Author: admin
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Women Talking: A Review
If a Hollywood studio executive had asked me as a student of Mennonite culture, history and theology, which of our stories should be told on the silver screen, I would have offered a long list. “We” have many beautiful stories with compelling characters that ask and speak to important questions. If they had asked, instead,…
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Imagined Irritability
I don’t mind hanging out at airports. It means I’m financially comfortable enough to be able to afford to fly somewhere. It means I’m about to go somewhere exciting or I’m about to go back home and be close to my kids again. Not everyone feels that way. That may be an understatement. It’s hard…
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The Fresno Fiasco
A lot of talk has been happening in the Mennonite twitter world (which is a pretty weird overlap of two very different realms) in the last few days about changes in a Master’s program at Fresno Pacific Biblical Seminary. Mostly connected to this article. Since I am a student in that program, I thought I…
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Vichy the Squishy dealer
This story is based on Matthew 13: 45-46. When Jesus walked this earth, he told stories about “the Kingdom.” He didn’t just want to help people go to heaven when they died, he wanted to show them how to live in the Kingdom now. One of the stories he told about the Kingdom went something…
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Commitments
I don’t try listen in when other people are talking privately. Especially not the other day, when I had gone to a local coffee shop to find a quiet place to work. Just the right number of people and all of their sounds drown each other out. Their presence becomes a kind of accountability too.…
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TV show review: PURE (CBC)
Back at the beginning of the year, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation released a new TV show called “Pure.” It was set in a Mexican Mennonite community in southern Ontario, similar to mine in a lot of ways (and different in some key ways too). It’s a rare privilege to get that kind of media attention,…
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Sad songs, happy people
Usually, the podcasts I listen to are sermons from other churches, so that I can steal ideas from be inspired by other preachers. I also listen to a few other thinkers and sports commentators, including quasi-Canadian, quasi-Mennonite Malcolm Gladwell. His podcast is entitled “Revisionist History” and in this most recent season (which you can find…
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Movie Review: The Shack
For this review, I contemplated ranking my experience of The Shack among my other most profound movie experiences. It was difficult to come up with a list. It might be because I’m getting older and my memory is slipping, but I think there are other factors at work. Sometimes the movies that seek to inspire…
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Hockey Knights
From time to time the National Hockey League looks around to see if, by any chance, they have left money on the table somewhere. Recently, businessmen in Las Vegas, Nevada expressed interest in buying a sports franchise, and when they were willing to pay the $500 million expansion fee, the NHL gave them a franchise.…
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Moving on up
Jerry Seinfeld famously put ‘helping someone move’ just below ‘driving someone to the airport’ on the scale of things you can only ask a good friend to do. I know some people resent being asked to do this kind of favour, but not me. My line of work leaves me with a sense of accomplishment,…