School Days, the Fear Factor and How God Took Over 327 Carrall

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about Marty, a former schoolteacher who essentially "lost it all" to drugs and booze and has been battling his way back. He has not been able to regain his standing as a public school teacher, but he decided recently to train to teach English as a Second Language and made a marvellous arrangement, in which the housing society that oversees his apartment will front him the tuition cost.

The funding has now come through, and Marty is about to start his course, the first part of which is offered online through the University of Victoria. Over the past couple of days, Marty's talked about re-connecting with the discipline required to take the course -- especially when it's online, with no one hanging over your shoulder, hectoring you on -- and the fear.

"Drugs take away everything," Marty said today. "I mean everything -- including any shred of self-confidence. I've been clean for seven months now, but I still have these fears. Can I do it? Will I be up for the job?" He talked of a 12-step program he'd been on, and how "courage" was one of the key points. "Courage doesn't mean being fearless," he said, "it means facing your fears and dealing with them.

"When I messed-up with drugs and I had to meet the Superintendent (of schools), my (AA) sponsor went with me and we sat outside in his car and prayed about it. I went in, all prepared to get fired -- and walked out with substitute hours! Totally not what I expected! Then we went to my bank manager, because I'd been kiting cheques. Again, we said a prayer in the car and I walked in there -- I figured he was going to call the cops and I was prepared to go to jail. Instead, he gave me a $20-a-month repayment plan."

In the Bible, fear, I pointed out, also precedes a move of God. Anytime something really big is about to happen -- a voice from a burning bush, for example, or the announcement of the birth of the Messiah -- the humans who see it have to be told, "fear not". 

Marty has a lot of support in his corner as he seizes yet another second chance. He knows it. And it's starting to sound like he's believing in himself again, too.

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Herbie is also about to answer the bell -- the school bell, that is -- and his fear is manifesting in a slightly different way. If you've seen the video presentation about The Lord's Rain, you'll see Herbie in the clips of the Volunteers. He's identified as Robert Lowe, which is his real name, but became known as "Herbie" when he jokingly used that name on a snooker scoresheet. Bad knees kiboshed his career as a plumber, leading to his arrival on the Downtown East Side, but he's pitched in on occasion, when something has gone awry with the plumbing around The Lord's Rain. About a year and a half ago, having gone from served to serving at The Lord's Rain, he determined to go into social work. He set about getting his high school diploma (he was a few credits short of graduation), then started applying for funding to take courses at Douglas College. The college accepted him, the funding came through, and he started last week.

His big fear was getting to the campus. His courses are located at the campus in Coquitlam, 20 miles from the Downtown East Side. He plans to move out there, but for the time-being, he's had to rely on public transit, which takes about an hour and 10 minutes by bus. So along with his preparations, he started in July, diligently studying the bus schedules (the TransLink website is wonderful for that) to determine what time the bus comes by Hastings and Carrall so he could get to the college by 8AM.

The guy is seriously pumped about going back to school and helping others.

He even dyed his hair.

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There's a common factor to Herbie's and Marty's current experiences: the knowledge that God has given them another Second Chance. They're grabbing it and working it for all it's worth. Would that more of us their age could combine life experience, Herbie's and Marty's determination, and even a soupçon of the exuberance of today's Generation N (N-titled): truly, as GB Shaw said, youth is wasted on the young.

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On the DTES, youth is just plain wasted. A new group of people has been arriving over the summer -- many of them, as I've said before, young girls newly arrived from someplace else, having been convinced their parents were "stifling them" and that the Big City would have much more opportunity for her.

And if you believe that, I have some watches you might want to see ...

Today, a new one turned up. I had been talking with Marty and turned around in time to see this stunningly beautiful, impeccably-dressed brunette pick up a coffee and start to leave. She was accompanied by a young man. He was the sort of chap that, if my daughter were to bring him home, I would go out and buy an assortment of guns, just to be able to spread them on the kitchen table and clean them elaborately, all the while telling the young man how much I loved my daughter and would be REALLY upset if she ever got hurt.

I digress.

"Too hot for down here," Justin -- a new volunteer -- remarked as they left.

Danilo laughed. "You both reacted - him [Justin] like a young man ... and you like a human." (I think he met "humanitarian" or "humane": sometimes, Danilo's English can be inadvertently comical.) There are myriad things one wants to do when seeing someone new on the scene, knowing what the "scene" does to young, vital, beautiful people in a very few years: you want to scream at her, show before-and-after pictures, hogtie her and throw her into a darkened van and rush her back home; but all one really can do is pray. Maybe even now, her dad is heading down to the area, to bring her home and work through whatever made her want to run away.

Danilo has seen more than a few before-and-after scenarios. "You know Maggie?" he said, referring to a prematurely aged woman who hobbles around, pushing a wheelchair and lives in a doorway on Cordova Street. "I remember she was like that [girl] -- pretty. Now look at her." 

(Maggie's Place is a disused doorway in a new restaurant at the corner of Cordova and Carrall. Unlike Pidgin, just across Carrall Street, it and another new, higher-end restaurant in the same building, have escaped the calumny and constant protesting of the DTES activists.)

As always, we need to lift up girls like this one -- and young men like the one she was in -- in prayer. Intercessory prayer can do great things when physical actions fall flat; and distance means nothing.

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Bravo for Life's Ironies Dep't. -- 'You wanna know how drugs can wreck someone?" Marty asked me. "There's a guy I know. He was messed-up on crack, managed to beat the habit, get a job and move into a better apartment. And the place he moved into, has a strict no-drugs policy. But as he got more money, he started having 'friends' over - and they'd get high. So he got evicted and he's back on the street." 

I've also seen the gradual destruction of one of the most promising people I've ever met: Mike, who was part of an award-winning school choir, but whose life gradually spun downwards because of drugs. Articulate to the point of getting hung up in his own vocabulary while trying to make a point, he would often be the only one -- aside from Amelia and me -- singing during Praise and Worship at Gospel Mission. But much of the time when I see him now, he's spaced-out on drugs; compounding the tragedy is his unwavering support for InSite -- the supervised drug-injection facility on the Downtown East Side. Occasionally, he's worn a T-shirt with the legend, "InSite Saves Lives" -- an Orwellian lie if ever I've heard one: the people who use the facility are already dead -- their lives surrendered to drugs; any hope that would spur them to recover, stripped away by a society that has tacitly told them that they will always be drug addicts so we might as well make it "safe" to use them. It was also Mike who told me that, by not taking part in the mob scene at the courthouse a couple of years ago, to intimidate a judge to rule that InSite was a "necessary health service" and hence had to receive federal funding, he missed out on $35.00.

I bring this up not simply to rant again about my passionate opposition to InSite and the concept of "harm reduction": as a Christian, I know that Jesus is about harm elimination and healing -- not keeping people enslaved to addiction. But there's a connection between The Lord's Rain and InSite that we don't often talk about.

From its beginnings as a Klondike-era saloon, our little space at 327 Carrall Street has seen some dark times -- probably none darker than its brief stint, 10 years ago, as a supervised drug injection site -- the forerunner of InSite.

Perversely -- but almost predictably -- Canada's public broadcaster is preparing to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the "safe" injection site, and this week, a CBC Radio reporter called to ask if she could interview one of the proponents of InSite at The Lord's Rain, "to get an idea of what the place looked like."

I explained to her that The Lord's Rain looks nothing like it did during the injection-site days, nor in the time that followed until we took it over. I'm afraid the poor woman got quite an earful from both Barry and me -- Barry is even more passionate about this topic than I am -- and frankly, the metamorphosis of 327 Carrall would be a story, in and of itself. But I don't think that's her assignment.

The fact is, between the illegal shooting gallery and the "anti-poverty" (anarchist) groups which occupied the place, 327 Carrall has seen some pretty dark scenes. Barry constantly prayed for Godliness to come over the space and its tenants, and in bringing The Lord's Rain to pass, God has certainly answered that prayer. From being a focal point for despair, rebellion and lawlessness, that space has become a reflection of light and love and a source of hope in Christ. Like anything that has gone through repentance and renewal, the occupation by the supervised injection site might as well have never happened.