"And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three: but the greatest of these is charity." (1 Cor. 13:13 KJV)
We hear much about faith and charity (actually, the Greek word Paul used was agàpé, which means selfless, unconditional love -- "charity" was the best King James I's team could come up with) as the Great Spiritual Characteristics, but hope doesn't seem to get much attention. Yet Hope is the dearest currency for the people we serve at The Lord's Rain.
James has been coming into Gospel Mission for many years, and when I got to know him, he had just been crippled by a stroke. He was about 60 when the stroke hit him, and it limited his ability to speak, but there were a few of us who could pick up what he was trying to say and help communicate.
One thing he hadn't communicated to me was the problem with his shoulder. I had been talking to him one night at the Mission, and patted him on the shoulder, and he practically screamed. He pulled down the collar of his t-shirt and revealed that a broken collarbone with the bone sticking up through his skin.
A few days later, I took him to the welfare office to see if they knew who might have his medical records -- any kind of indication of his treatment. The worker looked at me as if I was crazy. "We don't keep those records. I don't know where they are," he said. James didn't have any family close by -- or anywhere, it seems -- so on paper, he didn't really exist.
Through a long sequence of events, I learned that his shoulder was basically inoperable. Because he was an alcoholic and needed a walker to get around, there was a risk, the surgeon told me, that even if they used a metal plate to bridge the gap between the bones, James might trip and fall, break the plate and develop an infection. Prognosis: live with it.
His public health worker had taken an interest in him, and called me one day to discuss his case. She explained that he was threatened with eviction from his room because he had been caught smoking crack after he had been warned about it.
"Clearly," I pontificated, "James has to get off the drugs."
There was a pause, while the idiocy of that remark sank in. We said the next line together: "Why?"
And that's where Hope comes in: why should a 60-something man, crippled by a stroke, with a broken collarbone that keeps him in constant pain, make any kind of effort to get off drugs? As 'tis said, drugs are not the problem on the Downtown East Side, they're the solution.
And in the absence of Hope, that's exactly the case.
But James found something in coming to the Mission. Much against fire regulations, he would have someone else carry his walker up to the Mission and haul his slight frame up the stairs after it. His arrival would be greeted like Norm on "Cheers!" -- John Sharp would usually be the first to roar, "JAMES!", joined by others (ahem). But stuff happens: when we got the TV installed in The Lord's Rain so that people with disabilities could watch the services (as we explained a few years ago, the building is too old to retrofit with any kind of lift for wheelchairs or scooters), James had to take part there, but he missed the fellowship of being upstairs with the rest and then the frustration of losing his faculties took a major toll on his attitude, and he would be increasingly prone to explode in rage at people - usually barraging them with the "f-bomb".
He stopped coming for a while, but then, he started to make his way back. This past Monday, Anthony Babcook posted an update on Facebook, to wit:
"Yesterdays message touched James(Jimmy as people call him) he's a handicap thats a big handful at abut has a heart to keep coming back. I had a talk in a way me and him have worked out to communicate and he was pointing at Drew on the t.v. and he was crying when he said in his way the FATHER SON HOLY SPIRIT with his hand over his head heart and wrists. The only word you hear the most come out of his mouth may be F... but his heart is changing if its only bit by bit"
James' heart is changing. There it is: HOPE. I don't know if he's licked that crack habit or if he still drinks, but I do know that he doesn't look or act like an addict or a drunk anymore. There is something different in his eyes, his demeanour. I saw James a bit later Sunday afternoon (I hadn't read Anthony's post at that point), panhandling outside Waterfront Station, and his face broke into a broad smile and he flashed the "peace" sign at me (one of his favorite ways of communicating) and gripped my hand with his left -- he always tries to crush my hand to show he's still strong, at least on that side -- and you can just tell that this is a different man.
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Victoria has had her ups and downs, too. I mentioned her a year ago, when she woke up one morning to find her husband dead in bed beside her. She came straight to The Lord's Rain and just sat there, pouring it out to John. This past Tuesday, she came in, very excited about starting a new training course. Vancouver Community College is offering a course in basic employment skills -- six weeks of learning about computer operations, numeracy ("arithmetic plus", as she noted on her information sheet), interpersonal skills, problem-solving and a bunch of others. She's 54 now, and whether she'll be able to parlay these skills into employment is anybody's guess; but you could see the hope in her eyes: as she takes the course, she'll acquire skills she didn't have before and get a sense of what she can do, rather than dwell on what she can't.
Again: HOPE. "... hope that is seen is not hope;; for why does one still hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance." (Paul's letter to the Romans, ch. 8, verses 24-25.)
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