Tag: Sacraments and spirituality

“Deeper spirituality” by Andre Gingerich Stoner

The following article appeared in the August 20 issue of Mennonite World Review

In the mid-1980s, Dawn Ruth Nelson was part of a group of young mission workers trying to live out the Mennonite values of community, discipleship and nonviolence amid “the troubles” of Northern Ireland. When the communal living experiment ended explosively a few years later, she came to the painful awareness that her spiritual resources were not enough to sustain the ideals she was trying to practice. This led to a “desperate need for a more meaningful prayer life, a deeper spirituality, a closer connection to God” and her first silent retreat at a Catholic monastery.

When she returned to the U.S. she also began to explore the spiritual practices that had sustained Mennonites of earlier generations. Continue reading ““Deeper spirituality” by Andre Gingerich Stoner” →

The anguish of imperfect communion

by Julia Smucker

(Our friends at the Ekklesia Project recently posted the following reflection by Julia Smucker on Bridgefolk experiences with the challenge of sharing communion.) 

For about the past five years, I have been a participant in the Mennonite/Catholic ecumenical movement known as Bridgefolk – first as a Mennonite drawn toward communion with the Catholic Church but also strongly connected to my ecclesial heritage, and now as a Catholic seeking to maintain that connection with the church that formed me.  I had agonized over the choice I was presented with in the unavoidable reality that joining with one communion would mean breaking with another, and wondered whether I could do so without it being tantamount to a rejection, a cutting off of my roots.  And then I discovered a group of people who had been agonizing over this division for years before me.  Continue reading “The anguish of imperfect communion” →

The Mennonite features Mennonite Catholic visionary Gene Herr

Holy restlessness leads to home in Christ:
Gene Herr became a spiritual father to many people in his lifetime.

by Laurie Oswald Robinson

Cover story, The Mennonite, June 2012

 
June 2012 cover of The MennoniteA few days before he died on Jan. 1 in Hesston, Kan., the late H. Eugene (Gene) Herr said to his daughter, Ellen Awe, “I don’t understand why I am not going anywhere.”

The comment didn’t surprise Awe. Her father, a leader and visionary in the Mennonite church, had always lived with a holy restlessness. It was born from his passion to follow God’s call, even when to do so required leaving safe and familiar lands for  daring and new territories.

To his family and friends, he seemed he was moving as a pilgrim on his way to the promised land. They saw his movement as not born of one who was lost and trying to find his way “home” alone. They believed it as born out of passion for being truly found in Christ. He desired to give himself so fully to Jesus that no mile of God’s intended journey for him would be left untraveled.

But on this day, it was time for him to rest a bit before traversing the final leg of his earthly trek.

Awe replied to her father, “It’s because you    really can’t go anywhere right now, Dad. It’s OK for you to just be here and to let us love you. …”

“He accepted this and put his trust in us and graciously let us make decisions for him,” she says. “The concept of his ‘terminal’ illness included both moving and resting. … He was terminal but not as in an end. He was in a terminal, the place where one waits for the next leg of one’s travels.”

As he battled brain cancer for two years, it seemed God was calling Herr in his final days to integrate his doing with being. The integration was a model of the Christian discipleship Gene and Mary, his wife of 56 years, shared with fellow believers in the Mennonite church and beyond. Continue reading “The Mennonite features Mennonite Catholic visionary Gene Herr” →

“Spirituality versus Religion: Or maybe it’s not new….” commentary by Jana Bennett

Current debates over “traditional religion” sometimes track partially with ecumenical dialogue between Mennonites and Catholics.  The following blog by University of Dayton theology professor Jana Bennett may therefore be of interest to Bridgefolk.  

I’ve been reading a lot lately around the blogosphere from people who find themselves at odds with “traditional Christianity,” by which seems to be meant “the version of Christianity I grew up with.”  One of the most interesting is here at Rachel Held Evans’ blog: Kim Van Brunt describes leaving traditional worship services, in part because she felt the traditions themselves – the bulletins and Wednesday night prayer services and so on – were stilting her family’s ability to hear and live the gospel.  Many of the commenters complained that she seemed to be advocating a church of one, an individual’s paradisaical version of Christ’s body – so before readers here jump to that conclusion, let me just say that in her own response to the comments, she now belongs to what would probably be called a “house church” – an informal gathering of people meeting to support and witness to each other.

There are others feeling compressed by “tradition”.  One of the big ones, of course, is the viral video “Why I Hate Religion but Love Jesus” which was followed up with numerous posts about being spiritual but not religious.  In another vein, there have been Catholics thinking through the contraception debates in relation to feeling like the “hierarchy”.  In still another vein, members of the “emergent church” who feel that “traditional” forms of Christianity are increasingly irrelevant.   Continue reading ““Spirituality versus Religion: Or maybe it’s not new….” commentary by Jana Bennett” →

Margaret Pfeil and Gerald Schlabach suggest fresh Lenten practices in America magazine

Two Bridgefolk board members, Margaret Pfeil and Gerald Schlabach, are among four writers who suggest positive practices to “take up” for Lent in order to move beyond typical practices of “giving up.”   Schlabach suggests ways to “Love the Enemy in Your Pew” by inviting fellow Catholics with whom one most disagrees to share their back story face to face.  Pfeil invites readers to “Feed the Hungry with Local Food.”  In her article she recounts how the Catholic Worker community in South Bend, Indiana, has created a grocery co-op in  its mostly African-American community and made baked goods from nearby Amish communities a popular item.

The article is in the February 20 issue of the Jesuit magazine America and is available online to subscribers at http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=13259.

Advent issue of The Mennonite features cover story on Mary

For Advent this year, the cover story for the December issue of The Mennonite asks how Mennonites should think of Mary as “model and mother.”  A related article reflects on Mary’s Magnificat, and two poems portray the role of Joseph and Elizabeth in the drama of Jesus’ birth.  Another article, by Bridgefolk board member Darrin Snyder Belousek, recounts his story of returning to faith through friendship with Roman Catholics.   The Mennonite is the official denominational magazine of Mennonite Church USA.

Click here to access the December issue of The Mennonite.

Herald Press devotional named “best of best”

by Steve Shenk

Mennonite Church Canada/MennoMedia joint release
WATERLOO, Ont. and HARRISONBURG, Va.—A Herald Press devotional book has been selected as Worship Leader magazine’s “best of the best” in the team devotionals category for 2011. The magazine published the winners list in its Oct. 7 issue.

The devotional is Take Our Moments and Our Days, Volume 2, published in 2010.

Worship Leader’s annual guide for the world of worship includes everything from the best music resources to the ultimate software, visual and presentation technology, worship training, musical instruments, apps, sound and recording equipment, books and devotionals to the leading products in lighting, screens, and projectors.

“The special annual issue has evolved from a general buyer’s guide and bonus issue to one of the year’s central issues for Worship Leader—and the most back-ordered,” said Daniele Kimes, vice president for sales and marketing.

Take Our Moments and Our Days, Volume 2 was compiled by Paul Boers, Barbara Nelson Gingerich, Eleanor Kreider, John Rempel, and Mary Schertz. It is subtitled An Anabaptist Prayer Book, Advent through Pentecost. The thick, hard-cover book is available for $40 in Canada and $34.99 in the U.S.

The devotional can be purchased at www.MennoMedia.org or 800-631-6535 (Canada) and 800-245-7894 (U.S).

Herald Press is the book imprint of MennoMedia, a ministry of Mennonite Church Canada and Mennonite Church USA

Latest issue of Vision on theme of baptism

The latest issue of Vision: A Journal for Church and Theology is dedicated to the theme of baptism.  Vision is published at the Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Indiana and Canadian Mennonite University in Manitoba, and is edited by Bridgefolk board member Mary Schertz.

The theme of baptism is timely given that representatives of worldwide bodies of Mennonites, Catholics and Lutherans will soon be launching a trilateral dialogue on the theme.

Information and two sample articles from the issue are available at http://www.mennovision.org/Volume12-2.htm.   One of the two sample articles, “Cultivating a congregational climate of discernment,”  is by Bridgefolk co-chair Marlene Kropf.