The Treasure Within the Putty

And encouraging word for parents of younger children.

Source: The Treasure Within the Putty

Getting Personal: Unexpected Gift of Mennonite World Conference 2015

Reading Melodie’s personal journey of healing between a Mennonite and a Lutheran adds a rich dimension to the official reconciliation between our denominations.

Getting Personal: Unexpected Gift of Mennonite World Conference 2015.

Thanks and have a good summer

 

It’s time to unplug and tune in to the beauties of summer and to say good bye.

My work life is shifting to pick up some additional duties in a transitional time, so this blog will probably not be back in fall, certainly not on a weekly basis.

To those of you who have been faithful followers as I learned how to communicate through this format, I say, thank-you.  You’ve been a great encouragement.

To those who have dropped in from time to time, I say thank you. It is always fascinating to see from where else on God’s good earth people connect with my humble blog.

To all of you I say, “May the Lord bless and keep you. May the Lord’s face shine upon you, be gracious to you, and give you peace.”

 

 

4 Challenges of Parenting Parents with Dementia

This week I was deeply moved by a phone call by a woman asking about resources on the topic of dementia. It’s a close to home but hard to talk about topic. Here are a few of the real challenges we agreed on:

1) It’s a new issue. Because we are living longer, with better medical care, dementia is an increasingly common condition among seniors. Because most of our grandparents died before their brains began to deteriorate, we lack the generational memory for how to deal with this increasingly common reality.

2) Learning to parent our parents as they move into a second childhood is hard. It is challenging enough to deal with irrational behaviour with young children, who require our supervision to be safe, but in that case we know they will outgrow these stages. How can we still honour the parents who raised us and make decisions for them which they can no longer, but may still want to make? How can we soften the humiliation as they incrementally lose control of their lives?

3) Finding safe places to share the challenges is hard. We don’t want to speak poorly of the parents we love and honour, and it can be humiliating for them when others learn about their dementia. And yet, we need to find our way of providing the assistance they need and doing the self-care we need to remain healthy.

4) Finding resources is hard. There are a few good books and videos out there, but we need more. Thank goodness for places like Common Word that make them easy to access. If you know of another helpful resource, please add it as a comment. This is an challenge we need to help each meet.

Thanks for the Memories Aunt Olly

A local celebrity  and shaper of children and childhood has died. Many Manitobans who grew up in the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s raced home from school to tune in to Aunt Olly’s Children’s Party on the radio (Station CFAM). Listening to her program was a regular part of birthday parties, because she shared birthday greetings and instructions on where to find your birthday gift.  Work colleagues remember listening with siblings, snacking quietly and listening while Mother’s enjoyed the freedom to cook supper without distractions from the kids. Here’s a great tribute, written by another of her faithful listeners, Mary Lou Driedger.

Thanks for the Memories Aunt Olly.

Truth and Reconciliation with the Grandmothers

Photos: Stick Ceremony and Elkhorn Residential School (closed, 1949)

Yesterday was a historic day for Canada. After six years of careful listening and recording of the stories of survivors of Canada’s Indian Residential Schools (the last of which closed in 1996) the Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its summary report in Ottawa.

Through regional events with live streaming of the Ottawa event, this day was honoured throughout Canada; a day many hope and pray will be a turning point toward better relationship between Canada’s Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples.

The live streamed Ottawa event was important and informative. So were the opening prayers and greetings. So was the walk through downtown by about 600 Indigenous and non-Indigenous Winnipeggers. So was the shared feast and the pipe ceremony at Thunderbird House. But for me, a grandmother, it was the ritualized actions of the Grandmothers that were most transformative. I was so moved, I didn’t think of taking a picture. Thankfully, my friend, Kyle Penner, sent me one which I edited into the post a day after publishing .

The Grandmother’s event happened after the live streaming of the Commission’s report. Elder Velma Orvis invited us into a large basement room for a stick ceremony called RE-MEMBERING TOGETHER. She, two other Grandmothers, and a young woman seated on a chair, occupied the center of the circle. The Grandmothers tied and erected three peeled poplar saplings to create the beginning of a teepee frame. Ten more such poles were distributed to group participants. (There are thirteen moons to the Indigenous year.)

As Velma read from a document which highlighted parts of our shared history that oppress indigenous women the two other Grandmothers placed black cloths over the young woman’s head, one for each item that was named. The weight of those symbolic black cloths weighed down on all of us.

The ten recipients of the sticks were then invited to share. Among the respondents were survivors of abuse in the residential school system. One grandmother shared with her 10 year old granddaughter at her side for support. There was also one of my people, a Mennonite, who walked in solidarity with his Indigenous neighbours. One middle aged Indigenous woman choked out a sentence and sat down. Another, rather radiant Grandmother shared about the importance of holistic re-education and relationships. Later, on the walk, she would tell me about the Creator’s healing touch in her journey toward forgiveness.

With each shared story a black cloth was lifted from the young woman’s head. With the lifting of the last cloth the young woman shared her experiences of sitting under those dark cloths. Under their cover she had remembered her grandmother, a survivor of the residential schools, whose programs are now being correctly described as cultural genocide.  But experiencing the increasing dark and heat under the accumulating cloths had also reminded her of being in a sweat lodge. At this point she got up, and left the room rather quickly, perhaps to have a good cry.

We dispersed with our thoughts and emotions as well, just to reassemble outside and walk the 3.7 kilometres to Thunderbird House where feasting and ceremonies continued. It was clearly an important spiritual event for the Indigenous participants, and I appreciated the Grand Chief’s call to making new beginnings at all levels of society.

As I walked from the event to catch a bus back home, the woman respondent who had choked out a one sentence response during the stick ceremony came alongside me. She shared how emotional the ceremonies in Thunderbird House had been for her. We chatted about the event and about our mothers. I shared how I was now connecting my learning about our history with the residential schools with my love for my grandchildren. We shared comments about the freeing power of forgiveness.

At this point she trusted me with the story she couldn’t share during the ceremony, of becoming a mother, and having her five children ripped from her home by Child and Family Services. She left me with this comment, “How can I forgive when CFS robbed me of my motherhood?”

How indeed? May the Creator’s healing touch also find her, and help her find joy in her Grandmotherhood.  And may the Creator help me faithfully share the story with which she trusted me.

Choosing Brave Over Braced: Living As If My Life Depended on It

An interesting blog post on living with poultry and with danger? Do you live braced or brave? I think I live in between.

Choosing Brave Over Braced: Living As If My Life Depended on It.

Roots and Wings

Amy Yoder McGloughlin’s reflections as a mother and a pastor include important thoughts on believer’s baptism and parenting. So do the testimonies of the two being baptised and the dog. Enjoy. How do you view baptism and giving your adolescent/adult children the freedom to choose?

Practicing Families

by Amy Yoder McGloughlin, Mennonite Pastor and parent of two teenagers.  

On Sunday I baptized two young people in my congregation–one was thirteen, and one was thirty.  Both talked–from their own developmental place–about the importance of faith and the church in their lives.  The teenager talked about the church as a place where–unlike other parts of his life–he’s not bullied, but loved for who his is.”  He said, “Jesus was bullied, so I think he understands how I feel, but Jesus was also surrounded by people that loved him, and that’s how church feels to me.”

The thirty year old is someone I’ve know for much of his life.  He was unsure about baptism for many years–he’s the kind of person that needed to talk it through, to think it through–he needed to be absolutely sure.  He described baptism as “coming home.”  It’s coming to a faith that…

View original post 486 more words

Finding Christian Community on the Margins 1

 I am inspired by people who live in Christian community. Especially when those communities integrate people who wouldn’t feel welcome in my middle class congregation, even if we reached out hospitably.

Recently I joined a neighbourhood group, called Houseblend Ministries, for their Tuesday night potluck and prayers. Anyone is welcome to participate in these Tuesday night events, and so I and my casserole were received warmly. So were the brother and sister who came from a poorer part of town, who shyly peaked out from underneath their dark hoodies. So was the elderly man with cerebral palsy. And the neighbourhood women. And the residents of this old eight bedroom house in the West Broadway, a slowly gentrifying part of urban Winnipeg.

After the meal, which included pleasant light conversation, we moved to the parlor for evening prayers. In the context of a short but solid worship liturgy, everyone in the group was invited to share a high and a low experience of their week.

That’s what Houseblend  has been doing in Winnipeg since 2007.  It seems simple enough, but it is such a blessing. One newcomer expressed it this way. ” It was very natural and it just seemed like a safe place where, if you were having a bad day, you could share it with the group.”   And a resident shared this quote in their last newsletter, “I don’t think I will ever be able to properly express how thankful I am to live in this house. It’s like a second chance at life.”

Here’s how this group describes itself: We are……a group of people who, because we are inspired by Jesus’ love of people who are poor and by Paul’s words to the Thessalonians (1 Thess. 2:8), have committed to sharing our lives with each other and with our neighbours in West Broadway, Winnipeg. As an intentional community we seek to develop rhythms of life that make loving God, loving each other, and loving our neighbours sustainable. These rhythms are based on the life of Jesus.

Thank you, Houseblend, for living this rhythm of Jesus in my neighbourhood. Read more about them at houseblendministries.com.

We Care About The Crumbs

I’ve never thought about crumbs at Communion before, and don’t come from a sacramental tradition, but I love the way Laura Kelly Fanucci reflects on them. I’ve added a photo of a formerly controversial South African poster which inspired me in a friend’s home recently, and which conveys some of Laura’s sentiments. (My apologies for the glare and reflections on the photo)

We Care About The Crumbs.