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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

The documentary Miss Sharon Jones is a good place to start discovering Jones, but the following is a mixtape of just 10 of her best recordings. Sharon Jones couldn’t stop singing, even in her final days. Jones, the lead singer of Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, died November 18, 2016, at age 60, from pancreatic cancer. According to an interview with bandmate Gabe Roth in the Los Angeles Times, the entire band sat by Jones during her last days. Jones had suffered two strokes in a week, and could no longer speak. But when the band members played the guitar […]

by Esther Epp-Tiessen, public engagement coordinator for MCC’s Ottawa Office Edna Hunsperger was a trailblazer. Most young women like her, growing up in the 1930s in a rurual (Old) Mennonite Ontario community, anticipated early marriage, child-bearing and a life working on the family farm. But Edna wanted an education and she wanted to serve others. She persuaded her parents to allow her to enter nurses training in Kitchener-Waterloo.  She graduated as a nurse in 1937, the first Mennonite from her community to do so. Two years later Canada was at war and in a short time there was a call […]