January 6th
Five Minutes on Friday #55

TO MEND THE WORLD

https://youtu.be/pwFlCIpmRo0 - ‘The saddest noise’

 

PEANUTS

SNOOPY looking at Charlie Brown:  I wonder why some of us were born dogs while others were born people?  Is it just pure chance or what is it?  Somehow, the whole thing doesn’t seem very fair…why should I have been the lucky one?

 

BOOKS

Here are some of my favourite suggestions for reading in 2023.

Tomson Highway – Permanent Astonishment.  From his birth in a snowbank in Nunavet to the concert halls of Madrid and Paris, Highway has lived a full and astonishing life.

Katherine Paterson – Stories of My Life: A memoir.  Born in China, raised in the U.S. Paterson became a bestselling author.  In one amazing five year period she won two Newberry Medals (best children’s book) and two National Book Awards.  This book gently retells formative moments of her life, friendships, and writing.

Jonathan Franzen – Crossroads.  This novel tells the story of Russ Hildebrandt, a pastor, and his family, who all seem to be at a crisis moment in their lives.  His sixth novel and my personal favorite of the books he has written.

Dora Dueck – Return Stroke.   The title of Dora Dueck’s excellent new book, Return Stroke, refers to an event in her late father-in-law’s life, when he was 24 and living in Paraguay. Lightning knocked him unconscious and took the life of his mother; both were inside a house when the fatal strike hit, a bolt of electricity so strong it melted the chain in a clock they had brought from Russia. The title essay of Dueck’s collection explores this event within the context of her father-in-law Heinrich’s life, trying to make sense of the tragedy and of a man she never met (he died before she married his son).

The book consists of essays and a memoir in which Dueck ponders what it means to have lived well and what the past can teach us.

Contending with the mystery of old age and death, Return Stroke includes essays on Dueck’s own aging and the death of her husband, Helmut, who succumbed to cancer in 2021. “As He Lay Dying” is an especially moving essay as Dueck invites readers into her husband’s last days. 

For an excellent review see here:  https://anabaptistworld.org/playful-circularity-of-then-and-now/?utm_source=Anabaptist+World&utm_campaign=3054bad205-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_AWHeadlines-

And one classic:  The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky.  A book I have read and re-read since my student years.  The story begins with the murder of a brutal father.  Who did it?  One of the three sons?  The novel becomes engaged in God questions: Does God exist?  If God exists, how can the suffering of even one child be thinkable?  Is there an alternative to institutional religion which offers bland comfort rather than mystery and authority?  The great Russian writer who wrestled with faith his whole life, does not present ‘proofs’ about the existence of God, but rather a fictional picture of what faith and the lack of it would look like in the world of his day.  

Dostoevsky believed the Russian Orthodox faith to be unique and powerful.  (Whether we believe that or not is irrelevant).  The fact remains that after 70 years of Soviet Communism’s attempt to eradicate faith by violence, starvation, brutal internment camps, and a systematic attempt at indoctrination in a materialist education – the Communists failed!  It is Dostoevsky and faith that has survived rather than Marx and Lenin’s vision for a godless paradise.

All of this is to say that the novel grapples with questions we continue ask in the 21st century.

 

SUNDAY – Matthew 3.13-17; Galatians 2.20

Erland Waltner was a leader in the Mennonite Church U.S.A. for many years including twenty years as president of our seminary (AMBS)in Elkhart, Indiana. 

He wrote that he would describe his faith when he was young as a "spirituality of the road". He likened his time with God in those years to a pit stop in the Indianapolis 500, when racers stop to refuel and check tires before hurrying back into the fast lane as quickly as possible.

But in his elderly years Waltner talked more of a "spirituality of the river," in which he nurtured a deeper trust in God than he did in his early years. He learned to be carried by the river – no small task, he admitted, when he never really mastered the ability to swim. It's hard to let go. It's hard to trust…. 

(("From Road to River Spirituality," in Godward: Personal Stories of Grace, by Ted Koontz, 1996).

This Sunday as we retell the story of Jesus’ baptism, we are invited to reflect on our own pilgrimage of faith.  What metaphor or image would you use to describe your journey?