Welcome (others) to my world!

On Tuesday morning, as Metro reporter Kate Webb was leaving The Lord's Rain, there was a flurry of two or three conversations going on around me. As is often the case, I was expected to listen/respond to/be part of all of them. I've often said that you don't have to be ADD to minister there, but it helps.

Anyway, I called to Kate as she left, "welcome to my world!"

An issue on the Downtown East Side over the past few months has been just that: welcoming others to their world. It's been cloaked in the protests over businesses opening up shop in the area, and that the claim that the bogeyman  called "gentrification" will drive out poor people from the only homes they can afford. But amid the rhetoric and intimidating and often illegal actions that have accompanied this, has been the notion that "we don't want those kind of people here!" The anti-poverty activists don't want people from wealthier parts of Vancouver to actually see and (horror of horrors!) interact with the locals.

(It's worth noting that a week ago, the Carnegie Community Action Project's "main organizer" and one of the leading activists in this campaign, resigned his position. Vancity Credit Union, one of CRC's main supporters, posted an item on its website about the housing situation on the DTES, and in the final paragraph, it denounces illegal activity. While the newspaper account carefully avoids making a direct connection between the two events, Vancity's statement talks about discussion involving all parties, while rhetoric from the activists pointedly rejects that idea. I can't help wondering if they really want solutions or just a forum to gripe.)

I still believe that one of the benefits of increasing business on the DTES -- especially high-end businesses like Pidgin Restaurant -- is to generate interaction between two sectors of society that have been kept apart. Yet if we're to follow Jesus' teachings that those who have need to reach out to and help those who haven't, interaction is vital. Get to know one another. See how the other half lives. Indeed, action on poverty in New York City wasn't actually taken until Jacob Riis published his groundbreaking book in 1890, presenting photos of the Bowery, Five Points and similar impoverished areas. 

These musings were brought on partly by a blog posting by John Fischer yesterday and a follow-up today, on letting others share our respective worlds. Both are worth reading, but a comment from one of John's readers yesterday (and which inspired today's follow-up) is very incisive.

"Nothing positive happens until we either allow someone into our sphere or we are invited to enter someone else's. Maybe having one's bubble burst isn't such a bad thing after all."

Two words to note in that comment are "allow" and "invited". There has to be willingness on both sides to interact. My experience at The Lord's Rain is that, regardless of the attitude of activist leaders, the people we serve on the DTES are more than willing. And that's very encouraging.