Metanoia Story: Anastasia Brewster

I have the immense privilege to participate in a weekly small group with four dear women I met through my local church. We all happen to be raising small children, live in urban San Diego, and desire to make lifestyle choices that reflect our identity as children of God. This Spring we decided to be guided by the Mennonite Central Committee’s “Basic Trek: Venture into a world of enough”, a 28-day reflection guide on living not with less, but with enough for everyone.

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Metanoia Story: Rick Zemlin

Is it possible for us as individuals in the USA to maintain lifestyles that are economically just and healthy for ourselves and for the whole world or are we doomed to be over-consumers of the earth’s resources simply because we reside in an over-consuming country? That is a question that has dogged me for over two decades.

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Metanoia Story: Ed Lucas

If, in retrospect, a person’s first thirty years aren’t deemed a waste, they must then be the best teacher. It was about that long that I lived under the influence of the wrong stuff. The appeal for life-as-I-knew-it was great, with A) all the lures of bliss through consumption, and B) the promise that technology was ever on the verge of saving us from whatever problems we either have been plagued with for eons, or those just discovered we had (some of which were results of item A). The household my father provided was stable in the ways he intended, and he often reminded me of how little upheaval and instability there was in our lives. It was quite a conservative and sheltered setting where the world was “out there” and we were to be glad that it did not intrude on our lives “in here.” No one ever really taught me to consider whether my daily life had anything to do with the plight of others.

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Metanoia Story: Karen Holmgren

I grew up at a time and in a place where there were woods and a swamp to explore right behind our house. Some of my fondest and most vivid childhood memories are of the times spent looking for snakes, turtles, and salamanders, falling in the pond while trying to catch a frog, picking bouquets of violets for my mother, collecting red and gold leaves for an art project, or just sitting on top of the Big Rock contemplating life. As an adult I retained that basic love for Nature, but it was hardly in my awareness most of the time.

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