This prayer's a no-brainer -- really!

As I write this, it is Thursday afternoon and I have been sitting guard over The Lord's Rain since about 8am. There was a breakin overnight: someone managed to smash through the security glass panel in our front door (the kind with wire mesh embedded), open the door and get in. They were going after our large-screen TV, which we use to "pipe" the Carrall Street Church services from upstairs, so that people with disabilities can take part.

They even brought a golf club cart to carry it.

Anyway, they didn't get it. They got the TV off the wall and onto the floor, but took off -- probably because they heard the sirens. The police arrived even before our friend Ian got here: he lives nearby and was called when the intrusion alarm went off. 

Police say they got excellent-quality prints, so they may well catch these people. And now, I'm waiting for the glass-repair people to show up. 

So ... my prayer request to you: forgiveness for the people who did this and a revelation of God to bring them to repentance. Also, that the repairs won't be too costly and that we'll get the TV re-installed quickly so it can continue to serve our people. (The TV is intact, except for the input connectors, which were broken off inside the jacks.)

"You're Good People!"

I noticed the boy first. Clean-cut, good-looking, he politely, almost shyly, asked where he could hand in a pair of dirty socks and get a clean pair. He motioned towards the sign, “Vancouver Sock Exchange”.

I found a pair in one of our bins. They were clean, but didn’t match.

“That’s OK,” he said. “They’ll usually be covered by my shoes, anyway.”

“If anyone asks, tell them you’ve got another pair, just like them.” I’m such a wit.

Then I noticed the girl. Beautiful, and together, they could have been that quiet, sweet couple who got together in high school and never split up.

Danilo nudged me. “Teenagers?” he said. “Must be,” I replied.

They each had a large suitcase with a bedroll and spent their time organizing their things. I think they had showers. The boy told me later that they had spent the night at Triage, an emergency shelter. I’ve had very little dealings with Triage, but what I’ve seen is a kind, compassionate staff that goes above and beyond to try to give people a dry alternative to spending the night on the street. I remember carrying one drugged-out girl into the building and the staff arranging a couple of comfy chairs and finding a blanket for her because they had no beds available. The sense I get is that they will do anything in their power to keep from turning someone away.

“We need to get back to Alert Bay,” the boy said. “I came down here for treatment and now we’re waiting for Harbour Light to open to see if they can help us with the ticket back.” He went out around 9, and the girl stayed behind with the luggage. By 10 o’clock closing time, he hadn’t come back, so she got up to leave.

“You’ve probably noticed that you’ve stumbled into a church,” I said as we stepped outside the door. “Do you mind if I pray over you?”

“No. Please.”

It was brief: for protection, a safe trip home, health ... she smiled, “thanks. You guys are good people!”

I hope and pray that we don’t see them again.

The Lord’s Rain serves so many people in so many different ways: longtime residents of the Downtown East Side who find a community place where they can be themselves; people who see their stay on the DTES as a temporary stop while they get a foothold on life; people in need of a place to come when they are literally “just passing through”. I don’t know what the boy was getting treatment for, but if it was some kind of addiction, perhaps the experience of coming into The Lord’s Rain and meeting what his girlfriend called “good people”, can help provide the hope that fills the void.

+++

You Can Observe A Lot Just By Watching dep’t

Turnaround in one’s life doesn’t necessarily relate to financial or social circumstances. The first and most lasting sign of turnaround appears to be in one’s attitude, particularly when it comes to “owning” the issues and events in their lives. Simply put, those who own their issues, who admit that they messed up and bear responsibility for the setbacks (and I don’t mean saying, “I wrong to trust those people!”), are more likely to turn around. Those, whose problems are always the fault of someone else, are not. You see the effects of the attitudinal change in different ways, but the bottom line is, they’re a whole lot more pleasant to have around. It’s wonderful to watch.

+++

got jobs?

There are a couple of guys I know at the Mission who are in need of work. Due to age and certain infirmities, they’re somewhat limited in the amount they can lift and so forth, but they’re smart and, I believe, reliable. That’s the best recommendation I can give them, but I’m passing along a desire for some leads for them for part-time or casual work in the Vancouver area. If you think you can help, please reply to this email and I’ll help make the connection.

+++

Scripture

A verse in Jeremiah is one of many that sum up the importance, in God’s eyes, of serving the poor. The message is given to one of the sons of Josiah, king of Judah; the son has been solely concerned with the finery of being a prince. God tells him, through the prophet (Jer. 22:15),

“Did not your father eat and drink and do justice and righteousness? Then it was well with him. (16) He judged the cause of the poor and needy; then it was well. Was not this knowing Me?”

That really needs no further interpretation. 

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.

The Lord's Rain at 5: meeting a Basic Human Need

April 30 marks the 5th anniversary of the opening of The Lord's Rain -- the outreach at Gospel Mission that provides showers to people on the Downtown East Side -- and the surprises keep coming.

When the project was first touted back in the fall of 2007, at least one reporter pointed out that it was meeting a Basic Human Need -- namely, to be clean. Certainly, that was the most noticeable thing about the DTES when I first arrived at Rainbow Mission in 2004: the smell of stale urine and BO. How could people live in that filth day after day?

And as we learned in the years since then, people can't. "Street people" or no, they're human like anyone else, and there's a basic need to be clean.

But as I was reflecting on the past five years this morning, something else hit me. The Lord's Rain was not intended to be evangelical, and we definitely do not shove religion at people who walk in. But intent and reality are often two completely different things. (I like to think of Joe Adamson's comment about the Marx Brothers movie, "Duck Soup": "if we could get on the complicated Los Angeles freeway system and, simply by not intending to go to Santa Monica, not go there, 'intent' would be all we'd need."*)

The fact is, people come into The Lord's Rain, and even though they might never set foot in an actual church -- including Gospel Mission -- they still want to talk about God and Jesus. They ask about the Bible. They bounce ideas off us on things they'd read or heard, sometimes years before. They ask for prayer. So, while we may have intended The Lord's Rain to show the Love of Christ through works, we do wind up ministering to them through the Word. Maybe we'll tell them everything is going to be OK; or we might tell them they need to change or re-think what they're doing; but we'll always let them know, either by word or deed or both, that no matter what, God still loves them.

And that's what hit me: The Lord's Rain has been fulfilling another Basic Human Need. At their foundation, people need to know that God has not abandoned them. I think even the hardest-core atheist would feel some sense of relief to hear that message.

On the DTES, you could excuse people for feeling like they've been rejected by society, their families, their friends; a nasty little voice can keep telling them, "you brought this on yourself!"; but if they can be reminded that God is still there and that they're just as worthy of Jesus' sacrifice on the Cross as anybody else, there is still a glimmer of hope in their lives.

===
Leah Bolton, the bright young videographer at JoyTV10, has done a piece on the logo contest at The Lord's Rain. You can check it out at www.joytv10.ca/news, where you'll find a selection of videos. Scroll down about half a dozen and you'll find it. The deadline is now a week away (April 30), and prizes include a gift certificate to Army & Navy and tickets to a Vancouver Canadians ballgame.

===
Funding is a constant issue for The Lord's Rain, and donations from our usual sources -- individuals, certain churches and the occasional contribution from a corporation or its foundation -- have fallen off lately. Rent, utilities and contingencies come to about $2000.00 a month, which isn't that much -- unless you don't have it. I look at it as 200 people donating $10 a month, and I could do the "Starbucks-onomics" thing and say something like, "that's two lattes a month at Starbucks", but that would be cloyingly simplistic and sound too much like the Public TV begathons I used to do in Seattle.

However ... if you would like to make a donation, please go to www.gospelmission.net for details on donating online. PayPal works really well. Think of it less as "giving away money" and more as investing in people in Vancouver.

--
*from Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Sometimes Zeppo, by Joe Adamson.

Gentrification is not a four-letter word!

The high gate used to be a drop-site for drugs and stolen property.

Today's Province newspaper gives front-page treatment to a situation that's been brewing for the past week or so on the Downtown East Side: protests over a new restaurant, Pidgin, right across the street from Gospel Mission/The Lord's Rain.





The windows are about 2/3 blacked-out from view from the street,
so I played "Secret Sam" with my BlackBerry to get a look inside.



The Province article is very well-balanced (I think the editorial is bang-on, too), as it quotes a couple of regulars in the area -- like John, whose family has run Wing's Cafe (in the same building at the Mission) since the 50s, and some of those who hang out at Pigeon Park -- as saying the protesters "aren't from around here" and it makes me wonder why they've singled out Pidgin when there are at least 4 other new restaurants within the same block -- Nelson the Seagull and Rainier Provisions in the Rainier Hotel building, the resurrected Save-On Meats a bit further west on Hastings, and Acme Cafe a couple of doors past that.

Maybe it's because Pidgin has posted a statement on its windows that hits the "gentrification" issue head-on. See, there's a fear that the current incursion into the DTES by developers, buying and renovating delapidated properties will drive out the poor. As it is, the new developments have included a lot of low-cost housing and quite a few of the people who come into The Lord's Rain have found clean, new homes in these developments.

Rather than a bogeyman, gentrification is a unique opportunity -- it's a point I've made before and it's the notice Pidgin posted in its windows makes the same point -- an opportunity for two distinct groups of people to get to know each other. Let's face it: the image most people outside the DTES have of the area is the "Canada's Worst Postal Code" label hung on it by the activists. Were they to spend any time there -- say, having a nice dinner -- they might actually see something different. They'd see human beings, like themselves, only with a key difference: they made mistakes that they were not able to recover from as elegantly as others.

Who knows? Maybe while walking from the parking space on Cordova Street or the bus stop on Hastings, the restaurant patrons might strike up a conversation with the gang in Pigeon Park, and as an old Anglican minister once said to me, "you can never hate a man once you've talked to him."

Certainly, the menu at Pidgin could attract a "different" kind of crowd. If you're into trying out "cured steelhead, asian pear, ginger, sesame" ($13) or " beef tataki, black garlic, gruyère, woodear, wasabi mayo, chips" ($14), you would be attracted to the place. You might not be so inclined if they were just another burger-and-fries place.

So foodies and others get a first-hand look -- not the story getting fed by the activists -- and then start considering solutions that step outside the gimme-gimme answers the activists keep pushing. They might even see Gospel Mission and The Lord's Rain across the street, which has been ministering to people in the area since the Great Depression and changing lives in a positive way (without taking any taxpayer money).

And maybe that's what the protesters don't want. A quote in the Province article may say more than the speaker really wanted to: “The rich don’t need another playground down here in a poor area.” Is it that they want it to stay segregated? Do they want to see the DTES stay the way it's been for most of the past 40-odd years: a cauldron of despair, drugs and living death, ignored by the well-to-do. After all, if people start seeing what it's really like and start coming up with solutions that actually might raise more people out of poverty, there won't be as great a need for activists with demands which I believe are unreasonable and unachievable -- and at the very least, require someone else to spend the money.

You have to wonder why.

"Please Pray for Me"

Barry Babcook, the senior pastor at Gospel Mission, uses two expressions about The Lord's Rain -- sort of a mission statement (pun not intended -- oh, OK, maybe it was): "soft evangelism" and "Jesus with the skin on". Translation: while it's all-Jesus-all-the-time upstairs in Gospel Mission, we don't push our faith onto the people who come into The Lord's Rain. And yet ...
 

There's a list of "simple rules" posted on the cork board in The Lord's Rain. One of them states, "Prayer given when asked" -- the implication being that if you don't ask, we won't jump all over you; but if you do ask, we're there, with all the faith and fervor we possess. I'm constantly amazed at the way people have absolutely no reservation about asking us to pray over them -- and it doesn't seem to matter what their background happens to be.
 

Jeet, for example, comes from a Sikh family, which has basically disowned him. Drugs, gambling and women have landed him on the Downtown East Side; being over 60 makes it a strong possibility that he will stay there. He's asked me several times about the possibility of getting a job where I work, but as soon as the zero-tolerance policy on drug use comes up, he cools off on the idea. "You can tell 'em I'm OK," he's suggested. "NO," I've replied. "I like the drugs too much," he's said on other occasions.
 

At times, he's asked for prayer -- "A quick one-minuter for all issues" -- until one day, I did what I've never done before: I refused. "Look," I said, "I'm not a sooth-sayer; I'm not a shaman. God needs to hear from you directly, and Jesus Christ came so you could have access through Him to the Father. I can agree with you, I can lift you up, but until you make the move and stick with it, the only one this is benefiting is me."
 

I don't often play the bad cop, but this was a case where I felt it was necessary: a wake-up call of sorts, making the point that he can't talk about turning his life around, continue with his lifestyle and then expect someone else to ask God to heal him. Fortunately, John Sharp, who has exponentially more patience than I do, is very capable as the good cop, and has hung in with Jeet as a friend and a friendly face, putting up with his talk of drugs and horses -- half braggadocio, half pleading for someone to condemn him. It's almost like he's saying, "I make no apologies for my life, but won't someone please kick me in the rear?" So Jeet keeps coming around ... and doggone it if there haven't been changes coming over his life. He's a bit calmer, more sociable with others; and when I pray for him, he responds with a simple prayer of his own -- usually along the lines of "O Lord, bless John and Drew". Perhaps my mild rebuke -- if you can call it that -- had a positive effect.
 

And there are others who ask for prayer: you wonder, too, how much they're willing or able to take their own steps to break out of their situations, but you hear distinctly from the Lord, "that's not your call: just pray with them". Poco is depressed because her friends and family are dying off; Robert is trying to beat his alcohol addiction but a lack of funds is keeping him from getting into the treatment he needs. (Both are part of what John calls the "Listerine Gang", hanging out in Pigeon Park, slugging back Listerine cut with rubbing alcohol -- "the taste people hate twice a day", but the third or fourth time, you barely notice it.)
 

For Poco, the prayer is what I believe is one of the most encouraging things you can say to a person in that area: "God is keeping you around for a reason, so we pray that He will protect her and reveal to her what that reason is". With Robert, we pray healing for the problem -- which is not the lack of funding or even the booze, but the deep-down reason that has led Robert to that point. And we declare that God has broken down the barriers -- real and perceived -- between Robert and recovery. We might not know what the root problem is and we might not know what to do if we did, but God knows, can address it, and will address it when we call Him into the situation.
 

There is an intimacy about one-on-one prayer. The person asking for it has humbled himself (or herself) by admitting that the problems he has are way too big for him to handle, and that they're also out of reach of anything The Man can do: programs, handouts, whatever. Then, he humbles himself even further by admitting that to another person. Consider: isn't it when we are vulnerable that Jesus comes into our lives? When we think we have all our stuff together and we don't need Him, He'll stand back. Of course, that Pride leaves an opening that, as Howie Meeker would say, you could drive a truck through.
 

James -- Jesus' half-brother -- writes that we are to pray for one another, that we may be healed. Praying for Poco and Robert plants seeds of faith and love: the much-needed reminder that God doesn't make junk and that they're worthy of His attention. It's really easy to lose sight of that on the Downtown East Side. How and when that seed will blossom into a physical manifestation remains to be seen, but I'm confident that something will happen; the timing and nature of that "something" are up to God.
 

So a couple of weeks ago, Jeet asks me for a prayer again. We're standing outside The Lord's Rain, and I speak healing over him for his bronchitis and also that God will dig down to the roots of Jeet's difficulties and wash them clean in the Blood of Jesus. Jeet responds with a very touching, fervent prayer of his own, and as we're standing there, a fellow I'd never seen before comes up to us and stands there, expectantly. Jeet finishes his prayer and says, "I think this fellow wants you, too."
 

"I need prayer," the new fellow says. "Anything in particular?" I ask. He shakes his head, "just ... just ... " and his sentence tails off. So I pray over him for healing -- symptoms and cause, whether we know the cause or not -- and for God to reveal Himself to ... to ... "what's your name, brother?"
 

"Mohammed."
 

INNER VOICE: "no kidding ..."
 

And we continue the prayer. He is evidently grateful: he hugs me and we go separate ways. Seeds planted, indeed.

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 ...”

===

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.)

===

“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.

===

“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”

===

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.

Unity Happens

Those of you who've been following the saga of The Lord's Rain from its beginnings, almost 5 years ago, may recall that in the earliest days of the project -- when we were armed with a great idea but no money -- we approached a wealthy Christian businessman to see if he would underwrite the whole project. A slam dunk, we figured: I wrote a smasher of a letter and fired it off (snailmail, of course, to show we were serious) and waited for the invitation to lunch, where, probably between the main course and dessert, said wealthy Christian businessman would say, "oh -- before I forget," reach into the inside pocket of his suit coat and discreetly hand over a ridiculously large check.

Instead, I got a phone call from the businessman's personal assistant, who told me with not much room to manoeuvre that the answer was "no".

"Our board gave it prayerful consideration," she said, "but decided this was not something they could support. One of the things that really concerns the board," she went on, "is the lack of unity among ministries on the Downtown East Side. There doesn't seem to be much cohesiveness. It would be great if you and others ministering there could pull together and come up with a coherent game plan to attack the situation there."

I mumbled something that sounded like agreement and thanked her for considering the proposal.

Unity. On the surface, it's a noble sentiment, and when you have so many different groups with different approaches, it's easy to decry a lack of unity and withhold any support until "everyone gets together".

But on the DTES, there are so many issues that need to be addressed, it seems that the best way to achieve unity is to stick to your own knitting and stay out of everybody else's way. Remember the exchange between Peter and Jesus in John 21: "Lord, what about this man (John)?" Jesus said to him, "If I will that he remain till I come, what is that to you? You follow Me." -- [John 21:21-22].  You could get so hung up on unity that you lose sight of the real goal.

Now it's worth pointing out that getting turned down by this fellow's company was one of the best things that could have happened and I do believe that the Board had prayed about it and was led by the Holy Spirit in its decision. It reminded us that this was God's project and He -- not we -- would determine how it was going to be built and how it was to be funded, and it certainly was not to be by one person. As things unfolded over the next few months, it became evident that this was God's project and He -- not we -- would determine how it was going to be built and funded. A lot of different people with different gifts stepped up to do their part, contributing towards a common goal.

Unity -- God's version. Truly, His ways are not our ways.

If the construction of The Lord's Rain is Exhibit A of His version of unity, Exhibit B is Kris. Kris comes in very early most mornings -- often before 7 -- to shower and shave (including his head) and get off to his job hawking The Megaphone. The Megaphone is a periodical published by, for and about the people on the DTES. The stories are human-interest and a good way to get a feel for the vibe of the place, although the approach tends to be activist-oriented, which, as I've said before, I personally don't agree with. But it gives the area a voice -- and it gives people like Kris a job and a chance to mingle with the rest of the people of the city.

 

The photo here shows a recent high point for Kris, throwing out the first ball at a Vancouver Canadians baseball game. (My BlackBerry doesn't have a zoom lens, so take my word for it -- that's Kris on the mound at Nat Bailey Stadium.) Kris got this honour by winning a contest among Megaphone sellers, to come up with a slogan for the paper. He won with "Often Imitated, Never Duplicated".

I daresay I was a little disappointed that they didn't announce why Kris got to throw out the first pitch. There were a couple of little boys who also got to throw first pitches - one was celebrating his birthday and I'm not sure why the other was there. I'd have thought maybe a one-liner about, "now throwing out the first pitch - representing 'The Megaphone', the voice of the Downtown East Side ... Kris Cronk!", might have been in order. That's just the PA announcer in me -- I didn't hear Kris complain, so it's all good.

Kris represents a connection with another organization -- an opportunity to get to know and understand what they're doing and through that, achieving a form of unity towards a common goal -- if not a common approach. Someone connected with The Megaphone is now connected with The Lord's Rain.

Exhibit C is Buzzard. He has a real name, but he introduces himself as Buzzard -- or Buzz. Buzz writes the newsletter for Mission: Possible, another Christian ministry on the DTES. I have to confess, I know absolutely nothing about Mission: Possible -- aside from the name and the fact that a lot of people speak highly of it. He's started coming to the Saturday night services at Gospel Mission and now another connection is starting to form. Where it goes from here, only God knows.

The moral of the story: "unity" is not something you can impose on a situation. It happens, given time; and we're gradually seeing it come together on the DTES.

===
People to pray for ... Cheryl is a 40-something woman who's been coming into The Lord's Rain for quite a few years. She's sometimes quite "with it", and sometimes incoherent from the drugs; something of a loner, often with a very blank expression on her face. Last week, Amelia and I spotted her on Robson Street -- a fair distance from the DTES -- and we said hi. She had that blank expression. "I'm going swimming," she said. "In the ocean." Then she became animated and clasped her hands together. "PLEASE pray for me!" And she walked off. That was almost a week ago and we haven't seen her since. (I contacted a couple of friends at the Coroner's Service and Vancouver Police: they haven't pulled any bodies out of the water lately.) In a previous email, I mentioned how hard it is to get information about people on the DTES in a timely fashion, so I have no idea whom to ask. This is one of those cases where one has to call on the Lord to protect someone.

I've mentioned Jamie before -- a man who's had a remarkable turnaround from being homeless, an alcoholic and picking bottles out of dumpsters. Now he has a job, a place in Burnaby -- far away from the DTES -- and a woman he loves; but he's going through one of those "wilderness" periods, when it seems God has taken the training wheels off one's life and things can be a bit wobbly while you find your balance. He's even told me that he wants to go back to the days of being a "binner", with his old drinking buddies. Kind of like the Israelites, wanting to go back to Egypt, rather than wander with Moses towards the Promised Land. ("What? You mean this New Life thing is not all jam and smooth sailing forevermore?") At least he's calling and talking about it. If the phone calls stop coming, then I'll really be worried.

===

The Lord's Rain is approaching another milestone, which I expect we'll hit this month (if not this week). It will be shower #3000, thanks largely to the fact that we're now open 6 mornings a week. That's only been in the past few months, but the number of showers (I think I mentioned, we use the Cro-Magnon Accounting System to keep track) has increased dramatically, not just from being open more often but from more people hearing about it. Thank you, as always, for your support -- in the myriad ways you support this.

And there, friends, is Exhibit D.

Dear Tina, Wish you were here.

A scene like this was often played out over the past few years near Gospel Mission.

I'm on one side of Hastings Street, about to cross. A voice calls from the other side.

"Hiya, handsome!"

I do an exaggerated about-face, looking to see whom she's talking to. We cross the street and give each other a big hug right in the middle of the crosswalk. "You're lookin' great!" she says. "So are you, m'dear!" I reply, and we both go off on our ways.

Her name was Tina. Five-foot-nothing, mid-forties, face puffed out by years of drinking the East Side Martini -- Listerine with rubbing alcohol, either separately or mixed (proportions vary according to availability and whatever-gets-you-through-the-day) -- but usually a big smile and a lightly-teasing greeting. One of those people you were always happy to see.

She hung out in Pigeon Park and often came to The Lord's Rain. She rarely came to the Mission upstairs -- at least, not on my night -- but a couple of weeks ago, she and her "boyfriend", Johnny, did come, and if you listen to Amelia's talk about the visit from the Governor-General's Leadership Tour, you'll hear Tina's voice at one point saying, "the Lord works in mysterious ways".

Tina died on Tuesday.

That was it.

Pfft.

Gone.

I found out about it Wednesday morning from one of the fellows who recently started coming to The Lord's Rain. "I lost another of my friends yesterday," he said. Then he started describing her and the realization set in that this wonderful, vibrant person was gone.

Frank said it was likely kidney failure, brought on by those cocktails. He said Johnny had been getting increasingly angry with Tina about her drinking. Johnny is white, 50-something, and a professing Christian. Like Tina, one is always glad to see him.

So apparently, she was just sitting on one of the benches in Pigeon Park and passed out -- for good.

The locals had set up a memorial to her on that bench. Unlike the impromptu roadside memorials that spring up when someone is killed in a crash, with flowers and a cross and maybe a photo, this one has an interesting array of Things To Remember Her By. Bottles, an Edmonton Oilers beach towel, a cookbook, a sheaf of condoms (I'm not kidding), lit candles; there's also a school exercise book and a pen for people to write remembrances. Someone found a photo of Tina in younger days (top left of the picture) that resembles the Tina I knew not in the least (albeit enough that I could say, "so that's what she looked like 20 years ago"). In one way or another, those items meant something to someone in their own relationship with Tina; just as Tina meant something to each of them in their own way.

I hope in some way she knew how much she'd be missed.

It strikes me that part of the "hope" message we try to instill in people is the knowledge that they would be missed if something should happen to them. I think I know what my theme will be for Saturday night's sermon.

I'm reminded very much of Jesus' parable about Lazarus the beggar, who died and was gathered into the arms of Abraham (Luke 16). To others passing through the DTES en route to someplace else, she would have been just another drunk Injun; but there's no doubt in this mind where Tina is now.

===
That's a concept that's difficult for a lot to understand: the idea that you can be accepted by God and still not be acceptable to man. Some years ago, I wanted to share with a minister from Saskatchewan about Rusty, a brother who came to the Mission faithfully, hauling his bent body up the stairs despite having severe curvature of the spine, and shouting "praise the Lord!" with hardly any provocation. (He is still memorialized in our way of singing an old standard "I Been Redeemed By the Blood o'the Lamb!", finishing it by shouting, "yee-hah!", as Rusty did back in the day.) Rusty was stabbed to death after getting verbally involved in a fight between another guy and a woman. I started to relate this to the minister, but when I described Rusty as someone who loved the Lord -- "usually drunk as a skunk, but he loved the Lord". "Well, he couldn't have loved the Lord if he was constantly drunk," the minister snapped.

All-RIGHTY, then! Let's just move on to another topic, shall we?

===

Next to the memorial, a loud discussion was underway on the next bench. One fellow was trying to get more details about Tina's death and another guy kept repeating "that's all I (DELETED) know! Stop (DELETED) asking me what happened! I (DELETED) told you what happened - she died! Right there! On that bench!"

"So what happened?"

The discussion was still going on as I left, with the one who didn't know anything more taking repeated slugs from a large bottle of Listerine. And on it goes.

===
The sad news about Tina overshadowed Richard Johnson's return. He's the fellow I mentioned previously, who spent several weeks in hospital with a serious infection in his spine. He got the expected one-man standing ovation from John Sharp, who tends to take his role as Good Humor Man to wild extremes, and it was some exceptionally good news on a day when we really needed some.

Another element of serving on the Downtown East Side is the communications system. In this day of texting and tweeting, the primary way of finding out about someone on the DTES is still the tried-and-true moccasin telegraph. That may seem like a term with racial overtones, but it's the best description I've seen. It was given traction -- if not actually coined -- by Paul St Pierre, who wrote wonderful short stories about the people in the Chilcotin region, half of whom (at least, in Paul's stories) are white and the other half Indian (Paul wrote the stories in the 50s and 60s, when "Indian" was still an acceptable term)*. It refers to news passing from person to person, at the speed of whenever someone thinks to pass it on. It's also not limited to a particular ethnic group. On the DTES, there's really no other way of keeping tabs on people: they'll show up ... or not ... and if there's an issue, they might mention it to someone who might tell someone else ... you get the picture.

Not the easiest way to minister to people, I can tell you. This was how, for example, it took a week and a half for me to find out that Richard was in hospital: someone thought to mention it to me. Finding out about Tina was also "moccasin telegraph" stuff. I had said hi to Frank, and we exchanged information about our own personal conditions, and then he dropped the news on me. And he didn't even know I knew her.

Similarly, there's the story Amelia recounted about the woman on the Leadership tour who met someone from her reserve in Saskatchewan and everyone had been "wondering about him". Apparently, God plays a role in the moccasin telegraph, putting the right people in the right place at the right time.

You can't make this stuff up ...

From time to time, I've wondered about making a movie or a TV show about the Downtown East Side. (There was a time, earlier in my life -- about 35 years ago -- when I actually harbored thoughts of being an actor and writer: I got enough paying gigs to make me realize the idea was possible ... but not probable.) The show would be called "Rev. Downtown" (my legion of fan would recognize that as the title of this blog) and it would paint a picture of the DTES as I've seen it over the 8 years that I've been there -- gritty and unpredictable but with the undercurrent of Hope that runs through what we do at Gospel Mission and The Lord's Rain. As I've tried to express over the years, it's not all bad news -- not even close -- despite the image projected by activists and the media.


But what would the script look like? And who would play the characters? It would be a tour de force for an ensemble of character actors: improvising their parts without stereotyping or ridiculing anyone. Maybe Sean Penn (if he can take time out from making politically-correct "statement" movies), Matt Damon, Philip Seymour Hoffman and maybe Donald Sutherland and Graham Greene. And if you tried to write a script, a producer would send it back with orders to come up with something "real".

(Interestingly, that's one of the reasons why I believe the Bible is the Word of God and not (as Peter put it) some cunningly-devised fable: what human could devise it? The more I'd read it, the more I'd hear, "you can't make this stuff up". But I digress.)


Take, for example, the conversations I had at The Lord's Rain on Tuesday morning -- two conversations at the same time. I've joked on occasion that you don't have to be ADD to work at The Lord's Rain, but it helps. Often, someone will start talking to you regardless of whether you're already talking to someone else, so you usually have to tune one ear to the new conversation long enough to analyze whether it's something that can be put on hold until you've finished the current conversation or something vitally important that needs to be dealt with right away.


Compounding the situation this past Tuesday was the fact that the quarterly HST rebates were distributed the day before. (For those of you not in Canada, the government sends an amount each quarter to people on low incomes to compensate (at least in part) for their having to pay the Harmonized Sales Tax.) The rebates are a great idea in theory, but on the DTES, it means more money available to spend on drugs, and by gad, that's what they did on Monday. On Tuesday morning, many of the people were showing the effects and I was caught between two conversations with a newcomer named Vance and Dale, a man I've known since my start at Rainbow Mission in 2004.


Vance was notable for his scrupulous good manners, asking politely and thanking us for coffee, a drink of water, a refill ... but he had also been sitting by himself, deep in conversation with an unseen interlocutor, and occasionally gesturing very broadly -- almost violently. Dale had sat down next to him and he and I started talking about prayer. That's where Vance chimed in, excusing himself for stepping into the conversation.



But Vance's conversation was only semi-coherent, bouncing from one thought to the next like a flea on a hotplate. (My late mother, an actor, was once cast to play a pilot who'd suffered a brain injury in a plane crash. The sentences did not connect one word to the next, and for someone who used mnemonics -- mental images -- to memorize her lines, the challenge of learning this script was enormous. She literally had to memorize them word by word.) There was a common thread through his talking, however: demons and evil spirits. He talked about Jesus with bright shafts of light coming from His face, his own Aztec spiritual ancestry, standing toe-to-toe with the demon Pestilence -- and imitating Pestilence with a stance and facial contortions that made me feel like I was looking at Mr. P right there. Vance also talked about Leviathan (another demon), the Holy Spirit, bright lights and colors and a lot of other things I can't remember.


I sat there -- not frightened -- but fascinated. Interestingly, his talk about the spirit world did not go into things like the New World Order or other worldwide conspiracy theories (others talk about those). It was all about demons and spirits. Had he been part of a cult? Does he walk around constantly thinking these things, or do those thoughts come only when he's on drugs? (And I daresay, it's at moments like that, that I'm praying someone is on drugs! I'm only half-joking.)


All through this, Dale was continuing his conversation. Dale's mind was fried long ago by the lethal combination of mental illness and crack cocaine. He primarily follows a single theme: "I'm alright, aren't I?" He talks very loud and sometimes very fast -- the volume and the speed generally depend on whether he's affected by the street drugs or his own "head" medication has taken effect. At Rainbow Mission, he took great joy in wiping down the pews after the service. "Will you anoint my head with oil," he once asked me, "so I can wipe down the pews and not bring any evil to them?"


I thought I saw signs he was actually improving, but after Rainbow closed at the end of 2006, I didn't see much of him and when he did turn up at Gospel Mission he was in worse shape ... and the descent hasn't really let up. "I'm alright, aren't I? I'm gonna be OK, right? They say they're trying to help me but they don't, you know, they don't ..." (I'm not sure who "they" are: social workers, perhaps, or public health nurses? They probably do their best, but with limited resources, they can only do so much. Try telling that to the patients, though.)

"... I pray, you know," he went on, "... I hold my Bible every night ..."


"Do you read it?" I asked. "Just holding it won't do you any good."


"I should read it more, shouldn't I? I read the Psalms. I should read the Bible more, you're right."


"The Psalms are a good start," I replied. "Build on that."


"Yeah, I can build on that. I read the Psalms years ago. I should read it more, shouldn't I?"


Dale desperately needs validation of his life. Even trying to elicit some kind of criticism for not reading his Bible more reminds him that he's still alive and can still draw closer to God. That is, in fact, a common factor among so many of those on the DTES. That's a big reason why they come into The Lord's Rain: it's become a source of Hope -- that intangible reason for carrying on -- that is in such short supply in the area. And you know what? While it's good that we have staff and supporters who approach people with love and openness, the people themselves have made it what it is.


I think it's because of that, that some situations get resolved when they might have turned ugly. A couple of weeks ago, Danilo and one of the 'regulars' (Joe is his name) got into an argument over something to do with the coffee. The argument escalated to a veiled threat to "take it outside". Joe left ... Danilo was upset that he'd nearly lost control ... John was upset that someone gave Danilo "attitude" over the coffee ... A week later, Joe came in and apologized to Danilo. Danilo apologized for his role in it. End of discussion.

Incidents like that are a good indicator of the success of The Lord's Rain: that people are able to make up after a near dust-up. It's encouraging, and you know something? People need validation -- and sometimes, so do we.

Jesus, shelters and the law

There's a reason why there is a Commandment not to take the Lord's Name in vain, and it's less about cursing than it is about trying to take a religious "upper hand" in an argument. If you're going to approach something from the "what would Jesus do?" standpoint, better make sure you have a Scriptural basis for that.

A letter in the Vancouver Courier steps into that rather dangerous ground, in the controversy over the pending closure of the First United Church shelter for the homeless. I'm not sufficiently familiar with the issue to comment on it specifically, but the letter, with its use of pseudo-religious buzz-words like "Pharisee", indicates the dichotomy between what is "good" and what is "Godly".

The letter-writer seems to be of the opinion that, because Jesus calls on us to help the poor, the laws of the land should take a back seat. But that leads to the question, "Would Jesus break the law?"

Answer: no, He wouldn't. And He didn't. Pontius Pilate himself declared, "I find no fault in this man," and the charges for which Jesus was crucified were trumped-up and "confirmed" by false witnesses. Doesn't Jesus tell us to "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's"? He's not just talking about paying taxes: He's talking about obeying the laws. (When Paul called on us to obey the laws of the land, he was being persecuted by Nero. If he can do it under one of the most brutal, oppressive tyrants ever, we can follow a fire code.)

The fact is, with Jesus on your side, you can help the poor and oppressed and stay within the law. If it requires resources, He will provide them; if it requires an expert on certain issues, like fire regulations or (in the case of Gospel Mission) FoodSafe, that expert will be put in your path.

It's important to remember, too, that -- unlike the charges against Jesus -- fire-code and other regulations are not trumped-up. They're there to protect people -- people in the building itself and those in buildings nearby that might be damaged should a fire break out. Are those people less deserving of the protection of those regulations, simply because a particular building is being used for a "higher calling"? Are the homeless less deserving of fire-code protection, themselves?

And it's worth noting that many of the people living on the Downtown East Side have been devoid of boundaries in their lives, but once boundaries are applied -- even something as seemingly minor as the number of Cobs buns they may have at The Lord's Rain -- they (generally) accept them readily. How would it look if we who try to minister to them try to circumvent the boundaries and (worse) try to rationalize them "in Jesus' Name"?

Many years ago when I was in radio in Victoria, a special-interest group sent out a communique just before Christmas stating that it had poisoned some of the turkeys in a particular grocery chain. The chain immediately pulled all the turkeys off the shelves and offered refunds to anyone who'd already bought a bird. Someone called the station to suggest that, rather than waste all the food, the turkeys should be given to the poor. Well-meaning, perhaps, but a little unclear on the concept: so what's the difference between that argument and the suggestion that one should wink at bylaws and fire codes because of the "higher purpose"?

Now, if one wants to make an argument that homeless shelters should have relaxed standards or be exempt from certain codes, that could be grounds for a valid discussion. But don't try to make it Holy and Godly by adding "in Jesus' Name" to the discussion. That can be dangerous on oh-so-many levels.

Acceptable?

According to the author, editor and humorist Bennett Cerf, New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia would spend one day a month (I think it was) presiding over Magistrate's Court in his city. As Mayor, he was Chief Magistrate, and took that part of the job seriously. One day, a woman was brought before him, charged with stealing a loaf of bread. She confessed, saying she had no other way to feed her family. He fined her $50, then suspended the sentence and found everyone else in the courtroom guilty of "living in a city where a woman has to steal to feed her family". Each person was fined $10 and the sheriff was ordered to take up the collection on the spot. Then he turned the money over to the woman.

As I arrived at The Lord's Rain Tuesday morning, I passed an old man sitting on a street-level window ledge. His eyes were closed and he was at least half asleep. He's a fixture in the area: a man who calls himself a Pastor and putters around the Downtown East Side, usually with a walker, proclaiming Jesus to anyone who'll listen. Sometimes he has a roof over his head; sometimes not. It appears this was one of those "not" nights.

Another frequent visitor at The Lord's Rain is a man named Bill. He's well into his 60s and spends his days pushing a shopping cart around the city -- I sometimes see him in the West End, which is a considerable distance from the DTES -- collecting bottles. "Good morning, Father," he says when he comes in for his coffee. (I'm not a Catholic priest, but that's his way of addressing a leader in a religious setting, so that's OK with me.) Bill has the most gentle spirit and has astounded doctors by bouncing back from a lung infection about a year and a half ago that the doctors were certain was going to kill him.

Last month, I was in Toronto, and stepped on the subway one time to find the too-familiar aroma of stale urine. It was coming from a man who was sound asleep, folded up in one of the seats. People in the same carriage seemed to look past, around or through him: but never at him.

WHY IS THIS ACCEPTABLE?

Why is it acceptable that men in their 60s and 70s, with long lives behind them -- and who maybe made a couple of mistakes here and there that proved costly in the long run -- have to collect bottles and cans and sleep in doorways, waiting for a free-coffee place to open up? Why is it acceptable for a man to sit in his own urine-reeked clothes on a subway while people try to imagine he's not there? Why is it acceptable for people to have to urinate and defecate in alleys while the leaders of the city -- one of the "World's Most Livable" and "Greenest" cities -- dither over how to provide public facilities for them? (Even to the extent of suggesting it's the responsibility of the transit authority, for the luvva Mike!)

And yet evidently it must be for some people, because the situation persists and even seems to get worse. Ignoring them and figuring someone else can help people has hardly been a resounding success; remember what Jesus said: "what you do to the least of these, you do to Me."

That would include ignoring them. Ignoring these people is tantamount to ignoring Jesus.

Selah.

And lest you think that rising up and saying THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE! involves some mammoth undertaking, consider the guy on the Toronto subway. As we got near my stop, I knelt down beside him and roused him to see if he was OK. He said he was. Then I told him I was praying for him. "It's all I can do," I said. I was almost ashamed to say it, but he looked up and smiled and said, "Thanks, man."

I don't know why I was ashamed: probably because I didn't have a magic wand and didn't know where to take him to bathe and get a fresh change of clothes (in Vancouver, I would have taken him to The Lord's Rain). But really, prayer is the most effective tool we have when used as directed. And the sense that someone cares enough even to say, "hello in there" can plant a seed of hope that can grow more than we could ever ask or think.

From The Lord's Rain - "This is the Day ..."

Those of you who have been following this saga from the beginning probably know that one of the challenges has been to find a niche for Ladies' Day. It was actually put on Brodie Collins' heart -- he who did the plumbing for the project -- just as we were opening: that many women might not be comfortable showering or hanging out with a bunch of men nearby. So we decided to set aside such a time.

But what time? We began with Friday nights; that had limited success, partly because not many people want to shower-up at 7:00 in the evening and partly because another Lord's Rain opening started up earlier in the afternoon. So we kept trying new times, and it's always been difficult getting people to volunteer for an early-morning opening. Ladies' Day, therefore, became something of a moving target as we tried to find the right formula.

Then, this past spring, with Ladies' Day sitting in the Tuesday 9-Noon slot, our friend Randall pointed out that one reason why it was no more successful there was because people were lining up for lunches at some of the other agencies around the Downtown East Side -- and when it came to the choice between a shower and lunch, you can understand which won out. At that point, Janet declared that she was willing to give an early morning a shot and so, we moved Ladies' Day yet again to 7-10am on Mondays.

Monday, we got some evidence that we've hit the "sweet spot". With Janet away on vacation, I went down to open up. Sandy, whom I've known since the Rainbow Mission days in 2004-2006, came to help out, as did Megan, a new volunteer, who lives at the Rainier Hotel, a few doors away on Carrall Street. It's a single-room-occupancy (SRO) hotel, which caters primarily to women. Diane Brown, who works on Wednesday mornings, had met Megan a couple of weeks ago and invited her to come in: Megan asked if she could volunteer.

Megan seems like someone with a wellspring of gifts and ideas, who has -- for one reason or another -- never had a chance to give them an outlet. Drugs, mental illness, abusive past, you name it: anything can keep a lid on someone's self-esteem and make them keep their gifts to themselves and all have played a role in Megan's life. We'll get to know her more in the days to come. But one thing is certain: she's enthusiastic about bringing something to the Mission.

One of those is in "talking up" The Lord's Rain. She's been making little flyers to hand out at some of the social service agencies and telling the women in The Rainier about The Lord's Rain and Ladies' Day in particular. Already, it's starting to bear fruit.

This morning, a woman I hadn't seen before came in, using a walker. Ethel is native, 63, and in a lot of pain from the effects of arthritis and diabetes. She's also trying to kick a drug habit. "One of the women at the Rainier sent me over," she said. That would be Megan. Ethel was going for an interview to get into Ellendale, a recovery program in Surrey -- the kind where you allow yourself to be locked away for six months. But she was hungry, needed coffee, and needed to rest her feet.

One of the "meaning to get" things on my list has been a proper footbath, but I managed to rustle up a plastic bin and some foaming bath gel and ran warm water into it. Ethel plunged her gnarled, callused feet into the suds and the relief that came over her face was indescribable.

(The Health Contact Centre, which closed last year when a private not-for-profit agency took over some of its services, was noted for its footbaths, and people on the DTES haven't been able to find such a thing since; at the time, it was noted that the word "contact" was very important in the title: a vital face-to-face connection that you don't get in mainstream health clinics.)

"This is truly a house of the Lord!" she exclaimed. "I can feel His presence here!" Sandy and I prayed over Ethel for her to have favor in the interview and healing for all things, known and unknown.

Then Megan came in, followed by another woman. Kathy is her name, and she had been divorced from her first husband, then widowed by her second, who was a Pentecostal pastor. Now here she was on the Downtown East Side. There's a story there, and eventually, I imagine we'll hear about it.

"Let's pray for Ethel that she gets in at Ellendale!" Megan said.

"We already did pray for her," I said, and immediately heard the Lord say, "Fool! Don't stop her from praying!"

By some miracle, I managed to recover and encourage her to pray before any discouragement set in, and Megan prayed a lovely, heartfelt prayer for Ethel.

"Let's sing," Ethel said. "'This is the day (this is the day)/That the Lord has made (that the Lord has made)/Let us rejoice (let us rejoice)/And be glad in it ....' "

And then they launched into "Put Your Hand in the Hand of the Man from Galilee".

And so we drank coffee and ate Cobs Bread buns and talked of everything and nothing and by the time closing time came around, none of us wanted to leave. But the office was calling and Ethel did have to get up to the health clinic. We'll probably hear soon how things went. And there's a definite sense that Ladies' Day took a big step closer to the way it was envisaged from the start.

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Sock update -- about a year ago, I whimsically made reference to the Vancouver Sock Exchange, with people bringing in used but still wearable socks and swapping them for new ones. On Saturday, Ron, one of our regulars who's a "binner" (makes additional cash by collecting recyclables from garbage bins and taking them to bottle-collection depots and scrap dealers), came in with a large bag of dirty socks. He's been regularly receiving new socks from us, which is understandable, given the need for fresh socks in his line of work. Now, I'm happy to say that he's one of the first who's actually traded in the used ones. "I got another bag of them at home," he told me. Now, that's "giving back"!

When we first started The Lord's Rain, "street foot", a ghastly rot that takes over a person's feet when they go too long in the same dirty socks -- especially if those socks get wet -- was very common. I realized recently that I haven't seen a case of street foot in a long time. I think the awareness of the need for fresh socks -- and people's willingness to meet that need -- has had a lot to do with it.

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The Lord's Rain at 3

My God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory. (Philippians 4:19)

  

On Saturday (April 30), we marked our third anniversary of the opening of The Lord's Rain. I remember it well, partly because Amelia and I had just returned from a day trip to Seattle the night before. (The UBC Thunderbirds baseball team was playing an exhibition game against the University of Washington and I was doing the play-by-play for the webcast: my friend, Thor Tolo, and I had to vamp through three long rain delays while Amelia shivered off in one corner. Then we drove back to Vancouver through driving rain and at times sleet. Typical baseball weather, in other words.)

We flung the door open at 7am and waited for the thundering herd to arrive. It didn't. Some people saw we had free coffee and came in, said "cool" and moved on. Finally, a construction worker named Tim Doxlator said he'd take advantage of the service, and then a woman by the street name of "Little One" became the first woman to shower-up there.

On Saturday, we recorded our 1,800th shower.

  

No matter what you're doing in life, it's good, every so often, to look back on just how far we've come, rather than how far there is to go. Many Christians bent on Leading People To The Lord tend to focus on how much more a person has to do to 'get right with God', which often fogs up the reality that the person in question has probably come an exceptionally long way simply by opening his or her ears to the possibility that there's another way to live. Moses did that with the Israelites as they were about to cross into the Promised Land: reviewed the 40-year journey out of Egypt with the theme that "God has brought us this far, He's not going to drop us now."

As well, the quote from Philippians up there came back to me this morning as I was thinking about the past three years -- 3-1/2, in fact, going back to the day we signed the rental papers and started work. Some years ago, I was meditating on that passage and the Lord said, "look at the word order". The passage does not say, "my God shall supply, according to His riches in glory, all your need." Now -- and this could be like trying to catch a grounder on a gravel field so stay with me here -- "according to," when used in the title of the Gospels, means "as defined by". So what if we considered that passage to mean, "God will supply all your need as defined by His riches in glory"?

In other words, the passage goes from simply meaning, "God ain't broke and if you're faithful He'll take care of you," to "God will define what you need by His riches in glory and then provide for it."

 

I know - you think I've really lost it: that week in the Florida sunshine did something to my brain. But doesn't Jesus say that our Heavenly Father knows what we need before we ask Him? Often, our problem is that we ask Him for what we think we "need," rather than letting Him define it for us.

 

Trust me: it works. It certainly did in the case of The Lord's Rain. God defined a need -- also known as putting something on our hearts -- and then provided for it.

The origins of The Lord's Rain actually go back to the 1950s. That was when Jim Bromley bought the two-story brick pile at 325-327-331 Carrall Street, where Gospel Mission had been located on the upper floor since the 40s (when the Mission was founded in 1929 it was kitty-corner on Hastings, next to the late-lamented The Only Seafood Restaurant). I've never met Mr Bromley so I don't know his spiritual background, but he obviously likes us because he's essentially kept the rent as-is since the 70s, if not longer. We've truly been blessed to have such a landlord, and our "silent partner" relationship came into play when we approached Mr Bromley's son, Greg, who now manages the property, with what was, at the time, a "neat idea".

A dozen years or so ago, Gerry Wall, the senior pastor at The Oasis, spoke a prophecy over Barry Babcook. He said that Gospel Mission was going to expand its influence and its reach beyond that "upper room". How that was going to happen and what it was going to look like was not spelled out, but prophecies are like that: they'll give a glimpse of what God has in mind - just enough to make you go "OK, let's see how this plays out," and stay close to God in one's own dealings.

Nearly 10 years ago, with my life going through a period of deconstruction and reconstruction, I went to The Oasis, which is about a 15-minute drive over logging roads outside Duncan, along the Cowichan River.

In fall of 2007, Lee Grady, then editor of Charisma magazine, spoke at Westpointe Christian Centre, where I had been attending for about a year and a half. He asked for people who were doing missionary work to come up and he would speak prophecies over them. I went up with them. His prophecy over me was that God was about to send me on a journey, in which I would receive new and sharper "axe heads" for the work on the Downtown East Side. "Up till now," he said, "your axe has been bouncing off the tree; these will help you start to cut through."

 

He had no way of knowing I was about to leave for New York.

In New York, I visited the Bowery Mission and saw they provided showers for "street people" three times a week -- one time for women only. That notion floated around in my head -- along with a lot of other things from the trip that indicated the prophecy was coming to pass -- and a couple of weeks after I got back, I told Amelia about the apparent need for a similar program on the Downtown East Side. We had both been struck by the way the guys who came in were filthy -- and wanted to get clean. But without space to install the showers (and the floor of the 1888 building might not take the weight anyway), it was simply a "neat idea".

 

Except that less than 2 hours later, we learned that one of the ground floor spaces had become vacant.

You probably know the rest of the story, but it bears repeating in bullet form just to remind ourselves:

• Greg Bromley agreed to hold off renting the space for 2 weeks so we could work out a plan to fund and build the project. If he hadn't -- a throwback to the good relationship we'd had with him and his father over the previous 50 years -- The Lord's Rain would have remained a "neat idea".
• We had started with Zero dollars to go to this project, and agreed that, if God was truly going to bless the project and make it happen, the money we needed would be provided: and if not, it would go back to being a "neat idea" -- for someone else to pursue.
• 2 days before the deadline, two phone calls came, pledging enough money to get the project started. "We'll take that as a 'yes,' Lord."
• Another significant root of The Lord's Rain goes back to 1992, when I was working in radio in Victoria. Andrew Sheret, Ltd., a plumbing and bath supply company, was celebrating its 100th anniversary with a gala banquet, and the account executive who handled their advertising on our station approached me to be the MC. The evening went very well. 15 years later, I got one of those "nudges" in the Spirit to give them a call. They remembered me. "Can you give us a discount?" I asked. "We'll give you the showers," said president Brian Finlay.
• The Oasis, which has a lot of skilled tradespeople in its congregation, stepped in with a pledge to build the project. Despite the shaky economic situation in the Cowichan Valley, they loaded up vans and a trailer and made the ferry trip three times to get the job done. 
• Others appeared with skills from painting to fundraising to plumbing -- Brodie Collins, who was saved off the street at Gospel Mission over 20 years ago and started his own plumbing and gasfitting business -- and provided just what we needed, just when we needed it.
• Sometimes, it was humorous. Kathy Kinahan, who was working at Nokia at the time, kept pushing the company to come through with some bucks, even though it didn't quite fit with the company's vision for corporate social responsibility. Finally, a cheque arrived for $500. The same day, the old toilet in the back broke and had to be replaced. Cost: $500. The new toilet is now known as the Nokia Toilet. One of Kathy's colleagues suggested making a poster with a photo of the toilet with a cell phone floating in it. Oddly enough, the idea didn't fly.
• The media played a huge role. Jen Palma (Global) and Kyle Donaldson (CityTV) covered the construction; Al Siebring wrote about the Duncan connection in his Cow Valley paper, and Cheryl Rossi and Sandra Thomas wrote about the project in the Vancouver Courier.
• Further confirmation that this was God's Project and nothing was going to get in His way ("the Lord of Hosts hath spoken it, and who shall disannul it?"): due to a stupid mistake on my part, the door to the project was left unlocked. Someone walked in and took a load of plumbing tools. After beating myself up for about an hour, I was prompted to send out a news release, stating that the project would continue despite the "setback". CTV did a story -- Peter Grainger reported not on the theft, but on the project, and added word of the theft almost as an afterthought. Anchor Pamela Martin picked up on that point and ad-libbed that it would be nice if someone could help replace those tools. The next morning, came a phone call from a man who'd seen the story and wanted to help -- anonymously. And he did: big time. And continues to do so.
• Some further large donations have come in right when we've taken a stand about something -- like in 2009, when we refused to accept money that had come from provincial gambling revenue; shortly after that, we got a call out of the blue, saying we'd been chosen to receive a large grant.

Whew. Those last two bullets -- and the one about the financial pledges arriving two days before our self-imposed deadline -- really set the tone for The Lord's Rain. It has been an experience in faith-stretching, this is His project, not ours -- although we're the caretakers of it, not unlike the young man who lost his axe-head in the river (2 Kings 6) and Elisha the prophet caused it to float to the surface (the basis of Lee's prophecy). It's an indication, I believe, of how God wants ministry to people on the Downtown East Side and other areas of urban poverty to go to "the next level" -- an overall provision of hope and love that can actually help break people out of the cycle of despair that they're in.

His timing is amazing on so many levels: do you notice that the project came together before the bottom fell out of the global economy in 2008?

Three years and still open.
There's plenty to be grateful for.

Certainly, it hasn't been an easy ride and there are certainly times when it seems like something or someone is pulling out all the stops to prevent it from succeeding. But the fact is, it is a success and will continue to be so. Setbacks and strange things going wrong simply prove the adage that if you're not taking flak, you're not over the target (how many times have I said that?).