Last week I wrote about the worsening situation in Burma. Today is International Bloggers Day for Burma and the country is in the midst an increasingly repressive crackdown on thousands of monks and ordinary people in the country who were on the streets last week. The BBC reports:
Residents of the main city, Rangoon, say the streets are quiet during daylight hours, with the police and army keeping a low profile.
But during the overnight curfew, they say raids by the security forces continue.
The BBC’s Chris Hogg, in neighbouring Thailand, says if it is a tactic designed to scare people, it is working.
Click the read more link to sign the petition. (more…)
In the past few months, we’ve discussed how to handle churches that stray from their nonviolent roots, why we should refrain from commenting on situations we don’t know in-depth, and why those of us in comfortable lives should hold their tongues when people in uncomfortable lives outside of North America use violence. Yes, that’s a simplistic way of saying it, but it’s a decent summary.
My question is, when should we insist on peace and nonviolence? When should we, as people committed to the peacemaking roots of our church tradition (and not because it is our tradition, but because we believe it, too), stand up and say, “Nope, I’m not going to let this get watered down”? If a person with a U.S. military background comes into our churches and says, “Don’t tell people in Palestine not to throw rocks when people point guns at them,” how do you respond? Should we insist on peacemaking and nonviolence for ourselves but decline to comment on how others live? Can we live in church fellowship with those who say otherwise, and if so, does this mean asking them not to promote their beliefs in our churches? (more…)
All day today I’ve been meaning to sit down and right something meaningful about the escalating situation in Burma which seems ripe for change or extensive repression. Turns out someone with far more experience has done a great job of laying out the history of the situation there and a useful perspective on what’s happening:
Excerpt from Burma on the March by Gene Stoltzfus (founder of Christian Peacemaker Teams):
Buddhist teachings and values are deeply ingrained in Burmese society and when monks lead, an unwritten message is sent to the nation. The arrest of monks creates a shocking dissonance in the minds of the Buddhist population. In the practice of Buddhism in Burma, people frequently leave the routine of their lives for a few weeks to become monks. With saffron robes, shaved heads and begging bowls they examine their lives, perhaps in the hope of gaining merit, more spiritually centered living, or to move along in their own personal cycle of karma. Some of the monks walking in the demonstrations now are almost certainly people who have only recently joined the monastery for a brief break.
Marketplace has an interactive game called “Consumer Consequences” that is worth checking out. My current lifestyle is estimated to require 2.9 Earths to sustain it. What about yours?
Check out the game and some background info by clicking here.
This week I got an email from Cliff Kindy saying that he’s returning to Iraq for four months as part of a CPT Team. Cliff’s work as a Christian Peacemaker has been mentioned a fewtimesbefore on YAR.
A friend asked why I go to Iraq at a time when the situation is deteriorating even further. I go in expectation, trusting that the Jesus way of nonviolence always brings more creativity and positive change to situations of injustice and violence than the tools of war. The resurrection for me is a sign that life trumps death. Yes, it is a high risk project, but a project that participates already in the future for which we pray and yearn!
Last year I posted over on the Shoup blog about an incident in which UCLA security guards tasered a student 5 times in the Library. The accompanying video seems to show a situation in which, in my opinion, security guards indulge themselves in an entirely unnecessary power trip. You can read more of my response in the link above
Yesterday at a debate with Senator Kerry, security guards at the University of Florida used a taser on a student who went over his alloted question time:
I showed this to a friend and his response was that the student seems to be deliberately escalating the situation. Personally, I find the situation disturbing because of how quickly the security guards escalate the situation in the first place, by grabbing him. What do all of you think? (more…)
Just over 4 years ago the Mennonite World Conference held its World Assembly in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. At the time the country was in the midst of a downward spiral under the direction of president Robert Mugabe. There was concern about holding the assembly in Zimbabwe because of the worsening social/economic/political situation, but the hosts, the Brethren in Christ Church of Zimbabwe insisted that the assembly go on in their country. Since 2003 the downward spiral has worsened. The country is near economic collapse if it has not collapsed already. I don’t hear a lot about Zimbabwe in American news these days (that might be because I don’t hear a lot of American news in general) but the BBC has a video report that is worth checking out.
Out of all the issues we discuss on YAR, what we wear is probably one of the least important. But we all make choices daily about clothing, so it’s not something to just ignore, either.
How does what you wear communicate something about you to other people? Do you use your clothing as a medium consciously?
Are you more interested in the production of said clothing than what the style, cut, and extras have to say about you? (Sweat shop labor concerns and the like)
How do you keep clothing from being more important an issue than it ought to be? I know a woman who wears plain, roomy dresses she makes herself not because she’s trying to look Amish (not that there are any Amish people in her town in England, anyway), but because it helps her focus on important things and not her body shape and size. Those of you who have worked in medical settings where scrub uniforms are required may know the feeling of liberation by not having to think about what you’re going to wear to work that day.
Is there clothing you just won’t wear? Why or why not?
I’ve been a member of YAR since its early days (a year ago already!), but have, for various reasons, remained a silent observer until today. I figured it was about time I offered some thoughts, especially as I’ve been so nourished and challenged by so many of your stories, words, thoughts, experiences. This is such a valuable space.
For a bit of an introduction… I find myself at Goshen College, after growing up in another Mennonite hub in Southern Ontario… and I’m the AMIGOS (Mennonite World Conference’s global community of young Anabaptists) representative for Mennonite Church Canada… and I like to think there are some other important things about me, too, but I’ll finish with this: I really like biking. And so this past summer, I was a part of BikeMovement Asia (which has also been mentioned in various earlier posts, and is also fairly well explained at www.bikemovement.org); the reflection below was penned during these days of cycling in late May, 2007.
So I apologise for beginning my posting career with a recycled post, but also hope that these words which grew out of my time in Southeast Asia continue to hold some relevance… (more…)
Many of you have probably heard of BikeMovement. If you haven’t, we were a group of young adults that biked across the USA last summer talking about church and several other topics discussed on YAR.
Well the documentary following the trip is now complete, and a free copy is being sent to every MCUSA church this next week. (more…)
Do any of you radical anabaptists have non-radicals in your home congregation? I attend a Mennonite Church that has a large number of James Dobson fans in the congregation and another large number of people who do not want to offend any of these folks for fear of conflict and/or losing valuable members of the congregation. A friend of mine who is very peace and social justice oriented is very frustrated by the lack of support in this congregation and even some outright hostility towards peace issues being brought up in church.
We have ceased being a peace church in order to appease veterans and their spouses in the congregation. Some Mennonite women it seems have married non-Mennonite men who have military backgrounds and feel that bringing up peace issues is disrespectful to the sacrifice they made for their country. The women fear that if peace issues are brought up, their husbands will either want to attend a different church or just not attend church, so they don’t really want any peace issues brought up in church.
How do other congregations deal with this? (more…)
The NY Times featured an article about a new book containing revealing letters written by Mother Teresa (title above). The letters detail that one of the impetuses for her to leave the Lorento convent and live among Calcutta’s poor was a feeling of spiritual emptiness…a feeling she apparently struggled with for her whole life. The NYTimes says:
‘“I think there is no suffering greater than what is caused by the doubts of those who want to believe,” wrote Flannery O’Connor, the Roman Catholic author whose stories traverse the landscape of 20th-century unbelief. “What people don’t realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross. It is much harder to believe than not to believe.”’
How do those words feel to you, YARs? Like, what do you think? I’m excited to hear. The NYTimes continues: (more…)
A friend of mine invited me to a Mennonite church with her to experience their message this past November of 2006. I looked into the history; I examined the theology. And it made sense to me. As a result, I had a Christian conversion.
And then I spent some time in the church, and found that faith can smolder even among Mennonites. Despite a great theological understanding of the role of the Holy Spirit, I rarely hear Mennonites talk about the Spirit in their lives. Though preaching pacifism, some Mennonite lives out passive-ism. And still others cling to an ethnic identity which, while certainly important to heritage, is also exclusionary for those folks who don’t share that history.
I found this blog and thought perhaps it could be a helpful spiritual outlet for me. And, indeed, it has been.
But even us folks I think warrant a bit of constructive criticism, which I do submit comes from within my limited worldview, so take it with a grain of salt. YAR ain’t perfect. I may love this space, but I don’t unflaggingly support it. In the upcoming year, I would suggest the following to be considered by us folks: (more…)
Today while looking at the category list on YAR I noticed several categories with just a handful of posts. It’s interesting to see which these are. I should note some of these are topics we do address but for some reason don’t categorize our posts as.
But for the others, are these topics that don’t interest you? Would you like to start talking about them more?
Chosenness (2 posts)
New Monasticism (1 post)
Consumerism (4 posts)
Corporations (1 post)
Death Penalty (1 post)
Economics (2 posts)
Education (3 posts)
End Times (1 post)
Environment (2 posts)
Ethics (2 posts)
Ex-Gay (1 post)
Excommunication (2 posts)
Foreign Policy (4 posts)
Gaza (1 post)
God (4 posts)
Guns (1 post)
Hamas (1 post)
Hate (1 post)
Illegal (1 post)
Immigration (3 posts)
Indigenous (3 posts)
Israel (2 posts)
Judaism (3 posts)
Loyalty (3 posts)
Music (4 posts)
Objective (4 posts)
Palestine (1 post)
Peace (4 posts)
Polarization (4 posts)
Poll (4 posts)
Pope (2 posts)
Rape (1 post)
Reviews (1 post)
Schism (2 posts)
Science (1 post)
Sex (4 posts) (Compare this to 8 under “Homosexuality” and 28 under “LGBTQ”)
Sports (1 post)
Stewardship (2 posts)
Stories (2 posts)
Theater (1 post)
