Mennonite Weekly Review

Articles : What on Earth?

Jan. 29, 2007 issue

• 

  Blowers

  In danger of losing winter

  From the window everything is white. Everywhere the familiar is transformed, the ugly made attractive, the merely beautiful fashioned into the stunningly gorgeous.

  I know it won’t last, so I step outside to experience it, marring the perfection with my size-12 tracks. Beneath an Oregon grape, where I’d seen a ruby-crowned kinglet pursuing spiders, I find the snow marked by the faint brush of tiny feathers. In the distance I can hear varied thrushes tuning for the spring orchestra.

Oct. 2, 2006 issue

• Wildness of Roaring River

  Not far from my home, the Roaring River churns past massive boulders shaded by ancient trees. I love this river. Others have more spectacular waterfalls and more scenic views, but this one calls to me in a way they do not.

March 6, 2006 issue

• Walking with Christ, literally

  Sometimes a person’s walk with Christ can mean just that — a literal walk. This occurred to me while talking with a friend who suffers from insomnia.

Jan. 9, 2006 issue

• Abundance of winter owls

  Snowy Owls were winging south again. Rumors of their journey flew like electronic birds through the Internet.

Dec. 5, 2005 issue

• Get to know created world

  Mennonites like to think of ourselves as a connected community. The “ethnics” among us, given enough time, can usually discover how they’re related to each other.

Oct. 31, 2005 issue

• The example of the Douglas fir

  I first encountered them as an adult, hiking in the Wind River Mountains. My childhood memories of mountains are of wind whistling through long needles of Ponderosa Pine. These pines, I had believed, were the trees of the Rockies, so finding the Douglas firs came as a shock.

Oct. 3, 2005 issue

• In defense of Brush Rabbits

  I know my woods. I’ve covered every square inch of the four forested acres while pulling out invasive ivy or walking the loop trails.

Aug. 29, 2005 issue

• Why is creation groaning?

  In Romans 8 Paul describes the eager anticipation with which the creation awaits the fulfillment of God’s kingdom.

Aug. 1, 2005 issue

• Praying with each footsetp

  Ihave long appreciated the “Breastplate of Saint Patrick,” a prayer attributed to the fifth-century missionary to Ireland. I like the poem’s wildness — its celebration of the raw power in lightning, wind and surf.

June 20, 2005 issue

• Back from extinction’s brink

  I believe Jesus rose from the dead. I accept this on faith, never having seen such a thing with my own eyes. If I ever did witness a resurrection, I wonder what I’d feel?

Jan. 3, 2005 issue

• Nothing happened, or did it?

  Nothing much happened in the woods outside my study today. Beyond my window, a forest of Douglas firs stretches down one side of a ravine and up the other. They look like huge beings frozen in the act of moving across the landscape. Among them I’m a small child caught in a crowd of adults. I have to crane my neck to see their tops.

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