Job Grunting

The last few weeks can be summed up by my grueling absorption in finding a job, either in social work or ministry. I am about to come out of the system with a degree in Social Development Studies, with the promise of finding *somewhat related* work. As of yet I have no leads.

I don't think I'm alone.

I was very surprised that Renison College has no career services/advisor to give a nudge, wink or shoulder tap to graduating students in one direction or the other. We're basically left on our own. I have learned and I am learning still that it's all about connections, who you know and who you've worked for, and sometimes what denomination you belong to. But connections can only go so far, which I'm beginning to discover.

Maybe I should have gotten a degree in computer sciences.

   [ posted by Anabee @ 10:04 AM ]

Let them have faith (Part 2): How far will we go?

Based on many of the comments of the last blog entry, I was inspired to ask more questions (and certainly ones I dare not claim to have the answers to) on the subject of faith, specifically martyrdom.

Is it no longer reasonable to die for ones faith? Is martyrdom a thing of the past, having lost its relevance? Does dying for ones beliefs not make sense anymore? Is it an issue of time (this century), or place (North America)? I don't think it is an issue of time, for there are still Christians today who die for their faith...perhaps in more subtle ways. But is it happening less, perhaps?

Based on the examples from the Bible (the NT particularly) and other accounts of Martyrdom (eg. Martyrs' Mirror, records of Ugandan martyrs, etc.), martyrdom was important for many Christians of the past to prove their faith, and we look to martyrs admiringly, in awe, incredulous. And not just Christians, but Hindus (all the various groups thereof), Muslims, Sikhs, and followers of the tribal branches of native spirituality (to name a few) will also die for what they believe. For example, many aboriginal children died in residential schools for refusing to renounce their faith for Christian ways, Sikhs died battling Muslims to fight conversion, and so on. It was clearly important once...Is it not important anymore?

I guess what I am asking is, can our faith still be just as strong when we are not challenged to keep our faith, when we are not faced with death? As a middle-class university student in North America, I am spared from many of the struggles and wants of most of the world's population, struggles which draw people closer to God, in sobering recognition of their needs. Due to my easy lifestyle, where I can practice my faith safely and have all my needs met, am I missing something?

I feel the need to explore this question: How far would I take my faith? Would I really die for it?

I encourage readers to ask themselves the same question.

   [ posted by Anabee @ 12:01 PM ]

Let them have faith

Recently I read a newspaper article about a fourteen year old Jehovah's Witness girl who was refusing to get a blood transfusion which would save her life. The journalist was strongly protesting this, arguing that no child should die for their faith. This enraged me. Such a statement presupposes that no child (up to age what?!) can have a true enough faith that they can make meaningful life decisions for themselves. What kind of message does that send to children/teenagers?

Granted, there is a line somewhere to be drawn for when a child is old enough to make informed rational choices, or have a genuine belief, and I understand that line would fluctuate for every person (and I'm certainly not about to attempt to draw one), but is it really our decision (as adults) to say whether or not the decision or faith of a child/teenager is true?

However, the question is begged of the parents, which is to ask whether they have let their daughter come to JW faith on her own, or whether they have forced their beliefs on her, putting their desire for righteousness ahead of the needs of their daughter. I can't answer that, but I can only hope that she has come to her faith willingly.

Assuming that, what right would anyone have to make the final decision on a girl's life, forcing her to live, when it is according to her beliefs that she die? I ask this: What kind of life would she lead after being forced to live, as a result of a blood transfusion that is against her beliefs to get, when she may have believed it was her time to go and be with God? She would have to live with that regret, that pain, that thorn in her side for as long as she remains with those beliefs.

I suppose I feel so strongly about this because it all comes back to my belief in letting people have their faith. As long as ones beliefs do not harm others or themselves unnecessarily, one should be allowed to believe in whatever gives their life meaning, and should not be questioned by others. End of story.

   [ posted by Anabee @ 8:20 AM ]

Sharing in Their Concerns
I recently got an email from a friend of mine who is attending a Mennonite church sponsored college in the U.S. She is a member of a theological think-tank there with a group of other students from across our two nations. Leading into the upcoming Mennonite Church conference in North Carolina this summer, they came up with a resolution, and it has been communicated to me. What follows is the text of that letter, and then my response. (I've left out names for now, in case they are uncomfortable with my response)

We are Concerned Too! A Challenge to Mennonite Youth/Young Adults
As members of the Mennonite Church, we cannot wait for change to occur. It's
not up to our current church leaders to make all the decisions while we passively wait for our turn to lead the church. We are the church now. It is time for us, the young adults of the church, to step forward and take responsibility for the future of the church.

In the past few weeks, rumblings of concern for the future of the church have
begun to surface as loud peals of thunder among our peers, especially in the face of the upcoming convention in Charlotte. On Tuesday evening, a meeting between some concerned Mennonite young adults* produced a plan of action. This think tank needs your help.

Our hope is to talk to the Mennonite Church at large, to affirm our commitment
to the church, to acknowledge the areas where we think the church needs to work on, to be catalysts for change, and to make ourselves available to participate in the
process. As we talked about our concerns for the church's future, we came up
with a modest list. By expressing our concerns, we hope not to criticize, but to
learn from our elders and to show that we have a genuine interest in the future.

Here are some of the concerns listed:
A. Wanting to be faithful to the revelation of Jesus in all aspects of our lives. We are uncomfortable with the way politics polarizes and divides the church.
B. Challenging the Mennonite Church to actively engage our history. We want to
know how our origins in the Radical Reformation contribute to the present activities of the church in the world.
C. Bringing community, intimacy and accountability to the forefront of our relationships with each other.
D. Recognizing an active peace witness as integral to who we are.
E. Retaining and involving young adults who have grown up in the church.
F. Changing the Mennonite game from "How are we related as cousins?" to "How did you choose the Mennonite Church?"

We hope that this will be the beginning of conversation between young adults and older members of the church. We want to involve the diverse voices of our peers, so we invite you to join us and share your concerns and discuss those we have listed above as we continue to discern our direction.

First, thanks for including me in this dialogue. I am honoured to be among the first to view it. I want to applaud your efforts to build dialogue, and especially to do so without labeling each other first. I have always found that labels such as liberal/conservative, evangelical/cerebral, right-/left-wing are damaging to the quality of discussion.

Second, I know little about MC Canada or MC US institutional practice and political structure. It's partly because I am new to this conference, and partly because I like to live outside of those requirements, without necessarily defying them. This also means that I don't know how accurately the conference(s) are following or not following your suggestions. The church is defined by what happens in the community, not what decisions are made by old men and women wearing suits and carrying briefcases. While we need to run our churches within the parameters they set, the work at the community level is far more important.

With regard to your points, I strongly affirm A in its content and its top priority. I do however see a disconnect between points promoting the role of the church as institution (B & E) and the points downplaying the relevance of the institution (C & F). I see E and F as being in slight contrast. If young people grew up in the church, then at which point did they choose the church? I sense that your focus is on the 'retaining and involving' part and notsomuch on the 'grown up in the church' part, but when we make special efforts to include our own, we embrace our cousins, and not those who have chosen. It saddens me too to watch young people leave the Mennonite church, but I would prefer that E read "E. Retaining and involving MC's young adults." Also, F brings up a valid theological point, but the Mennonite game is social practice, not conference policy. The fact that F is even a problem is because we've been so good at keeping C in the past. It also seemed ironic to me that all of the members of your group carry typical Mennonite cultural last names.

Reformation studies is a passion of mine, especially the Radical Reformation. I love seeing what that era teaches us today. There however, many earmarks of that era that time from the present. 16th century society was polarized to a far greater extent than we are now. The Radicals were executed because their extreme views branded them as heretical. The invading Turks were viewed as less than human. Luther, Müntzer, Blaurock et al called the Pope and the catholic priests "murderers of souls" for their doctrines, and wrote them off as hell-bound. I doubt your group wants to add that to the present activities of the church. The conflict at that time was an attempt to cleanse a corrupt but dominant church structure. No matter how corrupt our church structure is, our greatest struggle should be against the corrupt but dominant capitalist socio-political system.

Thanks again. All the best! Let me know how things go!

   [ posted by William @ 2:18 PM ]

Maybe I Don't Know Much About Buddhism, but ...
Lately I've been trying to find ways of reclaiming my time, which has meant slightly less computer games, and slightly more TV. Philosopher Les Wynan might not call this progress, but Les Wynan should do more thinking and less whinin'. Anyway, the other night on TV I tuned in for a bit of a round table discussion on the influence of the pope, where the guests represented various religious groups. Now this should have made for a good discussion, except that the hosts asked stupid questions and the guests spoke out of their own biased agendas.

In response to a question on the pope's view of women, a Muslim leader took the opportunity to share how freeing Islam is in the lives of women. In response to the question of whether the pope was a spiritual leader or a religious leader, the Buddhist leader ranted about how evil Christian missionaries are. I changed the channel shortly after that.

This guy pointed to Asia where he knows of Christian groups are only giving Tsunami aid to people who convert to Christianity. I admit that that type of proselytizing is destructive, and I won't deny that it's happening, although the word of one man doesn't make it definite. He went on to say how destructive Christianity is to families in many parts of Asia, and how proselytization is inherently evil. I started to think about the churches that I know in Vietnam, whose leaders are arrested, tortured and/or killed with little to no trial or evidence because of an edict made by Buddhist authorities. I thought back to the Buddhist monk who burned himself alive in Saigon during the Vietnam conflict to prove a point. Actions like that are not conducive to healthy families either. Isn't Buddhism supposed to be about internal issues, not external issues like family? Even Engaged Buddhism is supposed to be about social justice issues, which over-ride family. He's the Buddhist leader, not me, but I was quite confused by his reasoning.

Don't get me wrong, I love families. I get strength from my family, but it also saddens me when they make independent choices outside of my religious framework. Aren't all religions based on focus on the sacred? Isn't family part of the civic (or mundane, or whatever the opposite of sacred is)? Or is it simply that Buddhism has the same problem as Christianity, that the leaders of the institutions are more concerned with the stability of those institutions rather than the application of the sacred texts.

   [ posted by William @ 12:15 PM ]

A Kind of Complicatedness
I recently completed reading the book "A Complicated Kindness" by Miriam Toews. It has been on Macleans' fiction bestseller list in Canada for 40 weeks. I generally don't make time to read anything on the best-seller list, mostly because I don't really enjoy popular culture literature. I ended up reading this book for a few reasons, 1) because it was required reading in my literature class, and 2) because it focuses on a Mennonite community.

The response to this book that I have formulated is in two parts: my thoughts as a critic of literature, and my thoughts as a Mennonite.
The book is quite well-written. It is easy to read, and easy to pick it up without losing track of where you've been. It's depictions of small town life, and of the various characters, with their various afflictions, are endearing and humourous. If one can remove any kind of emotional attachment to the institutional which is being criticized, the book is quite enjoyable to read.
However, I cannot easily remove myself from the people and institutions that are being criticized in the book. The book openly criticizes the Mennonite institution, and lightly veils the town (Steinbach), and only hints at an actual church. I am a proud Mennonite, and I love Steinbach. Steinbach is a town in southern Manitoba, with a predominant Mennonite community and steeped in Mennonite history and culture. I grew up in a Mennonite community that wished they were Steinbach. We were smaller, poorer, less sophisticated, and far less capable of actually influencing town and business behaviour. Still, I know the hurt that can be caused by this kind of community. I know that mental illnesses can go undiagnosed and ignored, if not even punished. I have seen the hurt that causes books like this to be written. I am not surprised to see books like this one, but I am sad that they are so popular (though it more likely that the small-town nature of the book is most likely the popular feature, not the anti-Mennonite propaganda). My own novel (assuming I finish it) won't be totally redeeming either, but it will be moreso than this one is.

The literary community loves this book, and people think its a fun book to read. The impression I get from Mennonites is quite different. Even the Mennonites that like the book (and there are some), think it is terribly depressing, to quote Rudy Wiebe, "grim, grim, grim".

I can and should go into my deeper theological problems with the book, moreso with the common misconceptions people hold that are expressed in the book. Perhaps at another time.

My sister said that she liked the book, but wouldn't recommend to people, because she didn't want them to think that the book profiled her own experience within a Mennonite community. I recommend the book, but only to people who know how to read a novel without attaching the depictions within it as fact and who have a healthy view of the Mennonite community.

   [ posted by William @ 9:05 PM ]