April Fools' Month

Usually, April Fools' Day is meant for one day only, the first day of April. It seems to me that this year it was April Fools' Month! The month of April is moody at the best of times, but this year it was downright capricious, and I'm still recuperating. I don't even want to post any of the snow pictures I took, but there were plenty! 

I can't resist posting this one of huge icicles hanging from the roof in front of our kitchen window! It is an illustration of the icy grip winter had on us Manitobans this year. Add to that the horrendous war in Ukraine, several beloved friends in Ontario who passed away suddenly, and Hardy's slow recovery from bladder surgery in March.

But there were also some highlights in April. One morning, when I walked to the mail boxes a block and a half away (and that was no easy feat, climbing over snow banks or sliding along icy sidewalks -- with cleats on my boots no less!), there it was: an anthology by Dora Dueck, entitled On Holy Ground, which the Mennonite Brethren Historical Commission had invited her to put together. 

Dora asked me about a year ago if I would be willing to contribute a chapter to this book. I was one of 15 women included in the anthology. In 2019, Kindred Productions published Doug Heidebrecht's book Women in Ministry Leadership: The Journey of the Mennonite Brethren, 1954-2010. It is a history summarizing the struggle of women in leadership ministry in the MB Conference. Dora's book grew out of a wish to write about the "lived experience of women in leadership ministry among Mennonite Brethren."

It happened to be one of the less capricious days in April when I received an advance copy of the book in our mail box. I walked to the nearby lake, sat on a bench overlooking the lake, and just held the book for a while. Then I read my chapter and memories came flooding over me, of the struggle we had back in the late 1980s and 1990s with the MB conference and their stance on women in ministry.

When I got home I listened to You Are Standing on Holy Ground
[ on YouTube  >>  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HisFMCEbHzY ]
and spent the afternoon and the next day reading the stories of other women featured in Dora's book. The song has been with me every day since then!

I was excited to note that one of the contributors to Dora's book is Delores Histand Friesen. In 1996 she edited a collection of sermons by Mennonite Brethren women called All are Witnesses. In it she included a sermon I wrote (but never preached), based on John 20.1-18: Mary Magdalene's encounter with the risen Christ. 

When life gets depressing, I pick up books and they transport me into another world. Some other books I've been enjoying recently:

                      

The book on the left was co-written by two experienced grandmothers.  On the right is Anne Lamott's latest. I love how she gets at serious topics with an earthy sense of humor!

The above is Nadine's first novel. I invited her to our sisters' birthday/book club meeting at the end of May to tell us a bit about how she came to write it and to do a bit of a reading from it. I'm really looking forward to that.

My sweet granddaughter, Lena Kate, sent me a picture taken in their backyard in Glen Allan, Ontario, and I can't wait to see these appearing very soon in our own yard!

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vale and hills.

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

- - - 

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude; 

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

(by William Wordsworth)