April 2018 – Greta Holt

Courage, humility, and vulnerability

By Greta Holt | April 25, 2018 |

Courage, humility and vulnerability: But first, God speed, Winnie Mandela. Life was not easy. Mom and Dad knew Hugh Masekela in Botswana. He helped bring about the Botswana International School of Music. For a long time, we had the VHS of the 1987 Graceland concert, now it’s in DVD. The concert was held in Harare, Zimbabwe.…

Courage, humility, and heights

By Greta Holt | April 18, 2018 |

Courage, humility, and heights: April is poetry month! My thanks to Jeff Gundy for adding immeasurably to this post by allowing me to present his poem Stringer below. Photo by KAP Jasa on Unsplash When I (Greta) was five, I pedaled my tricycle all the way down Grandma’s many concrete steps in Berne, Indiana, gaining…

Guns, talk, and money

By Greta Holt | April 11, 2018 |

This is the third and final post on guns. On to other things! I hope you can find some time to peruse the resources below. The Jubilee ‘Middle Ground’ video, where regular people talk to each other about guns, is particularly enlightening. (Sorry about the brief adverts on the YouTube clips.) 1. In the satirical…

Courage, humility, and protest

By Greta Holt | April 5, 2018 |

In the mid 1960s, our church’s youth group, with kids from other Mennonite towns, went to Chicago to help-the-black-people.😇 What we didn’t know. We worked in a child care center in Markham and other places, learning more than we could ever teach. Then, we got word of the Chicago Freedom Movement’s marches. With our leaders,…

Climbing April 2, 2021
Last year and during the first months of 2021, we have felt as if we were climbing. But as this year progresses, hope for the future is making the effort easier for some. We study and pray for the strength to finish the climb and help others journey upward. My parents worked in Botswana in…
Greta Holt
Courage and Humility 2020 December 4, 2020
Humility is hard to come by. Ego is not. Courage to overcome selfishness is as elusive as goldfish in the ocean. I lost my voice this year during COVID. Did it happen to you, too? To add insult to 2020’s injuries, my husband had a serious heart attack. I prepared myself to take care…
Greta Holt
Through My Mothers’ Eyes September 8, 2020
In this guest blogpost, Katie Laine, my childhood friend, tells the story of her German stepmother, whose family faced Fascism during World War II. ____________ THROUGH MY MOTHERS’ EYES All that came to be in my life began with what occurred to my two mothers. In 1949 my birth mother, paternal grandmother and paternal great-grandmother were killed…
Greta Holt
My Vector Complex – A guest post by psychiatrist Lawson Wulsin May 22, 2020
Psychiatrist Lawson Wulsin is a member of my writers’ group. I value his senses of balance and humor, especially in this crazy coronavirus time. His book Treating the Aching Heart: A Guide to Depression, Stress, and Heart Disease is a comprehensive study of heart disease, and his Mind Matters columns in the Cincinnati Enquirer are worth…
Greta Holt
Psalm 23 in the time of Covid-19 May 15, 2020
A few weeks ago in Zoom church, Cincinnati Mennonite Fellowship prayed the Lord’s Prayer, Psalm 23. Since it is part of a lectionary tradition, a great number of churches re-examined this psalm, as well. Photo by Jared van der Molen on Unsplash In our small church, we ask different congregants to give the Sunday welcoming…
Greta Holt
Individual and Societal Priorities via COVID-19: Guest writing by Mary Tom Watts May 7, 2020
Photo by Fusion Medical Animation on Unsplash “There isn’t time, so brief is life, for bickerings, apologies, heartburnings, callings to account. There is only time for loving, and but an instant, so to speak, for that.” Mark Twain In the 300 words I asked her for, my friend Mary Tom Watts—who writes for newspapers, reflects…
Greta Holt
Guest Blog by Diane Gottlieb April 29, 2020
Hello, All. My friend, Diane Gottlieb, is an expert blogger. She writes the blog WomanPause. WomanPause is about life after 50, and Diane explores everything from invisibility to the she-ro. With her background in creative nonfiction, Diane is a consummate interviewer, and she makes the most of her guests’ unique perceptions about life. I’m honored…
Greta Holt
An ‘Addie Poem’ during Covid-19 March 19, 2020
Friends, in this time-out of taking care of my husband and dear friend in the aftermath of his heart attack: ___________________________________________________ while the world comes to terms with a pandemic: (New York Times, March 18, ‘These Places Could Run Out of Hospital Beds as Coronavirus Spreads’) ____________________________________________________ I offer this thoughtful poem by my niece,…
Greta Holt
Kilt and Cap: being half-Mennonite January 23, 2020
Recently, a friend and fellow blogger, Diane Gottlieb, asked me about my Anabaptist background. Diane writes the wonderful blog WomanPause, regarding women in the glorious years. Her questions made me think of a memory I wrote in response to J Daniel Hess’s presentation at one of the previous Mennonite Arts Weekends. The Weekend is coming up again in a few…
Greta Holt
Christmas/New Year’s Wishlist December 16, 2019
“Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment. Cleverness is mere opinion. Bewilderment brings intuitive knowledge.” Rumi I did want to write about whether Christians must believe in the virgin birth to be christian. Wouldn’t it be a great exercise in Courage to tackle that subject during this season? I thought. What would I find and how…
Greta Holt