My Love for Gardening

I grew up in southwestern Manitoba, in a small town just like La Broquerie. My mom was a cook for a local diner and later in a nursing home. She always seemed to be surrounded by food. My dad worked for the rural municipality as their grader operator, a job he loved and was brilliant at: best gravel roads in the region. My dad spent his winters curling and watching hockey while my mom was in the kitchen making perogies, cabbage rolls and cinnamon buns to be sold at the local craft sales. But, in the spring, our family met in the garden.

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Why Are We Here?

Mary’s early childhood experience of being a refugee in the Ukraine flavoured her entire life. She was six years old when her family retreated with the German army in 1948. From there her family came to Canada. This experience gave her an immediate and continuing empathy for people that have been displaced from their homes for any reason.

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Living Simply is a Choice

“I remember us being poorer than our neighbours,” said Jack and Ruth added, “We learned our living skills from our parents.” I was trying to find out when Jack and Ruth developed their current simple lifestyle, but the impression they gave me is that the simple lifestyle is what they grew up with; it was what was normal. They never questioned it or wished for something different.

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The Church and the (Warming) World, Part 2: Revelation

Revelation, the last book of the Bible, is the most difficult to read. It’s also one of the books that most shapes our understanding of life: it provides a vision of the future, and like a novel, we understand the chapters of our lives differently if we’ve already read the ending. Our eschatology, or understanding of “last things,” impacts the way we view life’s journey because it tells us where we’re going.

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The Church and the (Warming) World, Part 1: Genesis

John Calvin taught that God’s act of creation in Genesis culminated in humanity - that we are the peak of God’s creative activities, and that everything created before us was for our benefit or use. I think this is (mostly) true: God has given us access to and use of everything in the created world, and most theologians agree with Calvin that God’s intention in creating the world was ultimately to become a human being in Jesus Christ. This means that humanity has a special place in God’s plan. But we may have reversed the order of creation, and should look more closely at what we were created for.

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