Dear Tina, Wish you were here.

A scene like this was often played out over the past few years near Gospel Mission.

I'm on one side of Hastings Street, about to cross. A voice calls from the other side.

"Hiya, handsome!"

I do an exaggerated about-face, looking to see whom she's talking to. We cross the street and give each other a big hug right in the middle of the crosswalk. "You're lookin' great!" she says. "So are you, m'dear!" I reply, and we both go off on our ways.

Her name was Tina. Five-foot-nothing, mid-forties, face puffed out by years of drinking the East Side Martini -- Listerine with rubbing alcohol, either separately or mixed (proportions vary according to availability and whatever-gets-you-through-the-day) -- but usually a big smile and a lightly-teasing greeting. One of those people you were always happy to see.

She hung out in Pigeon Park and often came to The Lord's Rain. She rarely came to the Mission upstairs -- at least, not on my night -- but a couple of weeks ago, she and her "boyfriend", Johnny, did come, and if you listen to Amelia's talk about the visit from the Governor-General's Leadership Tour, you'll hear Tina's voice at one point saying, "the Lord works in mysterious ways".

Tina died on Tuesday.

That was it.

Pfft.

Gone.

I found out about it Wednesday morning from one of the fellows who recently started coming to The Lord's Rain. "I lost another of my friends yesterday," he said. Then he started describing her and the realization set in that this wonderful, vibrant person was gone.

Frank said it was likely kidney failure, brought on by those cocktails. He said Johnny had been getting increasingly angry with Tina about her drinking. Johnny is white, 50-something, and a professing Christian. Like Tina, one is always glad to see him.

So apparently, she was just sitting on one of the benches in Pigeon Park and passed out -- for good.

The locals had set up a memorial to her on that bench. Unlike the impromptu roadside memorials that spring up when someone is killed in a crash, with flowers and a cross and maybe a photo, this one has an interesting array of Things To Remember Her By. Bottles, an Edmonton Oilers beach towel, a cookbook, a sheaf of condoms (I'm not kidding), lit candles; there's also a school exercise book and a pen for people to write remembrances. Someone found a photo of Tina in younger days (top left of the picture) that resembles the Tina I knew not in the least (albeit enough that I could say, "so that's what she looked like 20 years ago"). In one way or another, those items meant something to someone in their own relationship with Tina; just as Tina meant something to each of them in their own way.

I hope in some way she knew how much she'd be missed.

It strikes me that part of the "hope" message we try to instill in people is the knowledge that they would be missed if something should happen to them. I think I know what my theme will be for Saturday night's sermon.

I'm reminded very much of Jesus' parable about Lazarus the beggar, who died and was gathered into the arms of Abraham (Luke 16). To others passing through the DTES en route to someplace else, she would have been just another drunk Injun; but there's no doubt in this mind where Tina is now.

===
That's a concept that's difficult for a lot to understand: the idea that you can be accepted by God and still not be acceptable to man. Some years ago, I wanted to share with a minister from Saskatchewan about Rusty, a brother who came to the Mission faithfully, hauling his bent body up the stairs despite having severe curvature of the spine, and shouting "praise the Lord!" with hardly any provocation. (He is still memorialized in our way of singing an old standard "I Been Redeemed By the Blood o'the Lamb!", finishing it by shouting, "yee-hah!", as Rusty did back in the day.) Rusty was stabbed to death after getting verbally involved in a fight between another guy and a woman. I started to relate this to the minister, but when I described Rusty as someone who loved the Lord -- "usually drunk as a skunk, but he loved the Lord". "Well, he couldn't have loved the Lord if he was constantly drunk," the minister snapped.

All-RIGHTY, then! Let's just move on to another topic, shall we?

===

Next to the memorial, a loud discussion was underway on the next bench. One fellow was trying to get more details about Tina's death and another guy kept repeating "that's all I (DELETED) know! Stop (DELETED) asking me what happened! I (DELETED) told you what happened - she died! Right there! On that bench!"

"So what happened?"

The discussion was still going on as I left, with the one who didn't know anything more taking repeated slugs from a large bottle of Listerine. And on it goes.

===
The sad news about Tina overshadowed Richard Johnson's return. He's the fellow I mentioned previously, who spent several weeks in hospital with a serious infection in his spine. He got the expected one-man standing ovation from John Sharp, who tends to take his role as Good Humor Man to wild extremes, and it was some exceptionally good news on a day when we really needed some.

Another element of serving on the Downtown East Side is the communications system. In this day of texting and tweeting, the primary way of finding out about someone on the DTES is still the tried-and-true moccasin telegraph. That may seem like a term with racial overtones, but it's the best description I've seen. It was given traction -- if not actually coined -- by Paul St Pierre, who wrote wonderful short stories about the people in the Chilcotin region, half of whom (at least, in Paul's stories) are white and the other half Indian (Paul wrote the stories in the 50s and 60s, when "Indian" was still an acceptable term)*. It refers to news passing from person to person, at the speed of whenever someone thinks to pass it on. It's also not limited to a particular ethnic group. On the DTES, there's really no other way of keeping tabs on people: they'll show up ... or not ... and if there's an issue, they might mention it to someone who might tell someone else ... you get the picture.

Not the easiest way to minister to people, I can tell you. This was how, for example, it took a week and a half for me to find out that Richard was in hospital: someone thought to mention it to me. Finding out about Tina was also "moccasin telegraph" stuff. I had said hi to Frank, and we exchanged information about our own personal conditions, and then he dropped the news on me. And he didn't even know I knew her.

Similarly, there's the story Amelia recounted about the woman on the Leadership tour who met someone from her reserve in Saskatchewan and everyone had been "wondering about him". Apparently, God plays a role in the moccasin telegraph, putting the right people in the right place at the right time.

Health care, timing and a room full of Higgs bosons

I'm constantly amazed at the good that one finds on the Downtown East Side.

That shouldn't be a surprise to you, I suppose, since we do talk a lot about the positive things we see in that part of town; but I still marvel.

Case in point: Wednesday morning, a woman came in in very bad shape. She was drunk, she was feeling ill, she wanted someone to call an ambulance to take her to hospital. And she was pregnant. Rhonda is her name. I had been upstairs, making sandwiches, and Danilo pointed her out to me. She was leaning against one of the pillars outside. I went out to talk to her and pray over her until the ambulance arrived. It didn't take long.

The paramedic came out to get her. "I'm the ambulance guy," he said. "Do you need to go to the hospital?" Rhonda nodded. "I'm drunk and I'm pregnant," she said, "and I'm sick." She climbed into the ambulance on her own. "Anything else to add?" the "ambulance guy" asked us. Danilo shook his head. "She says she's missing her son," I added. "You mean she can't find him or she's just lonely?" The assumption was that this was a child who had been taken from her by Social Services. "How old is he?" the ambulance guy asked her. "26." "Oh. Lonely, then."

Lonely, in a city of over 2 million.

As the Psalms say, "selah". (Pause and think about it.)

The ambulance guy talked to Rhonda quietly and with immense kindness. She would likely be taken to St Paul's Hospital, which is the nearest facility to the DTES. Since it's also in the West End, where I live, I've found myself in the emergency ward a few times, too, and have seen their dealings with "street people". They'll treat patients who are drunk or drug-sick, but let them know, in varying degrees of severity, that they can't expect to get treatment when they keep doing it to themselves. Rhonda will likely get a stern rebuke from the nursing staff -- but she'll still get treatment.

I was reminded of Lesley, a woman who was having a "drug episode" just over a year ago and we needed to call an ambulance for her. By the time it arrived, though, she had second thoughts about going and the ambulance guy and I had to convince her to get aboard. I said to the paramedic as he was about to leave, "I'd hate to think what would happen if someone had a heart attack or there was a bad traffic accident or something." "If there was," he said, "another car would handle it. This is what we do."

(Don't misunderstand: I've often seen the tough-guy side of paramedics, like the time they refused to transport a fellow who was smashed and rude and abusive inside one of the local "pharmacies" (basically a methadone dispensary). That would be the incident that gets reported to DTES "activists" as an example of the harsh treatment locals get from The Man. The dozens of times each day they go to help someone, regardless of the cause or circumstance, often go unreported.)

Almost overlooked in this is the fact that The Lord's Rain was one door that was open at a time when she needed it -- and other places might not have been open for business. Again, right place - right time.

===
Richard, one of our favorites, is currently in St Paul's. He had been walking home when he started to feel weak and get a deep pain in his back. So he sat down on a bench until the pain went away and then he got up again. But he felt dizzy and sat down on the sidewalk. A friend from the same SRO (single-room occupancy) came by, saw him and called an ambulance.

Turned out, Richard had some sort of infection that had gotten into his vertebrae. He's been in the hospital for the past three weeks now (I only learned about it two weeks ago -- communication can be one of the hardest things on the Downtown East Side: people can go for weeks without being seen and then turn up as if nothing had happened; sometimes, they like it that way), receiving antibiotics and getting his strength back (he's in his mid-60s). He's also bored out of his tree and spends a lot of time reading sci-fi and westerns.

And Richard is getting good care, which is a real blessing. But it occurred to me, what if he had had to pay for his health care, or if he even balked at going to hospital because he might not be able to afford it? His is certainly not a case where he "brought it on himself". I'm gratified for a health-care system that wouldn't turn people away for lack of funds. (It might be tempting for a Canadian to draw a comparison with the US system, but Reggie Stutzman -- former pastor at the Bowery Mission in New York and now heading-up Real Life Church in the Bronx -- tells me Richard likely wouldn't have been turned away in the States, either.)

===

So a Higgs boson walks into a Catholic church, and the priest says, "we don't allow your type in here". And the Higgs boson says to the priest, "but without me, you cannot have mass."
-- don't boo me, that wasn't my joke (Milton Berle)

As it has been in scientific circles, pool halls and executive suites at ballparks, I'm sure, the discovery of the Higgs boson -- the so-called "God particle", because it's supposedly the catalyst that creates matter (or something) -- was a topic of hot discussion at The Lord's Rain. The discussion went something like this:

ONE GUY -- Hey: didja see they discovered the God particle?
OTHER GUY -- Yeah! Hey - ya know what? You're a "God particle"!
FIRST GUY -- Yeah! And so are you!
OTHER GUY -- And so's he (me)! And so's she ... and him ...

Within about 3 minutes, it was declared that all of us in The Lord's Rain -- and everyone we'd meet outside -- was a "particle of God".

And we all went about our business.

Bravo for perspective.