Pigeon Park - back open again!

It's been the subject of a fair bit of cynicism and suspicion ... and no little frustration on all parts for various reasons ... but one of the focal points of the Downtown East Side is back in business, as it were. Pigeon Park officially re-opened on Tuesday (Dec. 15), after being closed for several months for the work on the Carrall Street Greenway.

Pigeon Park is the primary reference point for Gospel Mission/The Lord's Rain. Barry Babcook occasionally refers to the Mission as "The Pigeon Mission" (although that's becoming less and less common) and for about four months, it was really hard for us to describe to people where we were located, because "Pigeon Park", for all intents and purposes, didn't exist.

One interesting little anomaly: I think I'm stopped illegally in this picture, because there's a "no stopping/bus zone" pictogram at the front of that space ... but no sign at the other end. There aren't any buses going down that block, anyway, but as you can see from the trolley overheads above the car (look closely), the buses will be back soon.

What's really neat about this is, here is our little church - right in the midst of this lovely Greenway. People taking advantage of the new facility, be it for biking or walking, will see Gospel Mission, and I believe will start to see the good-news stories that are coming out of both the Mission and The Lord's Rain. People might suggest that the Greenway and renewed Pigeon Park are connected with the great bogeyman called "gentrification", but I say this Greenway is really a pathway that will, at last, bridge that Great Divide between the DTES and the ROTC (Rest Of The City). As I've said before, we have to stop looking at the poverty and homelessness and hopelessness issues as a matter of Us and Them. It's Us and Us, and once we get our heads around that, we'll be more than halfway there.

Besides, don't people in the area have just as much a right to nice-looking streets as those in other parts of town? Just like a shower and a fresh set of clothes, there are times when sprucing up the outward appearance can do wonders for the inward reality.

What I really like about the renewed Pigeon Park -- and the Carrall Street Greenway -- is the message the city is sending to the area. With all the beautification going on as the city prepares for the Olympics, that's a stretch that could have been ignored -- but it wasn't.

And yes, it is called -- now and forever -- Pigeon Park. There was some talk that it would be re-named "Pioneer Park", in the way that other parts of Vancouver grope for signs of "heritage", even as 21st Century high-rises (oh-so-environmentally-friendly, dontcha know) sprout like ragweed around us. But no: the official Vancouver Parks sign proclaims that Pigeon Park it shall be. Really - no other name would have gotten any traction at all.

Mind you, there's a certain historical/heritage aspect to the name Pigeon Park, because I seem to recall a time back in the Hippie 60s when there was a controversy over making that the official name. Must check with Chuck Davis - he'd know.

Not that the renewed park doesn't have a streak of ersatz history. I think I noted in a previous post that they'd installed streetcar rails in the pavement. I believe the streetcar did run along that route (the old BC Electric carbarn is across the street, now home to an art gallery and a variety of offices, including those of Red Robinson and Bruce Allen), but what makes the rails such a strange addition is that they fool nobody. For one thing, they run at sidewalk level, not at street level. On the other side of the carbarn, on Pender Street, streetcar rails also cross the sidewalk and then continue running across the street. If you really tried to run a streetcar along those tracks, that'd be a heckuva bumpy ride going from the sidewalk to the street.

There are Biblical analogs to Pigeon Park, as well. I've written before that the DTES is Vancouver's "Samaria", and Jesus makes special mention of that area in His instructions to us. When Jesus journeyed towards Galilee, He went via Samaria and then stopped and rested beside Jacob's Well, a place that had over 2,000 years of history behind it even then. It was a place where you could be guaranteed to meet a Samaritan. Pigeon Park is right at the edge of the original city limits of Vancouver, and would have been a site of some kind of settlement -- right back to the native Indian villages prior to the arrival of the white man -- for generations.

Jesus went out of His way to reach out to Samaria and Samaritans, and we need to remember that He also called on us -- His followers -- to make that a priority.

Moments of despair, moments of joy

I love the way God messes with my mind sometimes.


Mind you, it's usually in a good way -- letting me see moments of despair, and then slapping me on the back and saying, "see? It's all going to be OK!"


The construction going on outside Gospel Mission / The Lord's Rain has been particularly trying. Some could look at it the same way certain businesspeople on Cambie Street looked at the construction of the Canada Line: a major pain in the bottom and anathema to business. Or ... consider the way the Carrall Street Greenway is going to look when it's finished. More about that in a sec'.


We've had some internal difficulties lately. People who we've seen make giant strides in their lives thanks to being touched by the Word of God have "weirded-out" on us. Others have run into serious health problems. Finances have gotten hard to come by. In the Spirit realm, one would say we're under attack.


Well, a former colleague of mine at the BC Electric Railway Company (for those of you unfamiliar with my sense of humour, that's TransLink - the South Coast British Columbia Transportation Authority, where I work) once said, "if you're not taking flak, you're not over the target". In Biblical terms, the apostles were told to rejoice when such things happened, because they were under attack for the sake of the Gospel.


And to put it in terms that relate to us ... we're poking someone with a sharp stick and he doesn't like it. If we weren't getting through to people with the Gospel and liable to lead people to Christ, the devil would leave us alone.


(There's an inspiring story, used as an analogy for salvation and newness in Christ, about Roy "Wrong Way" Reigels, who ran the wrong way in a Rose Bowl game, leading to the safety touch which made the difference in the final score. The amazing thing about his tragically flawed end-to-end run was that no one from the opposing team tried to stop him. That's the devil for you: if he lets us run untouched, it probably means we're not a threat to him.)


And indeed we are, because through all that have come shining moments to remind us that we're doing what we're supposed to be doing.

• Mario - a 40-something man who's been seeking God for some time. I met him at Rainbow Mission almost 5 years ago now. Then didn't see him much until two weeks ago, when he came to Gospel Mission. He had caught fire for God, brought a flash-disk filled with Worship songs, and talked about Scripture and how it applied to Vancouver.


• Kim - a fellow who I'd also first met at Rainbow, and who "migrated" to Gospel Mission around the same time I did. He actually preached a short sermon (which I'll post later) on "Salt and Light". And then, he stopped coming. Someone told me that somebody had said the wrong thing to him. We prayed for him, hoping he'd come back. Last week, he did -- with the message for my wife: "I'm Baaaack!" He'd been studying, learning trades, had new teeth, and a great new positive attitude.


• a woman -- a clothing designer and former drug addict -- who followed up on our list of "needs" in Operation Phoenix in The Province newspaper: eager to help with Ladies' Day and anything else we need


• one of our "community" who had come a long way in the past two years and then weirded-out on us (see above), made a personal, face-to-face apology to Pastor Barry, after almost blowing up every bridge he'd built

Much of this has come after I'd sent an email circular to a group of men and women of God, asking for prayer for the Mission and its assignment.

God is obviously listening.

He's also showing. I had a lovely vision the other night. I was praying about the situation at the Mission, and a photo of the front of the Mission came into view. But then, I started to see the streetscape of the Carrall Street Greenway, superimposed on the photo. The rest of Carrall Street has been turned into the Greenway, so it wasn't hard to imagine. And I started thinking, "wow! Our little Mission ... on that brand-new, beautifully designed street! Thank you, Lord!"

A moment of joy, indeed.