages to create Homo Erectus (man who walks on two legs) and finally Homo Sapiens (man who thinks). But where humans in Harari took millennia to evolve brains that had the capacity for logic, reason and the ability to analyze and predict along with a self-awareness not seen in other species, the creation narratives summarize this evolutionary milestone with the eating of t...

This promises to be another busy weekend on the Rosthern Junior College campus. Thursday, a grad of ‘70 came to the campus museum to borrow photos pertaining to her grad year for a display at their decade-reunion Saturday. On Friday, a couple of the Grads dropped in; the most fascinating display for them was the sports-jackets rack; both visitors are into volleyball. The annual musical (Rice/Weber’s Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat this year) plays on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Grad ceremonies, the traditional highlight of the weekend, happens on Sunday afternoon. And then the all-night grad class dinner and following party that promises to leave everyone involved exhausted. Grads are scratching their names into the bricks on the museum exterior, a tradition dating back to the ‘60s. I enjoy chatting with the grads as they scratch away with, usually, a three-inch nail and a bottle of water. I’ve suggested that a Dremel tool would make a good pencil...

My Dad's Dad My daughters' dad Finish this sentence: My dad was a _____________. Normally, I think, our first choice relates to vocation, avocation or career. My dad was a firefighter, farmer, teacher, railroad engineer, preacher, dentist . . . you get the point. Not often would we fill in the blank with a personality trait: funny man, angry man, gentleman, kind man, honest man . . . you get where I’m going with this. And yet, because we generally have only one dad, it’s probably not for what they did to earn a living, but what they were to us that’s of significance. My dad could laugh so hard the tears would stream; he could listen to a Back to the Bible appeal on the radio with the same effect. A product both of the conditions of his time and his father’s life and situation as he grew up, my father’s options were limited, vocation wise. First a teacher . . . a role for which he wasn’t well suited, then a farmer—equally not a match for his personality a...

Found Art ( Read Matthew 22: 1-14 – The parableof the wedding banquet. ) A precis: “ J esus spoke to them again in parables, saying: ‘ The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come . . . For many are invited, but few are chosen.” No doubt you—like I—have a whole repertoire of much quoted scripture passages that we don’t “quite get.” Like “ Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. And so I tell you, any sin and blasphemy can be forgiven. But blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.” Google, Yahoo or Bing can find any number of explanations that, taken together, will possibly confound more than enl...

Mennonite Heritage Museum “ What gain have the workers from their toil? I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with. He has made everything suitable for its time; moreover he has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil (Ecclesiastes 3: 9-13).” Ecclesiastes’ author (the preacher? philosopher? son of David? all three?) expends a lot of ink in the early chapters to make the point that work as hard as we might, death can make of it all a big disappointment. I’m reminded of the abandoned, collapsing fences and barns we see beside the roads and highways of Saskatchewan; people once toiled to build what were proudly erect edifices that are now nothing but nuisances to be left ...