Hopewit

  Some days, I think life for us would be better if we could all cooperate with our neighbours, if we would be of one mind about the important stuff. On other days, I remember that when a nation can get a preponderance of its citizens to “be of one mind,” a Nazi fascism or a Maoist China can take hold … and gratifying as it may be to experience thousands and thousands of “my people” marching in unison, we know what mass indoctrination of the population leads to. At the very least, it leads to penalties for dissenters: the “kulaks” must be imprisoned or killed, the Jews and communists must be annihilated, the capitalists are fit only for slavery in work camps. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. We could learn much about how nations take their unique shapes from the history, for instance, of Nazi Germany, Mussolini’s fascism, Maoist reign of terror by being schooled well in our histories. But if we can’t work up a reasonable indignation over book banning in Flor...

  The shower in our bathroom malfunctioned. When turned on, water sprayed out of places it shouldn’t, showering everything in the little room. It had to be fixed, and one look told me that a normally educated human with a normal battery of intelligence, education and experience should be up to performing a repair. I bought a new shower head and set to removing the offending part, but having no wrench that fitted the connecting nut, had to improvise with a pair of pliers, and a clumsy vice grip from my scanty tool collection. With my daughter’s help the repair did happen and blissful, uneventful showers were again possible.   Later in the same day, a screw holding the seat of a dining chair to its frame fell out, and although I do own a screwdriver with about 15 interchangeable screw tips, none would fit, and I improvised by forcing the issue with an inappropriate Phillips tip.   We all rely on whatever tools we own when it comes to navigating our way successfully t...

“Wow,” he exclaimed, “that’s a snazzy watch. What’s it worth?” I know what he means by worth ; he wants to know how much I paid for it. “It was a gift from my students. I’ve no idea what they paid for it.” “I’d guess about twenty-five hundred dollars,” he said seizing my wrist and bringing the watch up to his face for a closer look. I’d be depressed if my watch happened to be lost or stolen. Not because of its dollar value, but because of the reminder that I have been a person whose presence among my fellow humans was noted and appreciated. Also, the face is large, clear, and easy for my tired eyes to read. There are obviously more measures of worth than the amount of cash that’s exchanged. Perhaps we could better visualize worth if we defined it as: “the amount and kind of assets (money, comfort, reputation, freedom, time, leisure, etc.) that must be given up in order to acquire what’s desired or needed.” lf vaccination were to be made mandatory in a time of pandemic, thos...

  ... and for everything which is natural “On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days, you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” (Acts 1:4&5 NIV) We talked about the possible meaning of “being baptized with the Holy Spirit,” and what it had meant to us when as Mennonite-raised youth we were challenged at camp to accept the Spirit’s baptism. We went through the Pentecostalist “evidence” of being spirit-gifted: the tongue speaking, the ecstatic utterance, the sense of being touched by a divine presence, the expectations of the miraculous; and some of us acknowledged that we’d lived our entire lives with faith in God’s providence, but had no ecstatic, life-altering, watershed experience to witness to.   I thought of Jesus’ words to the Samaritan woman at the well, “Yet a time is coming a...

  In a town where the majority of citizens self-declare as adherents of a Christian faith, elections would logically result in a municipal council reflecting that. I can understand that given the onerous responsibility of running the community’s civic affairs, some council member might suggest that they begin each council meeting with a prayer for divine guidance. The deity addressed, of course, would be the Holy Trinity of Christian faith, not the Creator/Mother Earth of indigenous spirituality, not Buddha, Mohammed or Jehovah, and definitely not the humanist spirit of some agnostic/atheistic, not-Christian conviction. Protests were inevitable when a municipal council in Fundy Albert, New Brunswick added a mandatory opening prayer to its deliberations. As predictable was its subsequent withdrawal of the prayer protocol in favour of a five-minute period of quiet contemplation before meetings. You just can’t get away with mixing church and civic affairs anymore, unless you live in...

  Calla Lily Acts 13:15, NIV.  " After the reading of the Law and the Prophets, the synagogue leaders invited them, 'Brothers, if one of you has a sermon for the people, please speak.'" As we meet on Sunday mornings for worship, we know there will be hymns, prayers, scriptures, announcements, sharing and most certainly, a sermon , “a talk on a religious or moral subject, especially one given during a church service and based on a passage from the Bible (Microsoft online dictionary).” The dictionary lists synonyms: homily, address, talk, discourse, oration, lesson, preaching, teaching, peroration. I like the last one.   What place does the peroration hold in your thinking about worship? Is it more like a personal opinion expertly or not-so-impressively delivered? Or is it the inspired voice of prophecy, like Zechariah trying desperately to guide the children of Israel onto better pathways? Something between maybe?          ...

  Eigenheim Mennonite, ca. 1950 The article on which our Adult Sunday School focused, and which was first printed in the Canadian Mennonite, was logically questionable. It posed the argument that our “traditional” churches put up barriers to entry by members of other cultures, and that that explains the lack of cultural diversity in our pews. That might be a factor in some cases, but the explanation for a lack of cross-cultural presence in Mennonite churches is way more complicated than that. People who visit our churches—whether they’re culturally different or not—come again if their experience was satisfying; they don’t if it wasn’t. That choice likely depends more on their own expectations than it does on the welcome they receive. The churches with which I’m familiar go out of their way to greet and engage with strangers, but to even suggest that altering the style and content of worship so that others have their expectations met—and so they will return—would simply be at cos...