Of Mutual Benefit

Just yesterday I sent a quick one-sentence message to my sizeable batch of sisters and brothers. It was a sentimental memo of an interesting mishap that occurred once-upon-a-time along with the ‘free labor’ that we all provided in the operation of our family farm. Sixty years later it is hilarious, although some tears were shed at the time. Those were the good old days. Now that I think of it, that old story may get another rerun at an old-timers’ coffee klatch one of these days.

That farm memory erupted in my head just a few days ago. It was also at a coffee time, but this one not with old-timers; it was with two young guys, dear friends whom I have known for about five years by now. Newcomers to this country, these ‘meetings’ can only be scheduled if they do not interfere with constantly changing employment - jobs like security, cleaning, safety companionship, Uber driving, etc. By now these friendships also include church services, funerals, community gatherings, family visits. As we become ever better acquainted in this strange new country, there are real interests and real issues that easily make up the agenda. When these topics show up the eyes begin to sparkle, lots to talk about as friendships grow.

In addition to this Calgary scene there is always the Africa scene, not necessarily making headlines here in Canada. It’s siblings, parents, friends and family struggling and suffering in ongoing strife with Sudan, and sadly also tribal warfare within their ‘Christian' South Sudan. And along with that, how about the young people now growing up here along with parents (some parents missing), making career and entertainment and relationship choices among many others in this our multicultural city.

This is real stuff, and yet to talk about it is a challenge. Sometimes I marvel at their patience with me when after a few details get mangled in my brain, thanks to my challenged hearing and our differing accents the ‘truth’ may have got blurred! Then we laugh and start over again! This is real life conversation; talking about ‘back there’ and ‘here now’. Valuable time eventually becomes precious time because the focus is on possibilities rather than cynicism or despair. AND there is a bond; we also fully subscribe to a common denominator, namely our Christian faith, For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them (Matthew 18:20).

Now it’s thinker time again. Common interests, common questions; it seems to me whether the lineage is Mennonites from Russia, or tribal Christians from South Sudan, there are similar challenges. How do we raise our children? My memories of milking cows, pitching hay and driving farm equipment is similar to the agenda being articulated by these young dads. The farm work we did was essential to help the farm yield enough so that we could all be fed and clothed, and learn how to behave ourselves, including listening to our elders and not too many shenanigans. 

That old agenda is incredibly similar to a fresh new project taking shape in our city, Sudanese-Canadian Youth Talent Association of Alberta. As outlined in their Mission, Vision, and Values, the program is carefully articulated. My parents did not ‘write up’ their plans, and yet us kids understood exactly what needed doing. Interesting, this Association’s recent application to Revenue Canada includes a sentence might have been used back then, “Our organization is committed to providing structured educational programs that promote life skills and vocational training for the youth, general public and newcomers to Canada.” [i] I smile as they spell it out carefully, life skills will be fully organized and supervised by qualified basketball and soccer coaches. And vocational training will include sessions on resume writing, mock interviews, and indeed workplace communication. Well, there were differences: we never took classes in communication, and the de-facto sport in my day was hockey, and today's urban version of that sport is frightfully expensive. That's why this preacher's kids did not play hockey. Soccer was barely affordable! So a nice touch of realism here, basic level of these life-skills will be provided at charity price. It's also in the Bible, Train children in the way they should go; when they grow old, they won’t depart from it (Proverbs 22:6 CEB). SCYTA is now a registered charity.

Not only for immigrants to learn, but very important for all who live here. Even non-immigrant families need the very things being provided by this newly formed talent association. I am inspired by the vision to keep young people busy and out of trouble. It's a charity thing and I like that image as per the old King James version of the Bible!  And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity (1 Corinthians 13:13).

I recognize just a little inner disonnance at this time. I am not a fundraiser, in fact not at all impressed with latest money lingo (e.g. in some churches the tithes and offerings now rebranded as donations), and even less impressed with solicitous phone calls at suppertime thanking me for my recent supportiveness (really?) and can they count on more of the same, or maybe double the amount? Donate buttons show up in the middle of and at the end of almost everything online. So, even though unimpressed by all this latest ... this one time it's the right way! It is a charity way and a convenient way to participate in a very legitimate thing, and even revenue Canada will add their blessing at years' end. See the button? 😊  Sudanese-Canadian Youth Talent Association is a morality thing in this country of Canada. This is for all of us. It's better for our young people to play soccer than to hang out with their devices or in shopping centers.

______ [i] Sudanese-Canadian Youth Talent Association of Alberta, letter of intent, Charitable Organizations, unpublished, August 12, 2025.

 

 

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Just Above the Maze

At the very top of front page, I read it this morning in the Calgary Sun, MAJOR MOVE: With latest defection, PM effectively has his majority. No surprise to my cynical head, I turned to the details on page 4. That’s where I gave this head a shake. Surprise? Indeed surprise! The defector is an NDP Member of Parliament, not yet another Conservative; definitely enough to keep me reading.

Lori Idlout, the MP from Nunavut in Canada’s north, is the latest turncoat. Reading on in the article, I learn she made a decision that had to be, totally in communication with her constituents. In their local Nunatsiaq News, Idlout says it’s a crucial moment not only for Nunavut but for all of Canada. “With new threats against our sovereignty and pressures on the wellbeing of people throughout the North, we need a strong and ambitious government that makes decisions with Nunavut – not only about Nunavut.”

Ms Idlout claims she is listening to her community. I am tempted to wade in with opinion, questions about national pros and cons, but without further  orientation…? [Reading a bit further down in that paper there they are, opinions in her constituency almost like our Alberta locals, except in our city of Calgary we actually pay some journalists, like Rick Bell, for their opinionating].

At present we are in a testy, restless world! On this occasion however, I am inclined to some restraint, and almost immediately there is the vantage of another, and this not a professional journalist, but very much a professional. It’s from someone who just got jilted. Heather McPherson, a fellow-NDP and one of the candidates for leader of the national Party, speaks somehow kindly, even as I can only imagine the feeling that must be included in her brief words. Writing to members of the party, she begins, “Learning that Lori Idlout crossed the floor to join the Liberals was tough. We worked together for years, fighting Liberal cuts, arrogance and hypocrisy.” Then she doesn’t go on and on about that. “I’m sad to see her go.” End of paragraph, and her message goes on. There’s work to do.

There’s something in today’s front page event which reminds me of some considerable reading I have done in the last while – not specifically on topic of politics, but very much in sync with the above. Probably like most of my neighbors, friends, and perhaps even a few enemies, I am deeply concerned about today’s lay of the land, not only North America, but Europe, the Middle East and even farther afield. And indeed I am discouraged and disgusted by the dishonesty and moral depravity of those who get elected as leaders. It’s a commentary on us, the citizens of this world, not only those leaders.

So coincidentally (providentially?) my recent reading has been not about today’s news, and yet precisely on topic. Two books written by two very different people, one a lawyer of fifty years’ professional service, and the other a mid-career social worker. They write from their vantage, and therein my surprise and inspiration. The lawyer is a Mennonite with family roots in Holland, describes the sojourn of ‘his people’, much beyond his immediate clan. It is an analysis of his forbears’ journey through Poland, Prussia, Russia, and the two-staged emigration to Canada. [i] The other, an Anishinaabe Ukrainian Indigenous writer, [ii] provides seemingly endless Bible examples of kinship that stretch way down deep below and beyond today’s colonial interpretations which most Christians find themselves in. Walter Braul’s excellent historical analysis has no reference to personal faith. Patty Krawec’s personal faith is consistently evident as she writes about kinship, not only in New Testament, but also very much in the Old!

I mention these two authors today because I must. Both of their writings provide not only solid believable information on their respective lineages, but much food for thought on the shaping of nations and us beings within and beyond, over the centuries. Today I see them simply as timely persons on scene for the mazy topic above. Also I see Lori Idlout and Heather McPherson as timely contributors to the troubled profession of politics today. Lori did what she had to do, because we all know that our Prime Minister’s liberals, egocentric as they are and very limited in analyses, at this point should receive the support of this one specific politician (not all of us, Lord have mercy)! There are many other considerations, but as an Inuit lawyer from among her people in the North, she may help Canada’s Arctic sovereignty to be more believable than if she would not participate. That was a hard call and I believe Heather McPherson understands this, and so will not villainize a colleague. Such dignity is what would qualify her as next Prime Minister of Canada (just saying 😉).

These other two writers probably qualify as my kin in the overall scheme of things. At any rate, they have been feeding my head and my heart. I see their  wisdom just above the maze. Many friends and relatives (but perhaps not kin) have no time for any of this mid-air discernment. They are up or down, all or nothing, just like the MAGA in the U.S; no more discernment needed for them. They know the signs of the times, and in spite of the instruction received from Jesus about not being preoccupied with apocalypticisms (Acts 1:8), they know He will return tonight to meet all of us true believers (1 Thess. 4:17). Many others, also my friends, attribute such beliefs to fundamentalist ignorance. It is important to "rise above" this (Anybody remember the Rankin Family singers of the 1990's?).

From within this world’s pluralistic, multicultural vantage I dare not condemn nor qualify politicians nor writers nor people with slightly different angles on the truth - or on political parties. At least I can say this today! 

Prophecies? Being prophetic?  Well, that's another topic, coming up soon. For now I quote another scripture, “Not everyone who says Lord, Lord …” (Matt. 7:21a).

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[i] Walter Braul, Russian Mennonites: A Broken Path to Civility (Altona,MB: Friesen Press, 2025).

[ii] Patty Krawec, Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future (Minneapolis: Broadleaf Books, 2022):

A Library Thought

This is a blogpost written while sitting in a library here in our city of Calgary. It was about libraries, and why and how I sit there doing what I claim to be important things! I forgot to post it back there in October. Now I realize it is on topic for my next blog! Hopefully it will post in a few days! Stay tuned.

October 8, 2025

A little discomfort I deal with each time I go to the library. For me a library is still sort of a luxury, a place of anonymity and potential to do almost anything my head has in mind. Wow! It may be to read a book or magazine article – paper or digital – or to work at some document trying to take shape in my brain. I and my tasks are accepted as is, and library staff available with whatever query this old guy might have (and older staff ready to defer to someone younger if they are just as confused by the copy machine as I may be).

In my lifetime I have become acquainted with two approaches to library time. The first is time wasted, quite a curve ball away from farm chores and hockey and ball games. Library, in those years, suggested absolutely nothing else to do (and as might be expected some of those kids, now my fellow old-timers, still wouldn't know what to do in a library 😐). The other approach is at other end of spectrum. I can only refer to it as quality time, absolutely essential, the bibliothek in college and the rest is history. Definitely more enjoyable than fiddling around in coffee shops or watering holes, watching sports ad nauseum.  As per the therapists' opinion, this old retired Mennonite is borderline introvert - extrovert, sociable but also workaholic! So, library is wasted time for some and quality time for others. When in library I'm not fiddling or tinkering at something in my garage or yard or attending a Zoom meeting from my home office. Quality time.

Here we go. Today I shall jot down a few “ Alberta thoughts.” At present our province is enduring a teachers’ strike. Our government is not willing to shell out the big bucks for educators, and apparently it’s showdown time. Classrooms are packed and individual student needs are not being met, especially with many extra needs brought on by immigrant children. My first inclination is to give teachers all the support we can to help them do their jobs to best of their ability. Then again (ironic perspective from this longtime NDP), I also wonder about what is the most important here. Our education system is in a new day. It’s not only demographic classroom-size pressures. It begs the question, what quality education can realistically (or should) be provided for children of high echelon high salaried parents. Can an education system provide what is not provided at home, like discipline and parental guidance?

This is where my genuine socialistic inclinations lean just a bit toward the conservative. Many of today's parents need to reclaim parenting - do what you need to do yourself before looking to have government do it for you. I recently overheard a parent make a case for the importance of vacation trips so as to spend quality time with her kids! Duh!!  Maybe that woman should regularly make dinner together with her teenage daughter! Strikes and politics do not provide those things. 

Hopefully the strike will end soon with reasonable resolve, and I also hope parents will realize we must be realistic. That's it! My thoughts for this library day. And yes, today the library staff are diligently serving as alternate teachers!