The Lord's Rain - The Olympics & Another Milestone

It's fashionable around the Downtown East Side to vilify the Olympics. It's kind of a "principle" thing: anything new and different that happens in the area -- especially if it's done by any level of government -- is automatically "all because of the Olympics" and therefore Not To Be Trusted.

(Can somebody please 'splain to me what the point of anti-Olympics protesters is? They're not going to stop the games from happening, or stop several million people from having a good time -- and I don't think one homeless person has been housed as a result of the protests. The dark sense of oppression that comes off their actions and their posters with images of dark-hooded, masked demons and slogans like "Riot 2010" is far more threatening than any increased police presence. It reminds me that freedom of expression is a precious commodity, which millions of people have laid down their lives to defend over the centuries, and -- like anything precious -- open to abuse.)

But God ...

I love that expression of Jon Boyd's, from Westpointe Christian Centre. Something looks a certain way to The World, but God says it shall be different.

The World has its way of looking at The Olympics and the Downtown East Side, But God says, Not so fast.

1 -- I mentioned in a previous posting that vision I had of the Carrall Street Greenway -- complete and beautiful and welcoming -- and our little Mission, sitting there in the midst of it. That's a "pre-legacy" of the Olympics, right there. Why shouldn't our area look nicer? If the focus of the world's attention has made us take a hard look at the Downtown East Side and its issues, there's another legacy -- and just as lasting a legacy as the Canada Line, really.

2 -- Gospel Mission stands to gain, financially, from the Olympics. I've just been hired as PA announcer for the Canada Cup Women's Hockey Championship next week. It's a pre-Olympic event, and there's a possibility I'll be hired for The Show in February, as well. I tithe. Need I say more?

3 -- A milestone we reached this past Saturday is also Olympics related, and in a most wonderful way. When Joe Trepanier (who used to preach Saturday nights at Gospel Mission, and his leaving coincided with my showing up on the doorstep) took his shower, I looked at the little ongoing record we keep in a notebook and realized that the running total through the top of the page was 566. Then I started counting the tick marks down the page, and Joe's was the 33rd.

566 + 33 = 599. One more to a milestone.

And around 9:15, that "one more" walked in.

He's a fellow I'd seen several months before, about my age (50ish), with a young man in tow this time. And they both wanted showers.

In my mind, I flashed on the night Gordie Howe scored his 600th career goal in the NHL, and CBC, with the elementary 1960s-vintage technology, had prepared a special graphic: "600", flashing over the close-up of Gordie. This now played in my head as I told the pair they were #600 and #601.

So the honour goes to William Van Noord and his son, Jesse. I gave each of them a Bible with their names in it and the date and all that stuff. An impromptu ceremony, to be sure, and I think they were a little nonplussed by it all.

Now ... The Rest Of The Story.

Jesse Van Noord had just arrived from Ann Arbor, Michigan, about a week before. The pair are now living in a camper beside a job site, where they're installing cabinetry. William had, apparently, gotten the job and brought his son out to work with him.

The job was evidently something welcome for William, and I, for one, would welcome anything my son and I could do together, so there's a double blessing right there. I don't know -- nor would I speculate -- what the circumstances were that led to William living in Vancouver and Jesse in Ann Arbor, but here they were, together again. And since you can imagine the privations of having two grown men living in a camper, so it was a blessing to us that William had remembered The Lord's Rain when it came time to shower-up.

And where are they installing cabinets? Olympic Village.

So are the Olympics a blessing or a curse? Depends on how you look at it, doesn't it? But being one who believes that if you obsess on the demon behind the bush you'll miss the ram in the bush, I'm leaning towards the "blessing" side.