Abbie is currently in Guatemala, representing CMC on a 10 day learning tour with other members of Central District Conference congregations.  Below is a reflection from her.   I’m thankful for the opportunity to return to Guatemala.  Our time here this summer was so fun for our family and I loved attending Spanish classes and taking weekend and day trips.  But I left wanting to know more about the history of Guatemala, more about the indigenous groups, more about what role Mennonites have played in the country, as well as US involvement. This tour has helped fill in some of those gaps.  We are learning from some of the leaders of the Mennonite church in Guatemala who experienced the atrocities of the civil war and lived out what it means to be Anabaptist.  We talked with the President of the Mennonite church in Guatemala and visited her church where she and

“Each one of you has to be God’s microphone. Each one of you has to be a messenger, a prophet. The church will always exist as long as there is someone who has been baptized…Where is your baptism? You are baptized in your professions, in the fields of workers, in the market. Wherever there is someone who has been baptized, that is where the church is. There is a prophet there. Let us not hide the talent that God gave us on the day of our baptism and let us truly live the beauty and responsibility of being a prophetic people.” “I don’t want to be an anti, against anybody. I simply want to be the builder of a great affirmation: the affirmation of God, who loves us and who wants to save us.” “There are many things that can only be seen through eyes that have cried.” These are the words

When I was in college, I found an old party game in the back of a closet.  The game was called A Question of Scruples, and the gist of the game was that you had to guess how other people would respond to an ethical dilemma drawn at random from a big stack of cards that contained hundreds of different situations.  I don’t think my friends and I ever really followed the rules for gameplay, but throughout that summer we spent hours discussing the different situations that the cards presented and arguing our points for the ones that seemed especially tricky. The High School Sunday School class is currently doing a series on an introduction to Christian Ethics, so I decided to bring in the Scruples game and use it as a jumping off point to help us think about how we make choices.  Each student was given a card

Yesterday was the one year anniversary of Edith in Sanctuary in our church building.  The press continues to tell her story sympathetically, like THIS article in The Guardian, and THIS one in The Dispatch.  Edith actually first entered Sanctuary last Labor Day, but was able to briefly return home before entering long term on October 2. Over this past year I have thought many times about that Wednesday evening last August when we completed our accelerated discernment process to become a Sanctuary church.  It was the second congregational meeting in four days, all the time we had, due to Edith’s impending deportation order. One of my favorite anecdotes from that evening is that Mateo Leahy was there, sitting near the back with his mom Elisa.  He had insisted on attending, so he could vote for Edith to live in our church and not have to leave her family.  He was

Our Jewish friends are fasting today.  They are praying for themselves and the world, for us.  They are confessing shortcomings, and remembering the Mercy that holds us all. Today is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, a high point of the Jewish calendar.  As they have in past years, the Little Minyan congregation, under the leadership of Rabbi Jessica Shimberg, is worshiping in our building. They are chanting Hebrew in a Mennonite sanctuary.  The Torah scroll, held in the Ark, is elevated in front of the congregation.  Behind it hangs the World banner that has focused our recent summer worship.  The Torah has a white cloth cover.  On the cloth is a tree with the Hebrew words Etz Chayim, The Tree of Life.  In Sunday’s sermon I mentioned that the Tree of Life shows up in Genesis, and doesn’t reappear until Revelation.  But that’s only one angle.  The Tree of