Take it from Mother Teresa

From James C. Schaap

". . .to the great God, nothing is little. . ."

You know?--I really ought to imprint that line on a t-shirt: "to the great God, nothing is little." It's hers--Mother Teresa's--and it's just plain beautiful, isn't it?

But then maybe I think so just because I'm getting old.

How is it that retired people get such a kick out of gardening? Why, for pity sake, does the appearance of that gorgeous cardinal or her lovely husband just outside our window just light up our day? Last night, my wife and I had a quiet supper together alone for the first time in a week, and it felt something like what I little I know of heaven. What's that about anyway?

The world simply shrinks the older you get. That's what I'm thinking. This isn't scientific, and I haven't spent the last several weeks at the Home grilling residents. I just know what I know--and that is that life's little things mean more somehow when you put on some years. Seriously. You don't stop seeing forests--not at all. You just start seeing trees.

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Conversations

from Thomas C. Goodhart

Some years ago I attended a weekend conference in Washington D.C. entitled “Food, Faith, and the Farm Bill.” Sponsored by the Washington Office of the Mennonite Central Committee, the three-day event included a variety of speeches, lectures, and educational trainings about what the aforementioned title suggests as well as bible study, worship, and lobbying our senators. There were probably about a hundred attendees from all over the United States—a grandfather and dairy farmer from Pennsylvania, a youth county agent from Colorado, a retired Mennonite missionary in Africa now residing in Virginia, a recent college grad becoming a CSA vegetable farmer from Minnesota, a pastor from Kansas, a grain farmer from South Dakota—and all of them were Mennonites except for me. Being the lone non-Anabaptist however, I could still keep up with them in their own name-bingo games: Yoder, Miller, Mast, Hershberger… More importantly, they showed me great hospitality. And let me add, I’ve never been in corporate worship where the four-part hymn singing was so beautiful. I made some great friends that weekend, and obviously connected on the level of our passions and interests on food, faith, and politics, but much more so in our shared identity as Christians.

I love me some Anabaptists and truly appreciate what they bring to the larger “Christian table,” but nonetheless, am not one myself. So while with them, I wanted to hear from them, what did it mean to be a Mennonite? My conversations were certainly limited, but consistently brought up three themes. Firstly, they resonated with the wider “evangelical” church in that their faith taught them the importance of a personal response to Christ. (Menno Simons would probably be proud.) Secondly, however, they felt there was a movement among many Mennonites to too easily be “absorbed” in the wider evangelical movement—almost becoming “generic” Christians—and they expressed feeling that some of their churches were loosing some of the faithful and worthy distinctions of what it meant to be Anabaptist, particularly the practices and teachings of being peace churches and simplicity. Finally, they recognized in their Mennonite tradition that there was a counter-cultural identity—counter to their national cultures, counter to a sometimes “Christian” culture, and counter to the left/right liberal/conservative dichotomy of the wider world. These sentiments of clearly wanting to retain an Anabaptist flavour were especially strong among the younger people present.

This was only a quick snapshot taken in a limited three-day conference almost 8 years ago that in and of itself may well have been slanted in a particular “activist” direction. And that said, hardly am I an adequate sociologist. I’m sure I heard things that I particularly wanted to hear.

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Conversations

From Jes Kast-Keat

Like Jessica and Tom I, too, went to sunny Orlando for RCA Conversations. Jessica did a great job at offering an overview of the event. On my personal blog I reflect on how uncomfortable I felt with some of the nomenclature used at Conversations. I also wrote a piece on the prophetic nature of the rapper Lupe Fiasco and what wasn't being said at Conversations.

This blog I dedicate to Rev. Ann Kansfield and Rev. Abby Norton-Levering who taught me how to stand up for total depravity.

Opening Night

My friends and colleagues, Rev. Leslie Holmes and Liz Testa, worked it on the mics as the MC's for the event. We were lead in a quick 'get to know ya' game where we were asked to stand up if any of the statements applied to us. "Stand up if you have been a pastor for more than 25 years" "Stand up if you have been a pastor for less than 5 years" etc... One of the statements we were invited to stand up to was this: "Stand up if you use the words total depravity on a regular basis". Out of the 500+ good ol' Calvinist that were in there only a handful of people (less than 20?) stood up. I was one of them that stayed glued to my chair. Total depravity...how...I don't know...how depressing!

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Giving Up

From Scott Hoezee

As someone who grew up in the Christian Reformed Church through the 1970s and 80s, I knew virtually nothing about the Season of Lent until my college years.  Back in Ada, Michigan, and at the Ada CRC, we could not have distinguished Lent from lint.  But I was at least dimly aware of the purpose behind Lent and some of the practices that Catholics observed as part of it.

During my college years I had a part-time job at a large retail furniture store.  One Saturday during lunch in the break room, one of the salespersons proudly announced "I am giving up swearing for Lent."   No one else seemed to bat an eye at this but even I knew something about that didn't sound right.  "You're not supposed to give up something you shouldn't do in the first place!" I replied.   "That's like giving up child abuse for Lent."   My colleague was not amused.   I just knew he wanted to swear at me.

But in truth, we Americans are not very good at giving up much of anything.  It is by now well known that any talk of sacrifice is fatal for politicians.   Jimmy Carter learned that the hard way, even writing in his memoirKeeping Faith that starting already with his inaugural address, he discovered that any reference to limits, to giving up, to sacrifice for the greater good just did not work in America.   Let others give something up (preferably those whose sacrifice will enable the rest of us to keep living large and without boundaries).  But the rest of us want to hear sunny promises about getting more, not making do with less.

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What does Obama's Catholic miscalculation reveal about us?

From Jeff Munroe

It’s been over a week since the Obama administration blinked and came up with a way out of their self-inflicted fight with the Roman Catholic Church over mandatory birth control coverage.  The administration made a big mistake – they figured that since the great majority of Catholics don’t follow their church’s teaching on contraception (as high as 98% according to a survey cited on NPR), those same Catholics would stand up with the government against their own church. Bad idea. Somehow, the administration forgot that the best way to unite a fractured family is to attack it from the outside while at the same time not considering how united all American Catholics (and, indeed, all Americans) are on the issue of religious liberty.  After all, freedom of religion didn’t just slip into the Bill of Rights, it’s number one.  You think the ranking doesn’t mean anything?  Come on, you know number one is freedom of religion and speech.  You know that number two is the right to bear arms.  But what’s number three?  See what I mean?  I’ll pause while you Google it.

I’m humming the Jeopardy! theme, waiting for you.

Hope you feel better now remembering that soldiers can’t be forced into your home during a time of peace.  Don’t get too cozy. For a supposedly peace-loving nation we’re at war quite a bit.  Like right now.  But I digress . . .   

What I want to write about today isn’t the Bill of Rights or birth control as a political issue.  What fascinates me instead is the gap that I believe the administration initially stumbled over – the gap between what the church teaches on the one hand and the actual belief and behavior of most Catholics on the other. I’ve been wondering if there are similar situations in the RCA and CRC, wondering what gulfs exist between official church policy and the actual beliefs and behavior of the majority.

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