I was about 50 miles away from Pandora this last Monday afternoon when I felt in my pocket for my cell phone. My pockets were empty. No cell phone. I looked around the car where I sometimes lay my phone. Still no cell phone. It became obvious that I had leftmy cell phone at home. I began to inwardly panic. Here I was going to be away from home for two days with lots of driving and no cell phone. No way of communicating with the outside world. No way of calling for help if I needed it. I was too far away to go back. I would need to forge ahead with no cell phone.
Then I caught myself. I begin to consider the ridiculous nature of my unfounded panic. I have been without the “security” of a cell phone considerably longer in my life than I have had one. I would have to depend on people to stop and help if I had problems, as I have for most of my life. Could I not depend on God to provide if I needed help? Did the promises of God’s constant presence mean nothing to me? There are other ways of communicating, and after all, I was going on a retreat to be alone with God. Sometimes, all our technology gets in the way of being still and waiting to hear to voice of God.
I arrived at Camp Friedenswald after my Panda Express supper at University Park Mall in Mishawaka, Indiana. Instead of the noisy bustling crowds at the mall I found an encompassing silence at Friedenswald. The health center, where I was to stay was left open for me and no one was around. It was quiet. Very quiet. I walked down to the beach. More quiet. There was no noise except birds and the normal night sounds in the woods. At first the silence was a little eerie. Then the silence began to wash over me and seemed to cleanse me from my addictions to noise and “doing.” I was reminded of the verse and song from Psalm 46, “Be still and know that I am God.” I forgot about my lack of a cell phone and began to soak up the silence and peace of the Peaceful Woods. I brewed a cup of coffee and sat on a swing outside as darkness came. I knew that this is what I needed and looked forward to the next two days of prayer, silence, reading, and reflection.
Tuesday was our Central District Conference Ministers’ Resource Day which focused on Psalm 46 and being still. There were times of group reflections as well as silence in the group and on our own. There is really something very powerful about corporate silence. I also benefitted from the times of walking the trails in the woods. I had never noticed the giant beech trees on Turtle Hill before. Not quite like the giant Sequoias in California but very tall for Indiana. All in all it was a great time away, even though I got lost on one trail and missed one of the group sessions and even though I tripped and fell on a rough chip and seal road and tore my jeans, bloodied my knee and lost my glasses. (That is another story for another time.) It was a great time of renewal away from the demands of my work and focusing on what is really important. I never missed my cell phone.
Going on Retreat
I am long over do to go on a spiritual retreat. Today, I am finally going to do it. After officiating at a grave side service later this morning, I will be heading up to Camp Friedenswald to spend a little time alone with God. My own retreat time will envelope our CDC Pastors’ Resource Day on Tuesday which will focus on “Listening to God.” This should give me some more things to think and pray about. I will return to Pandora late Wednesday afternoon in time for our midweek Bible Study.
While looking forward to this time alone, I am not sure I am completely comfortable with it. The reason I don’t go in retreat more often is that I convince myself that I really don’t have time. Too Many things to do. Sermons to write. People to Visit. Emails to respond to. Classes to prepare for. Things to organize and clean up. Articles to write. I then realize I begin to sound like Martha who is fretting over so many important things that I forget to be like Mary and simply sit at Jesus’ feet. Maybe I need to look at this time away as being “too busy NOT to take a retreat.” Maybe I need this time away to gain a little perspective and see what is really important rather than continue to shuffle papers and go from thing to thing while actually not accomplishing much of significance. I’ll let you know how it turns out.
While looking forward to this time alone, I am not sure I am completely comfortable with it. The reason I don’t go in retreat more often is that I convince myself that I really don’t have time. Too Many things to do. Sermons to write. People to Visit. Emails to respond to. Classes to prepare for. Things to organize and clean up. Articles to write. I then realize I begin to sound like Martha who is fretting over so many important things that I forget to be like Mary and simply sit at Jesus’ feet. Maybe I need to look at this time away as being “too busy NOT to take a retreat.” Maybe I need this time away to gain a little perspective and see what is really important rather than continue to shuffle papers and go from thing to thing while actually not accomplishing much of significance. I’ll let you know how it turns out.
Friends and blog readers, The article below just came across my computer this morning and I felt it was worthy of sharing with you. It comes from the latest issue of the Mennonite Weekly Review. Have a great day. Dennis
Our world needs fewer bombs, more ice cream
By Sheldon C. Good, Mennonite Weekly Review
PHILADELPHIA — On the eve of Sept. 11, a peace activist and an entrepreneur helped us reflect on our post-9/11 world and imagine a better reality — one with fewer bombs and more ice cream Author and activist Shane Claiborne teamed up with Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream, to critique defense spending, violence and war. They also promoted faith, hope and love to the sold out crowd at World Café Live.
In short, the two self-described “ringleaders of the circus” hosted a peace and justice variety show. The two-hour live event featured a visual artist, a poet, a juggler and a welder, who beat an AK-47 into a hay fork. Ten years after that infamous day during my first week of high school, I realized, all is not well with the world.“Our country spends over $30 billion a year on our nuclear arsenal,” Cohen said.
To illustrate his point, he poured 10,000 BB pellets into a metal container. The sound, reverberating off the venue’s walls, seemed to drone on forever. Make it stop, my heart cried out.
Our current nuclear weapons arsenal equals 50,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs, Cohen said. Lord, have mercy. Cohen later arranged Oreos to show how the Pentagon’s budget stacks up, literally, to funding for social programs. The Pentagon’s wobbling skyscraper of cookies flanked multiple, almost unnoticeable, other stacks.
Terry Rockefeller, a documentary film producer, lost her sister during the Sept. 11 attacks. She spoke of her search to break cycles of violence.“There can be no war on terror. War is terror,” she said.A similar exhortation loomed behind her — “Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows” — a quote from Martin Luther King Jr.
Since May 2002, Rockefeller has with worked with September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, a group founded by family members of those killed on 9/11. They say that “grief is not a cry for war,” Rockefeller said.
In fact, they transform their grief into peaceful witness. Such nonviolent actions in pursuit of justice lead our jaded world in a different direction. Society, which so often acquiesces to the myth of redemptive violence, beckons for this kind of peacemaking.
After all, peace cannot come through war.
Logan Mehl-Laituri didn’t always believe that. In 2004, he deployed to Iraq with the U.S. Army.
“I traded my humanity for nationalism,” said Mehl-Laituri, who was later diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Facing a second deployment, he applied to be a noncombatant conscientious objector. He asked to remain in service but refused to carry a weapon.
The army honorably discharged Mehl-Laituri days before he traveled to the Middle East with Christian Peacemaker Teams.
Claiborne lived in Iraq during the “shock and awe” bombing of 2003. At an Iraq hospital, a doctor asked him, “Has your country lost its imagination?”
Before the Philadelphia event, I asked Claiborne that question too.
“Our imagination is hemorrhaging right now,” he said. “We’re spending $250,000 a minute on war as the country goes bankrupt.”
Claiborne believes Mennonites play a key role in illuminating this “elephant in the room.”
“The distinctiveness and peculiarity of the Mennonite witness as a prophetic and creative call and a front to the world we live in is really critically relevant right now,” he said.
He called Mennonites, “who might be tempted to tone it down a little bit, in order to be more relevant to the culture,” to share their peacemaking tradition.
“There’s a whole generation that’s grown tired of militarism and the emptiness of materialism and is longing for another way,” he said. “I think the integration of faith and practice of Mennonites is what many people are hungry for.”
Cohen, a secular progressive, considers himself a “natural ally” with Christians.
“We are saying the same thing in two different languages,” he said by phone Sept. 7.
Cohen, who has received numerous awards for socially responsible business, told me his passion for social justice comes from a sense of compassion and fairness.
Growing up on Long Island, he recalls occasionally driving into poverty-stricken Harlem with his family.
“I thought it was unfair that because somebody was born on one side of a line that they ended up living a life of poverty,” he said.
Multiple Anabaptist-related groups supported the event: 1040 for Peace, Christian Peacemaker Teams, Heeding God’s Call and Mennonite Central Committee.
Groups like these help us put our faith into action for peace and justice. There’s a real opportunity for Mennonites, 10 years after 9/11, to proclaim that Jesus’ way looks different from the world’s.
So let’s keep inviting our neighbors to join us on the journey toward a world with fewer bombs and more ice cream.
© 1999-2010, Mennonite Weekly Review Inc.
All rights reserved.
129 W 6th St Newton KS 67114
800-424-0178
For reprints, write editor (at) mennoweekly.org
Our world needs fewer bombs, more ice cream
By Sheldon C. Good, Mennonite Weekly Review
PHILADELPHIA — On the eve of Sept. 11, a peace activist and an entrepreneur helped us reflect on our post-9/11 world and imagine a better reality — one with fewer bombs and more ice cream Author and activist Shane Claiborne teamed up with Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream, to critique defense spending, violence and war. They also promoted faith, hope and love to the sold out crowd at World Café Live.
In short, the two self-described “ringleaders of the circus” hosted a peace and justice variety show. The two-hour live event featured a visual artist, a poet, a juggler and a welder, who beat an AK-47 into a hay fork. Ten years after that infamous day during my first week of high school, I realized, all is not well with the world.“Our country spends over $30 billion a year on our nuclear arsenal,” Cohen said.
To illustrate his point, he poured 10,000 BB pellets into a metal container. The sound, reverberating off the venue’s walls, seemed to drone on forever. Make it stop, my heart cried out.
Our current nuclear weapons arsenal equals 50,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs, Cohen said. Lord, have mercy. Cohen later arranged Oreos to show how the Pentagon’s budget stacks up, literally, to funding for social programs. The Pentagon’s wobbling skyscraper of cookies flanked multiple, almost unnoticeable, other stacks.
Terry Rockefeller, a documentary film producer, lost her sister during the Sept. 11 attacks. She spoke of her search to break cycles of violence.“There can be no war on terror. War is terror,” she said.A similar exhortation loomed behind her — “Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows” — a quote from Martin Luther King Jr.
Since May 2002, Rockefeller has with worked with September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, a group founded by family members of those killed on 9/11. They say that “grief is not a cry for war,” Rockefeller said.
In fact, they transform their grief into peaceful witness. Such nonviolent actions in pursuit of justice lead our jaded world in a different direction. Society, which so often acquiesces to the myth of redemptive violence, beckons for this kind of peacemaking.
After all, peace cannot come through war.
Logan Mehl-Laituri didn’t always believe that. In 2004, he deployed to Iraq with the U.S. Army.
“I traded my humanity for nationalism,” said Mehl-Laituri, who was later diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Facing a second deployment, he applied to be a noncombatant conscientious objector. He asked to remain in service but refused to carry a weapon.
The army honorably discharged Mehl-Laituri days before he traveled to the Middle East with Christian Peacemaker Teams.
Claiborne lived in Iraq during the “shock and awe” bombing of 2003. At an Iraq hospital, a doctor asked him, “Has your country lost its imagination?”
Before the Philadelphia event, I asked Claiborne that question too.
“Our imagination is hemorrhaging right now,” he said. “We’re spending $250,000 a minute on war as the country goes bankrupt.”
Claiborne believes Mennonites play a key role in illuminating this “elephant in the room.”
“The distinctiveness and peculiarity of the Mennonite witness as a prophetic and creative call and a front to the world we live in is really critically relevant right now,” he said.
He called Mennonites, “who might be tempted to tone it down a little bit, in order to be more relevant to the culture,” to share their peacemaking tradition.
“There’s a whole generation that’s grown tired of militarism and the emptiness of materialism and is longing for another way,” he said. “I think the integration of faith and practice of Mennonites is what many people are hungry for.”
Cohen, a secular progressive, considers himself a “natural ally” with Christians.
“We are saying the same thing in two different languages,” he said by phone Sept. 7.
Cohen, who has received numerous awards for socially responsible business, told me his passion for social justice comes from a sense of compassion and fairness.
Growing up on Long Island, he recalls occasionally driving into poverty-stricken Harlem with his family.
“I thought it was unfair that because somebody was born on one side of a line that they ended up living a life of poverty,” he said.
Multiple Anabaptist-related groups supported the event: 1040 for Peace, Christian Peacemaker Teams, Heeding God’s Call and Mennonite Central Committee.
Groups like these help us put our faith into action for peace and justice. There’s a real opportunity for Mennonites, 10 years after 9/11, to proclaim that Jesus’ way looks different from the world’s.
So let’s keep inviting our neighbors to join us on the journey toward a world with fewer bombs and more ice cream.
© 1999-2010, Mennonite Weekly Review Inc.
All rights reserved.
129 W 6th St Newton KS 67114
800-424-0178
For reprints, write editor (at) mennoweekly.org
The New Year Begins
No, I don’t have a strange new calendar. Neither am I mixed up about my dates. But in many ways September marks the beginning of a new year. School is beginning for all our students, teachers and other various individuals who work in education. We also begin a new Sunday School year here at Grace Mennonite. So while it is not actually the change of the numerical year it is a time for new beginnings for many.
Beginning this September is a new catechism class. This year I have three high school sophomore girls who are preparing for baptism later this year. They had been deeply challenged at the Mennonite USA youth convention in Pittsburgh this summer. One speaker in particular encouraged the young people to consider getting baptized as a sign of their calling, commitment, and service to Jesus Christ. It is always very challenging for me to reflect anew on the essentials and basics of our faith and communicate that to high school students. I also learn a great deal from them as they respond to the assigned Bible readings each week and share the significant verses they find while reading. Most of all I appreciate the questions that are asked. We are beginning by reading the Gospel of Matthew. I can’t wait to see what they say about Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5, 6, and 7 this Sunday.
Dennis’ favorite verse of the week
One of the new things I am doing this time in my Baptismal Preparation Class is sharing one of my favorite Bible verses or passages each week. I have lots of “favorite verses” and I have always found it difficult to narrow it down. But after being asked many times what my favorite verse was, I finally decided a number of years ago to choose one verse as my number one favorite verse. So now, when asked, instead of trying avoid the question by explaining that I have many favorite verses and not just one, I immediately respond by saying my favorite verse is I John 3:1. See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!
This short verse reminds me that no matter what kind of day I am having or how I may be feeling about myself, that I am a child of God. Wow! I AM GOD’S CHILD! I am also struck each time with the word “lavished.” God does not just “share” love or “give” love; God LAVISHES his love on us. This verse also reminds me of how I am to live my life as a child of God. I could write much more about this favorite verse of mine, but the blog would get too long. Another verse next time.
What I am Reading
My reading time this last week has been given over to studying maps and guidebooks in planning for our trip to Europe at the end of October. More on that later. I hope to get back to my book about Deo Gratius and his escape from Burundi soon.
Where in the Bible is Dennis Reading?
I have finished up I Corinthians. Always good to go over the love chapter in I Cor 13, Spiritual gifts in chapter 12 and the resurrection in chapter 15. I also finished 1 Samual and am now well into King David’s life in 2 Samuel. Psalms 58-59 where my Psalms for today. Even though I have read the Psalms many times, I am still amazed at the very forceful language, like “Break the teeth, O Lord, of the wicked.” The language in Ezekiel 16 is even stronger as the prophet refers to Jerusalem as an adulterous wife engaged in prostitution. How would Ezekiel refer to the church in America today? But then even Ezekiel is sprinkled with those very comforting and promising verses like Ezekiel 12:9.
I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.
Beginning this September is a new catechism class. This year I have three high school sophomore girls who are preparing for baptism later this year. They had been deeply challenged at the Mennonite USA youth convention in Pittsburgh this summer. One speaker in particular encouraged the young people to consider getting baptized as a sign of their calling, commitment, and service to Jesus Christ. It is always very challenging for me to reflect anew on the essentials and basics of our faith and communicate that to high school students. I also learn a great deal from them as they respond to the assigned Bible readings each week and share the significant verses they find while reading. Most of all I appreciate the questions that are asked. We are beginning by reading the Gospel of Matthew. I can’t wait to see what they say about Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5, 6, and 7 this Sunday.
Dennis’ favorite verse of the week
One of the new things I am doing this time in my Baptismal Preparation Class is sharing one of my favorite Bible verses or passages each week. I have lots of “favorite verses” and I have always found it difficult to narrow it down. But after being asked many times what my favorite verse was, I finally decided a number of years ago to choose one verse as my number one favorite verse. So now, when asked, instead of trying avoid the question by explaining that I have many favorite verses and not just one, I immediately respond by saying my favorite verse is I John 3:1. See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!
This short verse reminds me that no matter what kind of day I am having or how I may be feeling about myself, that I am a child of God. Wow! I AM GOD’S CHILD! I am also struck each time with the word “lavished.” God does not just “share” love or “give” love; God LAVISHES his love on us. This verse also reminds me of how I am to live my life as a child of God. I could write much more about this favorite verse of mine, but the blog would get too long. Another verse next time.
What I am Reading
My reading time this last week has been given over to studying maps and guidebooks in planning for our trip to Europe at the end of October. More on that later. I hope to get back to my book about Deo Gratius and his escape from Burundi soon.
Where in the Bible is Dennis Reading?
I have finished up I Corinthians. Always good to go over the love chapter in I Cor 13, Spiritual gifts in chapter 12 and the resurrection in chapter 15. I also finished 1 Samual and am now well into King David’s life in 2 Samuel. Psalms 58-59 where my Psalms for today. Even though I have read the Psalms many times, I am still amazed at the very forceful language, like “Break the teeth, O Lord, of the wicked.” The language in Ezekiel 16 is even stronger as the prophet refers to Jerusalem as an adulterous wife engaged in prostitution. How would Ezekiel refer to the church in America today? But then even Ezekiel is sprinkled with those very comforting and promising verses like Ezekiel 12:9.
I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.
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