Hair Days (good & bad), quakes and high IQs

Craig walked in the other morning, looking like something one of my cats had left on the doormat (you don’t want to know). “Morning,” he managed to say.

“Nice‘do’, Craig,” I said. “Want some gel to keep it that way?”

“Took me eight hours to get it to go like this,” he replied.

Indeed, Craig was sporting that pulled-through-a-hedge-backwards look that can only be accomplished by a cheap bed or an expensive stylist. Chances are, some latter-day Vidal Sassoon or Paul da Costa in the gentrifying Downtown East Side has already spotted Greg’s hair and thought, “hmm ...”

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Debbie, on the other hand, is spending extra time on her hair. I think I’ve mentioned her before: bent double from a severe curvature of the spine, once pretty, but now toothless and weaning herself off heroin through methadone, she still has some self-esteem left – as evidenced by the tattoo on one wrist: “FN 99”, which she says means, “Darn Near 100%”. Or something like that.

Anyway, Debbie is one of a growing group of regulars who come in regularly to make full use of this facility. Danilo already knows her routine and sets it up as soon as she walks in: soap, shampoo, two towels, conditioner ... and gel. (That’s how I knew we had gel for Craig if he wanted it.) Then, after the shower, the blow dryer and a brush, both of which live behind our reception counter. (The brushes and combs are kept in a Barbicide jar, which our friends at Hair Mode in North Vancouver donated (they didn’t ask for the plug, by the way, but I thought it was about time we thanked them); between that and the sit-down shower supplied by Andrew Sheret when we built the place, Debbie is able to do the washing-up she needs.)

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“You got a phone? I need to call my mom to see if she’s OK.”

Almost overshadowed by the unbelievable destruction of Sandy along the Atlantic Coast was the fact that a couple of days before, there had been a major earthquake in Haida Gwaii – formerly the Queen Charlotte Islands – off the north coast of BC. It registered 7.7. The one asking for a phone was Darrell, a native man whose home town and family are in Haida Gwaii, and just a couple of weeks ago, he was telling me that there is never a day when there isn’t an earthquake there. So beyond the media reporting – which may well have been affected by the fact that it happened on a Saturday night, there was no NHL hockey to report on and a tsunami warning was attached – a good measure of the quake, I figured, would be Darrell’s attitude.

We don’t have a public phone, but I handed him my BlackBerry. If it was causing Darrell concern, it had to be serious. As it turned out, his mother was pretty shaken up by the event, and they had just had a major after-shock. That's why the phone call was so important: it’s not as if Darrell could just zip over and see her in person: it’s a 7-hour ferry ride from Prince Rupert to Skidegate – cost $35 if you’re a walk-on passenger – and of course, you have to get to Rupert in the first place– in the neighbourhood of $250 on Greyhound. It’s amazing how you can be so separated and still be in the same province.

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“So tell me,” the bus driver said, “what’s the education level like there?” Being one of the front-of-camera spokespeople for the BC Electric Railway Company, which has supported my ministry habit for going on seven years now, front line staff tend to recognize me and strike up conversations. This transit operator (to use the correct industry term) was curious as to why I had been turning up on his #19 bus at 6:20am lately.

“Actually,”I replied, “there are some pretty darn intelligent people there.”

“You know, I’m not surprised,” he said. “You just never know, do you? Something goes wrong ...”

True, that. The email I passed around on Friday, appealing for cold-weather items to be donated to the Vancouver Police horse patrol for the men living in Stanley Park, reminded me of that fact. I’ve known a couple of the guys in the park – 21^st-Century hobos, in fact, living their lives, trying not to have to rely on The Man to get by; if it means kipping in a hollow tree or with a tarp hung between a couple of branches, so be it. We had a fellow who used to come into The Lord’s Rain regularly, bringing his back pack. He might shower-up or just sit and have a coffee and chat, then hike back to Stanley Park and vanish. He was on a “quest” – mainly to find his head again: he never actually told us what had happened. He eventually did, moved back to Winnipeg and when last heard from, he was working with at-risk youth in the Even Windier City.

As the bus driver noted, many of “the guys” are remarkably well-read. A lot of them know their Scripture and some of their questions and insights are amazing. I think I’ve mentioned Guy before: a fellow who came into the old Rainbow Mission and who laid an alternative interpretation of the story of the “Rich Young Ruler” on me that blew my socks off. I was just launching into the standard commentary about choosing the things of the world over eternal life with Jesus, and Guy piped up from the back and said, “what if he was sad because he had so many things he didn’t think he could ever get rid of them all?” I’ve never thought of that passage the same way again.

There’s Ron, who spends his days pushing a cart around the back alleys, gleaning whatever he can and often fixing things up and then selling them to second-hand shops, but is a voracious reader. He invariably has his nose in a book, even during the services at Gospel Mission upstairs. But that doesn’t worry me and I’ve never considered it rude: both Amelia and I can tell that he’s listening to the service and often, he too will come over and share some very poignant observation from Scripture. Mario is another who has often asked questions about Scripture that have sent me scrambling to the prayer closet to ask the Lord about it.

Ron still has all his marbles. Len, on the other hand, drifts in and out of coherence. He is – or was – a Professional Engineer, and still puts “P.Eng.”after his name, and spends a lot of time writing things on 3”x5” slips of paper and occasionally pins them up on the cork board. His sentences are usually well-constructed, except the actual words have absolutely no connection to one another.

Case in point: we had a brief hailstorm a couple of weeks ago, but when I called it “hail”,Len corrected me and said they were “ice pellets”.

“What’s the diff?” I asked.

There was a long pause, while Len tried to concentrate. “I’ll ... I’ll let you know.”

A few minutes later, he handed Danilo a slip of paper to hand to me.

CHANGE IN BAROMETRIC PRESSURE BY ICE PELLETS AFFECTS THE SYR OPS.

“Huh?”I said. At first, I thought it was a conspiracy-theory reference – he’s fond of those.

“You know,” he said, “air pressure changes and the sy rops move differently in the tree.”

“Oh– syrup!” I said. “Got it,” I lied. (I considered saying I felt like a sap but thought better of it.)

And yet it’s not as if Len is totally out of touch. A couple of years ago, a guy we’d never seen before got angry because I wouldn’t give him more than the two pastries we allot to each person. The long and short of it was, he cursed a blue streak; I kept my cool (something I'm not accustomed to doing), looked him square in the eye and calmly told him that if he didn’t like our rules, there was a great big city out there where I was sure he could find another free coffee, he kicked the reception desk, threw his cup of coffee at me (missed) and stormed out. John immediately started praying for him.

The place had gone quiet, as the others watched to see how this would be handled. A few minutes later, Len handed me one of his slips of paper.

“GRACE AND FORGIVENESS – NOW ON DISPLAY AT THE LORD’S RAIN”

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You've probably noted the common theme this time has been the older guys. They can break my heart -- possibly because I'm a middle-aged guy, myself, and there's a lot of commonality among us. These guys have had jobs, lived a long time, and have made one or two mistakes that were handled ... well ... differently. Sure, it's easy to say, "they brought it on themselves" -- except, well, aren't we all just one slip-up away from being in the same boat? Are the mistakes I've made along the road from there to here any "better" than theirs?

But as the bus driver said, you never know what might cause them to throw a piston and wind up on the DTES. Are they too smart for their own good? Is it like Jackson Browne’s lyric, “Was I unwise to leave [my eyes] open for so long?” The really sad part is when they themselves say, "I brought it on myself," and that's when they need someone to tell them that God has long since forgiven them, even if they haven't, and has provided a Way for them to break away from the shackles of the past. They need to know that trouble is only temporary, so do not adjust your faith. That's particularly important at a time of life when "temporary" can look more and more like "constant".

God has His reasons for things, and we need to keep asking Him what He's up to. I've had "someones" like that in my own life, telling me those things, and I'm sure you have, too.

We have to get on with our job and work while it’s still the daytime: help those as much as we can and underscore it all with Hope. Sometimes, knowing that there is a turnaround available is enough of a turnaround, right there.