what do Mennonites believe?

This Friday we have an interesting opportunity. We are meeting with a group of about 40 Muslim girls at a local Mennonite camp to play together and learn about each other. The Muslim group initiated this. They want to know: what do Mennonites believe? 

We've gathered a group of about 12 Mennonite girls, youth, and moms to meet with this group. I offered that we could teach them Giant Dutch Blitz (a rambunctious, active game that will have us stumbling all over each other in the gym). I warned Sultana, one of the leaders, that this won't teach them about our faith - just might show them how competitive Mennonites can be when we're playing games. 

Sultana also mentioned that she wants a chance to hear about what we believe. This is the piece I've been pondering for the last few days. How do I summarize our beliefs in a way that 12-15 year old Muslim girls will get something out of it, and that our girls will feel it represents them? How do I boil the complexities down into something simple and palatable?

When I asked my own girls what our church believes, these were their responses:

[9 year old daughter] shrugs shoulders

[6 year old daughter] "What do you even MEAN?"

[me] "I mean what do we believe about God and about us and about the world?"

[6 year old daughter] "What does 'believe' mean?"

[me] "Like what you think about God."

[6 year old daughter] "Doesn't EVERYONE think about God?"

[me] "Maybe. But what do YOU think about God?"

[6 year old daughter] "That God wants us to be nice?"

[me] "OK - anything else?"

[6 year old daughter] "That I can talk to God and God made the world and wants people to get along."

I came away a bit puzzled as to why these questions were so confusing to my daughters. Admittedly, we don't often talk about our beliefs. I believe that actions speak louder than words, and hopefully my children are "hearing" some of our beliefs in action. I hope that they're absorbing faith by osmosis, understanding the gifts of hospitality to both giver and receiver, the importance of being generous with your love and compassion and money, the ways that we can work to bring about a more peace-filled world. 

Derek and I pondered this over sushi last night. At what age do we label our thoughts and actions as "beliefs"?

One belief that I'll put on the table right now: that children are born with an innate knowledge of God, and sometimes we squash it out of them. 

I want to be careful that I'm not extinguishing my daughters' own unique theological thoughts, connections to God, beliefs - whatever you want to call them - about who God is, and who they are in relation to God. I don’t want to pile on cement-like heavy beliefs so that it’s hard for them to excavate down to the ones they find life-giving. I want to learn from them because I intuitively know that sometimes they're better connected to that Spirit than I am. 

I know that my own beliefs have changed over time, and I suspect/hope they’ll keep on changing. But the task at hand for this Friday remains the same: how do I present a group’s beliefs in a way that feels authentic and real?

sweet maple taffy

Is there anything more glorious than the sound of snow melting (I can hear it!), rising temperatures, sun shining, coat shedding, bikes and scooters roaring about, knowing that sap is shooting up the sugar maple trees?

I LOVE spring.

It's such a hopeful time of year.

The smell of maple syrup boiling in a sugar shack brings back potent and wonderful childhood memories - Dad stoking a huge fire, maple steam filling the shack, the first tastes of spring on egg cheese and donut tea balls. How sweet spring tastes!

My oldest daughter was begging to go to Quebec city this year for carnaval. So I did the next best thing: I promised her we'd make taffy. Yesterday was the day! We made "la tire sur la neige" - maple taffy (doesn't it just sound so much more yummy in French?). You can make it on ice, but snow is preferable, in my humble opinion. I remember doing some version of this as a child.

I tried this several years ago, and it flopped. I just boiled the maple syrup and poured it on snow - in front of my eager grade one class. To our disappointment, it just sank into the snow - all that precious, sweet syrup.

So this year I did a little more research. I also bought a candy thermometer. And it worked!

I used this recipe as a guide, but basically, here are the steps.

1. Get some clean snow and put it in a pan. Freeze it ahead of time if you think the snow will melt before you have a chance to make taffy. I put ours in the freezer for a week so it was nice and cold - and clean! Decorate wooden sticks (totally unnecessary, but fun).

2. Put 2 cups of maple syrup into a pot. I learned the hard way that I should have used a double boiler on my gas stove.

3. Boil the syrup until it reaches the "soft ball" point on your candy thermometer (around 230-240 degrees F). My failed attempt years ago happened because I didn't bring the syrup to a high enough temperature.

4. Put the boiled syrup into a glass measuring cup.

5. Pour the syrup in lines onto the snow. Count to 30.

6. Use a wooden stick to twirl it up.

7. Eat!

8. Drink milk. Brush teeth. :)

Wisdom literature connection (because I know you want one):
[say this to the sweet maple taffy as you eat it]

"Kiss me tenderly! Your love is better than wine, and you smell so sweet. All the young women adore you; the very mention of your name is like spreading perfume. Hurry, my king! Let's hurry. Take me to your home." -- Song of Solomon 1:2-5 

losing my sense of humour

My daughter was talking about her cousins - traits they have that were passed on through a parent. Then she asked, "But Mom, where did I get my funniness from?" Translation: you and dad aren't funny, so why am I?

This made me sad, but I realize she's right. Over the years, I've significantly serious-ed up, and I've lost that funny feeling. What happened? I remember giggling uproariously, often during church or with my cousin at a sleepover. I miss that feeling of uncontrollable laughter.

When did I get so serious?

I think it was a gradual process.

First teacher's college, then teaching kindergarten and grade one, where I supervised children's behaviour and told them when they were being inappropriate. Big funny-killer, even though the work brought me joy.

Then I became part of committees that talked about shrinking budgets. Not a whole lot of laughing that happened there, unfortunately.

Then we bought a house.

Then I started nagging more.

Then my cousins and I, who had a Christmas tradition of dressing up in weird costumes and carolling to our families at our Christmas gathering then getting changed and pretending it wasn't us, stopped one year. I guess we were all of a sudden too mature for that.

Any suggestions of how I could find my lost sense of humour are more than welcome.

I have an interest in wisdom literature lately, so here's my inspiration from the book of Proverbs, talking about an "excellent wife":

Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at a time to come. (Proverbs 31:25)

Here's to more laughing over the weekend! Another Lent discipline.

dust bunnies, mortality and legacy

I keep thinking back to Ash Wednesday, when I received ashes on my forehead. I walked to the front of the silent church, and as the pastor marked the sign of the cross in ashes, tears came as my eyes met hers. "Remember you are dust," she told me, "and to dust you will return."

There I was, marked for death.

I kept the ashes on my forehead for a good 5 minutes before I smeared them off. Accidentally at first, but then with great vigour finished off the job. I wanted it off. I was finished with that curse of death.

It's not something I think about often. I don't think that I fear death (not too much, anyway), it just doesn't usually hit me square in the face. There are more messages out there that remind me of my possibility and my life than my mortality. Or the mortality of those closest to me, especially my children.

We visited a young friend in this hospital on Friday, and each day has brought more questions about mortality. Why do children get cancer, Mom? Why were some people in the Bible healed and others weren't, Dad? Mom, why can God bring Jesus back to life but not our guinea pig?

There is nothing like visiting a children's hospital to remind me of frailty and of our ultimate lack of control. I get choked up imagining my own children in their place - an uncertain future, lives cut too short, and I desperately want to protect them from it. I don't want them to be marked for death. I want to control.

That's a piece of Lent for me - giving up control, and surrendering my living and my dying. Realizing that I'm not just a giant dust bunny, but a beloved creation of God, made by precious, God-infused matter. The ashes remind me of my mortality, but also ask a simple question of legacy:

what do you want to do with this one, glorious life? 

quiet

It's been 3 days into my Lenten experience with quiet, and I love it. Although I'm realizing that my 10 minutes of quiet are not so quiet. They're still - I force myself to just sit, cup of tea in hand - but they're not quiet. My brain can be so noisy.

It's like excavating. Digging down, through the chatter, to a wiser word. Because the chatter sounds like this "there's so much to do and so little time and why do I have to do all the chores in this house and woe is me and I'm still not done that and need to add that to the list and why do I say yes to these kinds of requests..." and so on. When I dig down, here's what I hear:

There will be enough time.
There is hope.
You are not alone.
You are enough.
You are deeply loved.

I love this quote from Mother Teresa:

"We need to find God. He can not be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature, trees, flowers, grass all grow in silence. See the stars, the moon, and the sun how they move in silence. The more we receive in silent prayer the more we can give in our act of life. We need silence to be able to touch souls. The essential thing is not what we say but what God says to us and through us. All our words will be useless unless they come from within. Words that do not give the light of Christ increase the darkness."

Some photos from a magical, frosty quiet time this past Sunday morning along the Conestoga River:

celebrate

I must sound manic - going from a darker post yesterday to one about celebration today. But that's life, isn't it? Not manic - but a mixture of light and dark.

I was asking a wise friend how to raise resilient, kind, and caring children, and she gave me some interesting advice: Celebrate. Fill them with joy.

Hospitality is something I'm working on, and during Lent want to find ways to be more intentional about it. Since we moved to our new home this past summer, we have hosted at least one celebration per month. Some gatherings have been bigger than others: family Bollywood dancing, kid Bollywood dancing, steel drum band, a kids' outdoor fall festival, a meal with some of Derek's Master's students, and dessert with some undergrad students. It has been a lot of fun to have this variety of gatherings, and I'd like to keep that up if we can.

I even want to go so far as to have a guest book - not for people to sign, but to keep track of our hosting experiences. Crazy but true. I want to record these joy-filled celebrations so that they can fill me with even more joy as I look back on them.

And I want to find smaller ways to celebrate too, as a family. One idea that I got from Gretchen Rubin's Happier at Home was to have simple but celebratory breakfasts. To decorate the table when the kids are in bed, then have a holiday themed breakfast. We had a lovely one on Christmas morning:

 and now I've got one ready for the feast of St. Valentine this morning: white table cloth, red plastic cutlery, heart-shaped tins with red heart gummy candies inside, a heart-shaped candle, and a special thrift-store valentine-themed-stuffed-animal on the kids' chairs. Total cost: $2.00.

Here's what holds me back from being hospitable and hosting celebrations:
1. untidy house
2. lack of cooking skills/confidence

And here's my plan for attacking those silly things:
1. clean, and enlist others to do so as well
2. get take out :), just have desserts and appetizers
3. stop worrying so much about what other people think.

A work in progress, as always.

40

I woke up with this number in my mind: 40.

40 days of Lent.

40 years of age.

I wasn't so OK with this new age until I made a plan for celebration - that Derek and I would go to a lovely bed and breakfast up north for a night, followed by some snowshoeing and spa decadence on the actual b-day. Then 2 days later, we had some folks to our house for an evening of grooving to the happy rhythms of a steel drum band. It was a wonderful way to start my 40s. I even got to learn how to play a scale on the steel drum! I think I'm almost ready to play at the Santa Claus parade now.

in the cold plunge pool

and of course, the family Bollywood dance

This milestone has been cause for more introspection than usual. How do I want to go forward in these next years of my life? How can I live more fully? Yesterday I mentioned some reasons I don't feel particularly adult-like sometimes. I'm sure there are other mistakes or omissions from my 30s and earlier too. A while ago, I was walking down the sidewalk and heard 2 women behind me. One said, "There are 2 things you need in your 30s: a good tailor and investment pieces." I almost laughed right there. There I was, in the last months of my 30s, and I had managed to make it through without either.

Back to 40; I'm getting sidetracked. I love how the number 40 is used in the Bible to mean "a long time" - Jesus' 40 days in the wilderness, 40 nights on the ark, 40 years wandering in the wilderness. For those who observe Lent by giving up certain foods or drinks, Lent can feel like a long time too. But I want to do something in Lent that will lead to a lasting change in my journey. This year, I want to walk through the shadows - remember the dark - during this Lenten period.

Maybe it's because the first thing I did this morning at 6:00 am was to read an email from a friend who has a 6 year old son. She is an incredibly strong mom, and she is walking with her son through a very dark time: he is battling brain cancer. Her email this morning showed hope, and courage, but I had to blink back the tears as I read the dark. The prognosis of possibly only a few more months.

My eyes froze on the words. No. How can this be?

All of my stupid worries pale so much in comparison to this desolate pit.

Psalm 40 has long been a favourite, especially U2's version through song.

"I waited patiently for the Lord, he inclined and heard my cry.
He drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog,
and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure.
He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God.
Many will see and fear, and put their trust in the Lord."

The chorus of this U2 version is reminiscent of Isaiah 6, crying out to God in agony.

"How long to sing this song? How long? How long?"

I love this mixture - walking the tightrope between patient prayer and urgent plea.

This evening I will put on ashes - though they make take the form of oil if I can't get myself somewhere that has ashes. And I'll remember the dark. The sick, the hungry, the depressed, the cancerous ills among us.

And I'll pray - with patience and with urgence.

s-t-r-e-t-c-h

...is my word for 2013. It came to me as I lay in the eucalyptus steam room at the Scandinave Spa in January, celebrating my 40th birthday. Stretch. Breathe in the good. Sweat out, breathe out, the bad.

I've been putting off a blog post because now that I'm in my 40s, I should probably be really insightful and wise. And I just can't come up with anything to fit that bill. So I'll just write.

I sometimes catch myself and say, "You're not in high school anymore" or "You're an adult, Rebecca" because sometimes that's just so hard to believe. There are things that I haven't done yet - like wear high heels, or roast a turkey, or enter one of those shops that say "adult store" - so I think that I can't possibly be 40 yet.

But I want this year to be one of stretching, of exploring new things and new pieces of me. Our family is getting excited about a trip we'll be taking in May - we'll be heading to Benin, West Africa for a month. That will be a wonderful stretching experience, I'm sure.

I want this year to be one where I pay more attention to my body - to walking, running, breathing in and out, being more aware. So starting the year hopping from hot tub to cold plunge pool to solarium rest room was simply divine. I highly recommend it!

During this season of Lent, I want to stretch too. Stretch myself by being quiet, at least for 10 minutes a day. This sounds ludicrously simple, but it usually just doesn't happen.

Here's a website that I love the looks of - 40 acts - so creative and a fun way to focus this Lenten period.

I also want to write one card - simple, not long - to one person each day of Lent. If you'd like to be one of these people, contact me with your mailing address, then watch for a card to appear sometime before Easter!