Us and Them -- really???

A little vignette from Saturday morning ...


“So are you learning much from volunteering down here?”

The question came from a Native chap, whose name I don’t know yet but who’s been a regular around The Lord’s Rain for some time now.

“I mean,” he went on, “there's a big difference between the Ritz-Carlton and this place, isn’t it?”

I guess we all do some “profiling” in our lives, and while I’m not exactly the embodiment of urbane sophistication (and certainly not an habitué of the Ritz-Carlton), it’s easy to assume some kind of class distinction. Mind you, I think I can count on one hand the number of times the issue has come up in my own case; unfortunately, when it has, it’s come up in the form of a crass comment from someone, which I dismiss because there’s a spirit of envy behind it. Usually, praise God, people at the Mission accept me for who I am and I return the compliment.

But this fellow’s questions were sincere and without that spirit. He was genuinely curious.

“Actually,” I told him, “what impresses me more than the differences is the similarities.”

And that’s the truth. People often look on the folks on the Downtown East Side as being “special cases”, a separate caste: someone once referred to the treatment of the urban poor in Vancouver as “genocide”, but that implies they’re a different race from the “others” in the city. But I think that's patronizing, suggesting that they should get perpetual handouts and "breaks" from society because they are basically incapable of moving beyond where they are now. But that kind of thinking avoids the inconvenient truth: any one of us is one slip away from winding up in the same situation.

When I speak in churches, that’s often one of the key messages, and I pull it out both for shock value and because it's the truth. What impresses me about working on the Downtown East Side is that people are intelligent, respectful, well-spoken, and good to be around. Ask Amelia about the level of respect: when she serves them coffee or food, they all say “please” and “thank you” and they stop to chat; when she was ill recently, people asked about her, prayed for her and sent home good wishes.

Some of the people, certainly, are addled by drugs; others by mental illness. Some can be a real pain in the bottom at times. Some seem closeted away in their own little world – but watch what happens when you call their name: they snap into this world, and smile, and answer.

Think about it: there are people in your own circle who are just like that – and if they’re not addled by drugs, certainly there are other addictions that affect a person’s behaviour and outlook.

All have fallen in some way, and some people handle it differently than others. Any one of us can be one misstep away from starting that downward spiral that leads to situations like the Downtown East Side. If you're in a decent financial situation, that can cover a multitude of sins -- at least, as far as the world is concerned. As Spike Milligan once said, “money can’t buy you friends, but it gets you a better class of enemy”. But if the slip-up is accompanied by going broke, losing a job, family, status – and that’s happened to more than a few of the people we meet on the DTES – the crash is palpable. A rich man whose Grace runs out ahead of the money doesn’t realize how much he needs Grace.

One recurring theme in my own messages at the Mission is how close I came to that kind of crash: the elements were there, but by then God had gotten hold of me and had said, "stick with Me, kid, and you'll go places". I've long since understood that this isn't about me, but about Him, and the rest of that theme is how that same Grace and renewal is available to anyone who'll believe.

If you want to look for differences our friend was asking about, here's one: most people who come into the Mission know they need help. A lot of people in other parts of the city don’t. Recently, another recurring theme that's developed is that it’s OK to believe God has something better and that one is entitled to it, simply because, well, it is written ....

So while it’s easy to look at the DTES – or any hotbed of urban poverty – and look at an “Us and Them” situation, you don’t have to look much harder to see it’s really “Us and Us”.