It was my turn to be on call during Easter. My pager went off shortly after midnight. “Lawrence, one of our patients is crashing. We need your support here,” the nurse from the palliative ward said. A woman in her 80s was dying and her family was not ready to let her go.
Monthly Archives
February 2011
The Mennonite Brethren church in Panama is concentrated in Darién province, a jungle zone bordering Colombia. The region’s indigenous groups and Afro-Panamanians were thrown together during December flooding caused by…
Permission to Speak Freely: Essays and Art On Fear, Confession, and Grace
Author name: Anne Jackson
Permission to Speak Freely is born out of a single question Anne Jackson asked on her blog two years ago: “What is one thing you feel you can’t say in the church?” The responses Jackson received to this question, combined with her own reflections on a faith journey characterized by both ambivalence and love for the church, forms the heart of the subject matter of this book…She was lying with her back to me. By then, she needed help turning in her bed, and there was no room at the other side for me to sit to face her. But even with her back to me, I could be with her. I could wait with her. As I waited, I reflected on what this gracious 88-year-old woman of God had come to mean to me.
Snapshots of parish nursing
Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) is the largest and most influential Anabaptist organization in the world. It has nearly 1,200 workers and an annual budget of $82 million. Its reach extends to 62 countries abroad, and in North America it encompasses 14 denominations, covering the spectrum from Amish grandmothers to The Meeting House, a Brethren in Christ congregation and Canada’s coolest mega-church.
Inspired by the Herald, re: The Herald; Proper book review required, re: October; Is our worship truly inspired?, re: November; Immaculate Conception a false teaching, re: December; Our leadership models put us at risk, re: December; Angels are for real, re: December
- ColumnsFrom the communityinspirationalLife & FaithMB HeraldViews
Welcome to sociological purgatory
by Phil WaglerI grew up in southwestern Ontario where – by my childish observations – most everyone was religious, or at least made excuses if they weren’t. The statistics verify my early mastery of sociology. A recent Globe and Mail article (“Canada Marching Away From Religion to Secularization,” December 11, 2010) notes, “Before 1971, less than 1 per cent of Canadians ticked the ‘no religion’ box on national surveys. Two generations later, nearly a quarter of the population, or 23 per cent, say they aren’t religious.”
Of Pilgrims and Fire: When God Shows Up at the MoviesAuthor: Roy M. AnkerRoy M. Anker’s book, like his earlier volume, Catching Light: Looking for God in the Movies (2005), is anchored to a central argument: we are all pilgrims – “whether we know it or not.” Even in this post-Christian world, Anker argues, people struggle with deep, and deeply important, theological questions through narrative.
31, 200 aboriginal children in foster care; Provinces receive regulation of laws; Canadian mining companies worst offenders; Missing person search and rescue integrated; Original MDS organizer dies; College exclusively for students with intellectual disabilities; WEA opened International Leadership Institute; 21 people killed in Egypt; Vietnamese pastor’s home seized and demolished; Bill to make coerced abortion a criminal offense
More than 35 senior leaders from the Canadian Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches (CCMBC) gathered in Abbotsford, B.C., for a National-Provincial Collaboration Summit Dec. 14–15.
It was the same Spirit working in men separated by thousands of miles that brought Thom and Elaine Braun’s first church plant into being. After growing up in another denomination, Thom joined an MB church that “sent out many pastors and missionaries.”
“The church has a long history in health care…. nursing has always been the heart and centre of church-based health care. The characteristics of nurture, care, servanthood, and a holistic understanding of humans are central to nursing care.”—J.A. Shelley
Have you ever had something hit you so hard, hurt so much, that you felt like someone “blew a hole” through you?
Nearly fifty years ago – in 1964 to be precise – as a young man in his twenties, I first came to the Mennonite Brethren Herald. Those were turbulent years. A few months earlier, John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. The U.S. was drifting into the Vietnam conflict, the first major war it was to lose. Riots, marches, and city ghettoes on fire heralded the civil rights conflict.
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