Indigenous People’s Day and the stories we must tell
This Monday was Indigenous People’s Day, a refocusing of Columbus Day. While in Minnesota last month, I had a morning to walk through the Minnesota History Center in Saint Paul. I spent the most time in the exhibit Our Home: Native Minnesota. It focused on the long history of the…
Midweek Blog: Listening, Mourning, Connecting
The September issue of The Christian Century magazine had a monthly theme exploring the topic of the “Earth’s agency,” with a number of articles looking at various aspects of ecotheology. This was a timely read to lead up into last weekend’s Fall Retreat and gave me plenty to reflect on…
Sacred listening
“Being listened to is so close to being loved that most people cannot tell the difference.” – David Augsburger, Mennonite teacher and author Throughout the next year Central District Conference is conducting Sacred Listening conversations across the conference. The goal, as I understand it, is for conference leadership to get…
Sacred ground x2
This past weekend I was in Minnesota at the invitation of St. Paul Mennonite Fellowship. They have an annual retreat at a secluded retreat center an hour north of the twin cities. The time includes input from a guest and planning for the coming year. I presented about transitions. The…
Ritual and reality
“Ritual is a very ancient social technology and it fulfills the exact same roles today as it did for our ancestors thousands of years ago.” These were Dimitris Xygalatas’s closing words in an interview that aired on NPR’s All Things Considered last evening (8 minutes audio). Host Ari Shapiro had…
