It’s 8:00 AM, July 9, the day I’m actually writing this and I’m re-remembering the dream I awakened to just after 4:00 this morning. In my dream I was walking around the outside of the storefront location of Columbus Mennonite Church. It was our second storefront since we’d left the Neil Avenue location near OSU and both of the storefront locations were in an old-fashioned outdoor shopping center, where the store’s expansive glass fronts a poorly-lit open, but weather-sheltered mallway. The fluorescent-lighted 60’ x 60’ space was empty inside except for two people working—one was maybe Steve, but the other was definitely Al Bauman. Very large yellow-taped X marks were arranged in order, filling up all of the black carpet. I thought, “Hmmm, this space is slightly larger than the storefront space the church moved from around the corner and maybe that’s why we’d moved.” When I awakened, I thought,

I enjoyed first hammock time at my new home recently.  The house I’ve lived in for just over a year is still becoming, is not yet, “home.” Regular hammock time might shift my emotional balance more toward that.  My old Paraguay hammock is still sturdy enough and is a delightful backyard “hang.”  It was in regular use at our former home, where the backyard featured two hang positions, both centered on the old, sturdy metal swing set frame between two suitable trees. The hammock’s last use was in the Middler Sunday School room in January (when life was “old normal”), pretending (in winter) to be the “plant material” (it’s made of cotton thread – pretending can do magic) roof of our sukkah shelter from a lesson about an annual Hebrew festival commemorating the Wilderness years. Suitable trees here are too far apart for an ideal hang, so I experimented with

This morning I was asked to share with an interfaith group on “A Mennonite Perspective on Peacemaking.”  The broader context was thinking together about divesting from the current police/incarceration system and investing in other forms of community well-being.  So, open question, What does Mennonite peacemaking have to contribute to the conversation?  The task reminded me of one of the official Open Questions our CMC Leadership Team named for our year back in March, which went like this: As an Anabaptist community, how do we live faithfully within a contentious political environment? One thing Mennonites have going for us is that we have 500 years of history of trying to be a peaceful people.  We have not always done this well, but centering the peaceableness of Jesus is not something many other traditions have done.    Mennonites were born out of the political and religious turmoil of 16th century Europe, the