Archive

The Eagle Huntress

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December 29, 2016 Matthew Kauffman Smith

Talented bird whisperers train eagles to help them hunt for food and fur in treacherous, bone-chilling winters. Matthew Kauffman Smith with special guest writer, Ella When I took my daughters to the bank when they were younger, the teller would always offer them a sticker. He or she would offer a Disney princess sticker to my daughters, even though one time I saw Spiderman stickers in another stash that was offered to the boys. Given the option, my girls may have selected the princesses, but there’s a good chance they would have chosen an alternative. Now my girls are old […]

Light, peace and hope shining in the darkness

December 23, 2016 Rebekah Sears

by Rebekah Sears, policy analyst for MCC’s Ottawa Office We are your people, walking in darkness, yet seeking the light. –Henri Nouwen It’s almost time – Christmas time! Our period of Advent waiting, is nearly finished for another year. It is a time when many churches and families are lighting candles in anticipation. It is a season where we celebrate light coming into the darkness. Our hope is arriving – in many ways it is already here! When I was working for MCC in Bogota, Colombia, I experienced the Advent season as being all about lights—as filled with light. I […]

Stranger Things

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December 23, 2016 Michelle D. Sinclair

Twenty minutes into the first episode of Stranger Things, a sense of deja vu, or at the very least, nostalgia will come over people of my generation. No cell phones, primitive computers, and kids riding bicycles like grown-ups use cars? We must be in the realm of the 1980s, or at least the version that used to inhabit the big screen. That impression is intentional, since writer/directors/brothers Matt and Ross Duffer crafted the series as an homage to Spielberg films and other classics in that era of storytelling–particularly E.T. or even The Goonies. Those adventures still took time to explore […]

O little town of Amona

December 16, 2016 Rachelle Lyndaker Schlabach

O little town of Amona By Rachelle Lyndaker Schlabach At this time of year the hearts and minds of many Christians turn toward the “little town” of Bethlehem. Bethlehem still exists today as a Palestinian city in the West Bank, under Israeli military occupation. But recently the little “town” of Amona has been getting more attention. Amona is an “outpost,” housing about 40 families near the Israeli settlement of Ofra in the West Bank. Amona was started in 1995, with settlers placing three caravans on land taken from private Palestinian landowners. After 20 years of legal wrangling, the outpost still […]

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

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December 16, 2016 Vic Thiessen

J. K. Rowling returns to the world of Harry Potter with a series of films based not on books she has written but on screenplays she is writing directly for the films. The first in the series is Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and its blockbuster status assures that we will be seeing the rest of the series (five in total) in the years to come. Fantastic Beasts could have been a classic for the ages instead of merely a fun night at the movies. Fantastic Beasts is directed by David Yates (who directed the final four Potter […]

Welcome Your Neighbor signs spread across the country

December 12, 2016 Thirdway

By Hannah Heinzekehr               Photo: The original Welcome Your Neighbor sign in the yard of Immanuel Mennonite Church, Harrisonburg, Virginia. Photo provided.  Almost a year ago, Matthew Bucher was watching a presidential primary debate and lamenting the language candidates were using to refer to recent immigrants to the United States. Bucher is pastor at Immanuel Mennonite Fellowship in Harrisonburg, Virginia. The church is located in northeast Harrisonburg, in a neighborhood that is rapidly diversifying and includes people who speak many languages, most prominent among them English, Spanish and Arabic. As he thought about ways […]

What’s next on climate change?

December 9, 2016 Tammy Alexander

Tammy Alexander, Mennonite Central Committee U.S. Washington Office After the recent U.S. presidential election, many advocates working to address climate change are wondering what the next year will bring. Last year, the Obama administration signed the historic Paris Agreement committing the U.S. to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to provide funding to help vulnerable communities around the world mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change. In contrast, during his campaign, president-elect Donald Trump questioned whether climate change is real, promised to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement and pledged to expand U.S. oil, coal, and natural […]

The Edge of Seventeen

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December 9, 2016 Jerry L. Holsopple

While some may dream of going back to high school, The Edge of Seventeen reminds everyone how hard it can be to grow up. Nadine thinks she doesn’t belong, perceives her popular jock brother, Darian, as being favored, and barely survives her mother’s attempts to get back in the dating scene. Nadine wields her wit like a shield to protect herself from a constant sense of loneliness. She picks on her favorite teacher because he doesn’t humor her but rather returns her comments with his own dry wit and concern couched in wise remarks. Her snarky remarks ricochet right back […]

The Covenant That Binds

December 2, 2016 Melodie Davis

Note: After December 2, all Another Way columns will be posted only on my personal blog, FindingHarmonyBlog.com, a week after they are first sent to newspapers, rather than here on Third Way website. All current personal email subscribers to Another Way will receive my weekly column via MailChimp. Another Way Newspaper Column for week of December 2, 2016 The Covenant That Binds This past year we celebrated 40 years of being married. I say celebrated when I should say the anniversary trip we would have taken at the end of May (over our anniversary weekend) was thwarted by church commitments planned […]

Arrival

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December 2, 2016 Gordon Houser

The theater where I watched Arrival showed several “coming attractions” before the film. Most were either sci-fi or adventure films with lots of fighting and technological violence. I thought, “Has the person who decided what coming attractions to show seen the featured attraction?” Eventually, we learn that the film has a much larger purpose. . . . It’s interested in the meaning of time itself. While Arrival can be labeled sci fi—it does involve alien spacecraft landing on earth—it is far from the usual genre films of heroes fighting aliens. Instead, it is an arresting, thoughtful drama that explores both human emotion […]