Quietness and Rest – A Great Christmas Gift

Maybe it is just because of the busyness of the last few weeks, or because Tom & I have just booked accommodation for our annual Advent retreat, but I have been thinking a lot lately about the need for rest and quietness in our lives.  I think particularly as we move into what is generally [...]

Civil Disobedience as Spiritual Practice.

I don’t usually do blog posts on Saturday morning but because I still have several articles that I have not been able to get posted I thought that I would post this interview today which was sent to me by Jarrod McKenna from Perth Australia.  Tom met Jarrod McKenna the last time he was in [...]

Peace in the Garden

 
My peace rose has just started to bloom.  It is one of my favourite roses and its fragrance one of the delights of my summer garden.  My appreciation of its beauty grew when I discovered that it was developed during World War II, by a family of French rose breeders.  The rose was actually smuggled [...]

Generosity not fear

Check out this great post with a poem on Generosity and Fear by Todd Hierstand.
We are living in a time where fear and despair are the overwhelming attitudes. Whether we’re talking about our personal financial situations or our national financial situation or our world’s financial situation these attitudes are prevalent. Fear. Despair.
But as those who [...]

Women Peacemaking and the Church

I just found this wonderful article on Women Peacemaking and the Church by Father Dear, thanks to Jan who mentioned the article on her blog Yearning for God   It reminded me of a book I read many years ago written in 1970s by Swiss psychiatrist Paul Tournier called The Gift of Feeling, in which [...]

The Shaping of Our Lives

Today is Columbus Day in America. For some it is a day of celebration as they remember the coming of Europeans to America. For others it is a day of mourning as they remember the genocide of indigenous peoples this event precipitated not just in the United States but throughout the Americas. [...]

A Rose of Peace

Today is International Day of Peace and this evening we celebrated a beautiful peace liturgy here at the Mustard Seed House.  As we sat in silence for a few moments I was reminded of one of my favourite symbols of peace – the peace rose.  nothing speaks to me more strongly of God’s desire for [...]

Celebrating the Shalom of God

Friday is International Day for Peace so I thought that this video would be an appropriate offering for the week. The chorus for the song was written by a group of Mennonite youth workers at a course we conducted in Winnipeg some years ago. The verses came from the poem I wrote [...]

Books, Plants and Friends

I just realized looking back through this blog that it is a long time since I mentioned any of the books I have been reading, which is rather surprising since I read 4 – 5 books a week. Maybe the problem is that I have been dipping into a number of rather of uninspiring [...]

Exploring Restorative Justice: Meet the prisoners & the victims

Here is a cool article on Exploring Restorative Justice that I received a copy of from Peacebuilders at Eastern Mennonite University today.  I was touched and encouraged by this radical and I think Biblical approach to justice.  In a world in which most of our “justice” is based on punitive measures we all really need [...]