How do you, as a pacifist Mennonite, justify playing a violent game like Halo? was the question I got through the telephone one lazy afternoon. I stopped for a moment, nervously chuckling. “Um, well, you see …”

It was the fifth time we had done this, share Denver as father and daughter. The spirits of the younger girl, going back all the way to the first trip when she was 13, hovered near, seeming almost as present as the married woman now plunging so quickly, to our mutual shock, toward age 30. This presence of my daughter as many different girls and women proved an opportunity to ponder the parenting journey …

Some of us are tired of all the vision talk in our congregations or the larger church. Others are interested but speak about vision in hushed tones, as though it’s a special gift reserved only for leaders and assorted charismatics. The truth is most of us take vision for granted. Vision is simply how we see things. We don’t realize the value of vision until we can’t see things any more …

When we gather each Sunday to worship the Triune God, we proclaim that God is in charge, which means that we are not. In doing this we follow an early Anabaptist belief in self-surrender (“Gelassenheit”), offering ourselves in service to God …