No Stuff Christmas

Christmas is about giving.

Actually, no, it’s about buying.  No, it’s about spending time with family.

It’s really about celebrating the birth of Jesus, Emmanuel – God with us.  (I can’t really say no to that… but that doesn’t cover it either).

The fact is the Christmas season has become a real mishmash of religion, culture, traditions, family, time off, angry-shopping, over-eating, gatherings, singing.  And the experience of Christmas is quite different from one person to the next.

But for many people it is associated with buying stuff. 

But not for me this year.  To celebrate the fact that Canada’s household consumer debt is the highest it has ever been, I am going to implement my first ever Buy Nothing Christmas.

Don’t worry.  I am not a downer Scrooge.  People will still get gifts.  But this year I am not buying stuff.  Here are some ideas I came up with this morning.  

Both my Reesor and McDowell families have a food-based gift exchange.  I don’t know what you call the game that we play but it involves stealing gifts from each other for about 2 hours until it miraculously ends with a selfless aunt choosing the unknown last gift from the middle (my friend Heather just told me the game is called “white elephant”...is that true?).  Instead of buying a box of chocolates, I am going to give the gift of a homemade dinner at my place.  I have been on a curry kick lately (I think the recipe is on page 171 of the More-with-Less cookbook) so it will likely be that.

For my mom, dad, brother, and Somphou (the IVEPer who lives with my folks), I am going to pay for a family night out to celebrate that we still love each other (and to thank Somphou for putting up with us…).  Dinner, a movie, a concert?  Whatever it is, it is going to be about people, not stuff.

Ok, so maybe it doesn't fit the official Buy Nothing Christmas criteria.  But you get the point.  This Christmas I am focusing on people, not things.  Let's call it a "No Stuff Christmas" (sorry, I haven't had the time to make a really cool No Stuff Christmas website yet).

Whatever you do, my suggestion is this - be creative.  And always remember to give to people who can’t give anything back.  "For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me."  Always remember that what you have is not yours - it is Gods.  We are stewards of what we have been given.  So give off the top, not with what is left over.

If you need some ideas on how to share what you have, consider some of these options:

1. Donate through MCC’s Christmas Giving Catalogue, or
2. Mobile Give $10 to MCC with your cell.  $10 allows MCC to buy school books and a uniform for young students around the world: 
1. Send a text to "45678" with "MCC" in the comments section where they would normally type their text message
2. You will immediately get a return text message confirming that you are about to make a donation to MCC
3. Reply with "Yes"
4. text someone else and tell them to do the same.

Merry Christmas!

Placelessness

Placelessness.  He wrote it on his arm sometime during the night when I was asleep beside him. Jet fuel and metal carried us across the lines on the map carving into the land below. We let our words speak their truth and for a few hours put ourselves aside. He was a stranger lost beside me, and although it was foreign to him, he was trying to grasp my faith. I don't know where it's taken him. 


I was that little girl, the one always cast as the angel or Mary. I’d play the part but secretly I longed to climb up onto a camel and ride away with the wisemen. Wonderlust. Now that I’ve grown its taken me to the far corners of the world. Occasionally into places of power and influences, like the castles of the kings, but more often- and in moments far more sought after -into the homes of the poor and into communities torn by violence. 

I now understand how hard it is to travel: When you go, you don’t always come back. You and the places you leave change and sometimes you can’t reconnect. Placelessness. Be in this world but not of it. I’ve come to embrace the disconnect. I can’t be the same as who I was before… and neither could the wisemen. For me, nothing captures the truth of the Christmas story like  T.S. Eliot’s Journey of the Magi.  

By Kathryn Deckert

More with Less

Imagine if we lived the way our grandparents' did...if we just bought the basics and made things from scratch? More health... less preservatives. More product... less packaging. More self-sustaining... less dependent consumption. More ... with Less.

Recently, my mum and I made a double batch of homemade Corn Chips for the first time (see pg 310 of the "More-with-Less" cookbook).  They are made of good, whole foods, much more cost effective than buying said snacks, easy to make, and a rewarding activity on a snowy afternoon.  More with less.

The More-with-Less cookbook, commissioned by MCC and originally published in1976, is comprised of delicious and nutritious recipes and has morsels of sustainable food wisdom scattered throughout. It has sold over 850,000 copies.  The compiler of the cookbook, Doris Janzen Longacre, also authored a book entitled "Living More with Less" which has been found on many a bookshelf from our parents and grandparents generations.  Check out the recent 30th anniversary edition.  

Imagine if we lived more with less...

A Documentary About Love

Love is an accessible concept - it needs no introduction.  However, that doesn’t mean that all people experience or understand it in the same way. Our individual stories and emotions colour our conceptions, for better or worse.

But what does love mean to you?

I've been working alongside Director Paul Plett and Audio Technician Dave McDowell of Ode Productions asking this very question. Our inquiry has taken the form of a film entitled "A Documentary About Love," which asks four main questions:

1) Can you define love in one sentence?
2) What experiences have led you to this definition?
3) Has your own definition ever changed?
4) In your opinion has the concept of "love" ever changed throughout history?

Serving and Learning Together

Are you interested in living in another country?  Maybe learning another language?  Volunteering, eating new foods, meeting new people, having your mind and world blown wide open?  Do you want an education that you will never get in the classroom? A chance to grow spiritually that you won't get in a regular Sunday morning service? Interested?

I was too...  So in 2002 I moved to Haiti as part of the SALT program.

Current MCC Ontario staffperson, Ken Ogasawara, as a
SALTer in Uganda 2001-02.

SALT is a one-year program for 18 to 27 year-olds that will take you almost anywhere in the world.  Depending on where you go, you might be blazing a new trail by yourself or working and living near fellow SALTers.  What kind of assignments do you get? How about environmental program coordinator in Tanzania? Or science and math teacher in India? Or radio/recording technician in Burundi? The list goes on.  

I worked with a human rights organization in Port-au-Prince; learned Haititan Creole, lived with a family, traveled the country, and learned a whole lot about myself.  It was a hard year but a good year. And I recommend the program to young adults who want to grow.

Give what you have

Sinners are always wanting what they don't have; 

the God-loyal are always giving what they do have.

               Proverbs 21:26 (The Message)

Stuff

Think of all the things you have spent money on in the last year.  Now place each of those things in one of two categories: "needs" and "wants".

My guess is that many of us end up with the "wants" category quite full.

Most of human existence has been focused on survival - filling our most basic "needs" in order to stay alive.  But many of us and our babyboomer parents haven't had to think about survival at all.  We have more than we need and our focus instead is on getting as many of our (often material) "wants" fulfilled.  What a drastic difference as compared to the rest of human history!

One of the by-products of this shift from a need-focused to a want-focused culture is a lot of stuff.  This video offers an interesting reflection and analysis of stuff.

News from Mennonite World Conference

Misrak Meserete Kristos Church in Addis Ababa.

Mennonite World Conference (MWC) is "a community of Anabaptist-related churches rooted in the 16th-century Radical Reformation in Europe.... Today, more than 1,600,000 believers belong to this faith family; more than 60 percent are African, Asian, or Latin American."

MWC links together this Anabaptist community of faith for fellowship, worship, service, and witness.  One way MWC connects the church is organizing an assembly that brings this global fellowship together for about 1 week every 6 years.

I can remember travelling to Manitoba with my family when I was 8 years old to gather with other Anabaptists when Canada last hosted the event, Winnipeg 1990.  I have fond memories of that week.  Though I couldn’t speak a word of Spanish nor he more than 3 words in English, I spent the week with a Puerto Rican kid named Luis.  Our friendship brought our parents together, which led to my family living in Aibonito, Puerto Rico less than two years later (my mom taught English at a school called Betania Mennonita for a semester).

That experience – or perhaps that friendship – planted in me a seed of curiosity in connecting with people that are “different” than me; a seed which can only be fed by learning with people who can show me different ways of living, and different ways of living out the gospel.  This journey (which I recognize I have just begun) has really enriched my understanding of what it means to part of the body of Christ, with all our diversity in worldview, ideas, challenges, gifts, and abilities.

"The last 100 years of nonviolence"

http://ontario.mcc.org/peace