We've said before that one of the side-functions of The Lord's Rain has been to provide hope to people and encouragement that, no matter what stage of life they happen to be at, there is a reason to reach out and strive for the change they need.
In the past few weeks, we've seen more and more evidence that that's happening.
EXHIBIT A is a pair of young people I think of as our "glam couple". Charlotte and Brendan started showing up last fall, and to look at them, the first thing you'd think is, "what are they doing here?" I still don't know the full answer to that, but they're a perfect example of the basic truth about the Downtown East Side: you never know who's going to slip, or how or when it can happen. They have lived in shelters for I don't know how long, battling the drugs and the demons in their lives.
If it weren't such a pejorative expression, I'd call Charlotte "high maintenance". Her requirements: two towels, face cloth, shampoo, conditioner, shower gel (yes, we have that), hair dryer (we have two of those), all requested with "please" and "thank you" and "if it's not too much trouble". The thing is, that kind of "maintenance" has kept her sane -- and The Lord's Rain has been there to do that.
There's been more: when she and Brendan broke up just before Christmas, it was here that she came to pour her heart out. When they got back together a week later, it was here that she came to bounce off walls with joy. When Cheryl Weber from "100 Huntley Street" interviewed people for a feature on The Lord's Rain and Gospel Mission, Brendan told a bit of his story -- again, an example of how you can "have it all" and suddenly lose it, thanks to the drugs.
Last week, Brendan and Charlotte came in to announce that they were finally getting a place of their own and checking into a recovery program. Does that mean that this will be the last we see of them? I hope so, although I'll miss them. But that is what this whole exercise is about: to get as many people as possible cleaned up, turned around, and outta there -- if only to make room in the safety net for new people who slip and fall.
EXHIBIT B - is Pete and Jack. My main contact with them is upstairs in Gospel Mission (although Jack paid a surprise visit to TLR last Saturday). Jack is 50-something and Pete is in his 70s, and they sit in the front row like Statler and Waldorf, the two old guys on The Muppet Show who sat in the box seats and made caustic comments about the performances. Each has become an example of the slow but definite, positive changes that we see around there.
Jack, for example, is always eager to testify. When I first met him 2-1/2 years ago, his testimony was invariably about how someone had done him wrong and he needed to forgive. Now, he testifies about telling people about Christ. A couple of weeks ago, he testified about a mission trip he'd gone on to Ucluelet, visiting people in a care home, being touched by their reaction to the group of them singing "Amazing Grace", and the sense that he, too, had something worth sharing with others.
He's made Pete one of his personal "reclamation projects". It would be easy to hang the label "career criminal" on Pete, as he's been in and out of the slammer for most of his life. He once told me -- rather proudly, in fact -- that he busted out of the BC Pen back in 1961 or thereabouts -- shinnying up a chimney (he's short and slightly built) and going over the wall. He was picked up walking along some railway tracks. But there's a "story" behind Pete, too, including (if I gather this correctly) his being raised by a grandmother who he thought was his mother (rather like Bobby Darin, actually). You can imagine the psychological effect that would have on a teenager when the truth was revealed.
When I first came in contact with Pete, he was probably the most miserable old sod you'd ever come across. He grumble and look bored with everything and if any preaching went so much as two minutes past 8pm (which is our unofficial time to stop with the preaching, pray and serve the meal) he'd start to get downright rude.
He hasn't been like that for the past year, at least. He's grown more thoughtful and introspective, opening up little by little. He sits quietly through the sermon, taking it all in, and some of the worship songs seem to have an impact. I get the sense that he's come to realize that here he is, at age 73, wondering what his life has been all about ... and starting to get the idea that there's something to this "Christ thing" that can finally give him some meaning.
(Digression: it may be time to revisit a sermon I gave a couple of years ago, called "Count It All Dung". The "stuff" we leave behind when we come to Christ is best purged from our lives, but dung has its uses, primarily as fertilizer. We take our experience, good and bad, and build our new lives on it. It may be a message that can strike home with Pete as he wrestles with this.)
Anyway, Jack rides Pete mercilessly through the services now. "Hear that, Pete? He's talking about you!" "Whaddya think, Pete? What do you want us to pray for you?" "Come on, Pete, you can pray for that!" It's almost comical, except that for the two of them, it's serious business: and so far, Pete hasn't shown any signs of being turned off by Jack's persistence.
We also had a woman come forward to receive Christ at last Saturday's service. She and her husband have been coming to the services for the past several weeks: he's a Believer, and she had fallen away (she told me later). To see the utter joy on her husband's face was a cause of joy in and of itself.
And recently, a young man has been coming in to shower-up at The Lord's Rain ... and I'm pretty sure he's involved with the drug dealing across the street from us. Nevertheless, TLR may be an entrance point for Jesus to stick His foot in the door, and who knows what long-term impact that will have? As I've said before, there's a reason why Gospel Mission is located right across from one of the worst alleys for drug activity in the city -- and why God arranged things for TLR to be placed at street level. Stay tuned.
Every so often, we have an experience that reminds us of the enormity of the job. A couple of weeks ago, I encountered a young woman who was in dire need of a washroom, so I brought her around to TLR, where she got cleaned up and got a change of clothes. But she also spent about an hour screaming profanities at the world in general -- and occasionally at Bill and me -- as she drifted in and out of reality (I'm pretty sure that her telling something to stop biting her ankles was during an "out of" moment).
As it was, the City of Vancouver's Dig Up Carrall Street To Make The Street People Think They're Going To Be Herded Out Of The Area For The Olympics Project has cut into attendance at TLR, so Bill and I were able to give this girl a lot of attention. But these are the people we need to reach, and many of the ones who've become "family" over the past couple of years started in similar shape.
To think: when I touted the idea to Amelia in the fall of '07, I thought it was "just" about providing showers to people.
(If you're interested in contributing to Gospel Mission -- or to The Lord's Rain in particular, visit www.gospelmission.net).
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Monday, May 18, 2009
331 Carrall Street, Samaria
A group from my home church, Westpointe Christian Centre, just returned from a missions trip to Costa Rica, and amid the testimonies of people accepting Jesus as their personal Saviour, a great "AHA!" came through for the Downtown East Side.
The one Latina the group, Amada, said that the shantytown called El Carpio (pop. 45,000) was like Samaria, and referred to the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at Jacob's Well.
Samaria was, for a time, the capital of Israel -- back when Israel and Judea were separate countries. But over a relatively short historical period, it was besieged, conquered, sacked and eventually populated with a macedoine of nationalities: a sort of ethnic dumping ground. A lot of religions were practiced there, and the Bible tells us of plagues that befell the people, which were reversed when they got right with God again. Even though Samaritans claimed to be descendants of Abraham, recalled the captivity in Egypt and recognized Moses as the mediator of the commandments from God, Jews rejected them because of the intermarriage and their differences on whether to worship on Mount Gerizim or in Jerusalem.
Samaritans were outcasts.
In John 6, we read that Jesus had to go back to Galilee, and to get there, He had to go via Samaria. And not only did He travel through Samaria, He stopped to rest there -- at a spot where He'd be most likely to meet a Samaritan. When one showed up, He engaged her in conversation, "read her mail" -- as we say about prophets -- and revealed Himself to her.
In Vancouver, you'll find Samaria on Hastings Street between Cambie and Gore.
If someone from outside the area has to drive through, they usually do so with the windows up, doors locked, avoiding eye contact and praying for green lights all the way. The idea of actually sitting down to rest, say, in Pigeon Park, would be out of the question.
Like the Samaritans, the people on the DTES are outcasts, dumped by society in the neighbourhood because they're not wanted anywhere else. Witness the Heart As Big As All Outdoors interviewed a month ago on CBC's morning show, who lives in the Dunbar area and is alarmed that binners -- whom she reviled as "those people" -- are now coming into her neighbourhood. The interview was a wonderful study in bigotry. Indeed, over the weekend we heard about people who actually live in condos on the DTES, who are up in arms over the prospect that United We Can might re-locate close to their complex. Come ON, gang! This is like moving next door to an airport and complaining about the aircraft noise.
But I digress ... Among the many aspects of the DTES -- along with drug addiction, homelessness and mental illness -- is the fact that they come from a variety of ethnic backgrounds and are influenced by a variety of social forces that tend to come between them and God.
The DTES is our "Samaria" for another reason. Jacob's Well is/was the lasting connection to the very beginning of Jewish history. The DTES is the historic epicentre of Vancouver: it's within the original boundaries of Granville -- later Vancouver; it's where the first Chinese immigrants settled; it's also the site of native settlement.
If being a Christian truly means to emulate the life of Jesus, isn't it our duty to wade into Samaria and sit down for a while? Instead of water -- and living water -- drugs can be the conversation-starter. A couple of weeks ago, John Sharp and I arrived early at The Lord's Rain, and before we opened up, we went for a walk, praying, watching and listening. Barely had we reached the first street corner, than a guy came up and asked if we were looking for some drugs. Had we been truly on the ball -- and emulating Jesus -- we would have come back with, "the kind of drugs we have are better than anything you've got".
Truly, DTES people want to know that they're still OK with God -- or that God's still OK with them. They are impressed when someone cares enough to bring them that message -- and back it up with something permanent like -- for example -- a facility where they can get a shower, a cup of coffee and some friendly faces and conversation to match.
The Word of God promises that this will bear fruit. Look at what happened after the Samaritan woman discoved Whom she was talking to. She dropped her water-pot, ran back into town and told everyone she could find that she had met the Messiah. They came to see what she was talking about; and they believed, not because of her witness, but because they'd seen Him for themselves.
It's during this incident, by the way, that Jesus notes that the fields are white for the harvest. So it is, too, in the DTES. Why do you think the enemy is trying to distract the people with drugs and paranoia about the Establishment?
Once again, our duty as Christians is to take the message of Christ to people who need to hear it, and also to bring people to a direct encounter of their own. That duty applies just as much to the outcasts in our own country as it does to the outcasts overseas -- moreso, in fact, because these Samaritans are in our own back yard.
The one Latina the group, Amada, said that the shantytown called El Carpio (pop. 45,000) was like Samaria, and referred to the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at Jacob's Well.
Samaria was, for a time, the capital of Israel -- back when Israel and Judea were separate countries. But over a relatively short historical period, it was besieged, conquered, sacked and eventually populated with a macedoine of nationalities: a sort of ethnic dumping ground. A lot of religions were practiced there, and the Bible tells us of plagues that befell the people, which were reversed when they got right with God again. Even though Samaritans claimed to be descendants of Abraham, recalled the captivity in Egypt and recognized Moses as the mediator of the commandments from God, Jews rejected them because of the intermarriage and their differences on whether to worship on Mount Gerizim or in Jerusalem.
Samaritans were outcasts.
In John 6, we read that Jesus had to go back to Galilee, and to get there, He had to go via Samaria. And not only did He travel through Samaria, He stopped to rest there -- at a spot where He'd be most likely to meet a Samaritan. When one showed up, He engaged her in conversation, "read her mail" -- as we say about prophets -- and revealed Himself to her.
In Vancouver, you'll find Samaria on Hastings Street between Cambie and Gore.
If someone from outside the area has to drive through, they usually do so with the windows up, doors locked, avoiding eye contact and praying for green lights all the way. The idea of actually sitting down to rest, say, in Pigeon Park, would be out of the question.
Like the Samaritans, the people on the DTES are outcasts, dumped by society in the neighbourhood because they're not wanted anywhere else. Witness the Heart As Big As All Outdoors interviewed a month ago on CBC's morning show, who lives in the Dunbar area and is alarmed that binners -- whom she reviled as "those people" -- are now coming into her neighbourhood. The interview was a wonderful study in bigotry. Indeed, over the weekend we heard about people who actually live in condos on the DTES, who are up in arms over the prospect that United We Can might re-locate close to their complex. Come ON, gang! This is like moving next door to an airport and complaining about the aircraft noise.
But I digress ... Among the many aspects of the DTES -- along with drug addiction, homelessness and mental illness -- is the fact that they come from a variety of ethnic backgrounds and are influenced by a variety of social forces that tend to come between them and God.
The DTES is our "Samaria" for another reason. Jacob's Well is/was the lasting connection to the very beginning of Jewish history. The DTES is the historic epicentre of Vancouver: it's within the original boundaries of Granville -- later Vancouver; it's where the first Chinese immigrants settled; it's also the site of native settlement.
If being a Christian truly means to emulate the life of Jesus, isn't it our duty to wade into Samaria and sit down for a while? Instead of water -- and living water -- drugs can be the conversation-starter. A couple of weeks ago, John Sharp and I arrived early at The Lord's Rain, and before we opened up, we went for a walk, praying, watching and listening. Barely had we reached the first street corner, than a guy came up and asked if we were looking for some drugs. Had we been truly on the ball -- and emulating Jesus -- we would have come back with, "the kind of drugs we have are better than anything you've got".
Truly, DTES people want to know that they're still OK with God -- or that God's still OK with them. They are impressed when someone cares enough to bring them that message -- and back it up with something permanent like -- for example -- a facility where they can get a shower, a cup of coffee and some friendly faces and conversation to match.
The Word of God promises that this will bear fruit. Look at what happened after the Samaritan woman discoved Whom she was talking to. She dropped her water-pot, ran back into town and told everyone she could find that she had met the Messiah. They came to see what she was talking about; and they believed, not because of her witness, but because they'd seen Him for themselves.
It's during this incident, by the way, that Jesus notes that the fields are white for the harvest. So it is, too, in the DTES. Why do you think the enemy is trying to distract the people with drugs and paranoia about the Establishment?
Once again, our duty as Christians is to take the message of Christ to people who need to hear it, and also to bring people to a direct encounter of their own. That duty applies just as much to the outcasts in our own country as it does to the outcasts overseas -- moreso, in fact, because these Samaritans are in our own back yard.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
It's the drugs, stupid! (a response)
Yesterday, we posted a rant about drugs on the Downtown East Side, in which I noted that, while the US War on Drugs has been, by many accounts, unsuccessful, Canada's apparent "peace treaty" with drugs has hardly wrestled the problem into submission, either. This brought a considered response, and with the permission of the writer (who's asked to remain anonymous), I'm posting it here.
Usually I read your emails and always find some inspiring message in part or in whole . Today I found it interesting that the usual message of salvation and GODs work took on a political tone speaking to the issue of the drug problem. As I consider myself somewhat of an expert I felt compelled to respond.
As someone who has personally experienced the US federal penal system I would like to educate you a bit as I constantly see misinformation being put forward. First I would start off by saying the US policy on drugs has been a complete failure and my opinion is in accordance with many groups , politicians and even federal US magistrates. The US incarcerates more people per capita that any other country in the world for non-violent drug offenses. This leads me to my second point, the US prison system is more and more being privatized in an effort to enrich individuals that under the guise of saving the tax payers a small amount of money, have almost cut off basic services health care,dental and definitely any and all forms of programs designed to rehabilitate offenders and actually does the exact opposite by seizing all assets of people, alienating them from family and loves ones by placing undue burdens on them in respect to where they are serving their time usually 500 miles from their home.
I say usually cause that is the policy of the USBOP (United States Bureau of Prisons. I am very concerned here with the Conservative party taking steps to emulate them. We have to first of all accept someone using drugs (including alcohol, cigarettes and caffeine ) included is a consentual crime . Can we expect the Canadian government to legislate morality. isn't that defeating the purpose of exactly why GOD has put us here and given us FREE WILL . Aren't we responsible for the choices we make ? Why are we always looking for someone to blame ie the drug sellers . Isn't a simple case of supply and demand ? Would there be a supply if there was no demand?
I think our generation and maybe our society is too easy to blame others for our actions. I also find it ironic that the real problem the alcohol and cigarettes and prescription drugs get little to no mention even though the evidence supports that alcohol and tobacco alone kill more people every year than all other illegal drugs combined. So doesn't that make the provincial and federal governments the biggest traffickers of all. Not to mention the huge multi-national drug companies that fly under the radar and to the contrary boast of their multi-billion dollar fortunes. Hasn't prohibition taught us anything ?
Can't we look at modern examples in Europe and see that decriminalizing has stabilized the new youth wanting to experiment with the banned substances and moreover provide these substances in a clean safe place. The fact that they treat it as a health issue and realize that the people will steal, rob and worse to get it accept that although this is controversial, it actually saves the tax payers in the end.I think we get a mixed message here whether it is viewed as a health or criminal issue and personally would like to see the spaces in prison used for violent offenders and pedophiles.
The fact the federal government is using tax dollars to in effect to try and shut down alternative programs the safe needled injection site for example proves this theory, and would only compound the problem with the transmission of diseases, HIV AIDS to name a few seems quite ironic to me. Can we not be resigned that a percentage of people will continue to use no matter what programs or treatment options are offered. This may sound pessimistic to some , but I see it as realistic. I personally grew up in a home where alcohol destroyed mine and my siblings childhood and although the media like to glorify the DTES drug problems I find little to no mention of this huge problem.
After living in Rio De Janeiro Brasil i was shocked to see that the standard police stance there was to exterminate the problem literally, i still find that so cruel that it is almost unimaginable and it has done little to nothing to curb the problem. Even under the assumed penalty of death , the youths are not discouraged and have little to no alternative. The human being is capable of extraordinary things when faced with hunger, starvation or the difference of a their child dying if they aren't able to provide a simple medicine that we take for granted here, but there means the possibility of life or death. Do we want to follow that example I think not.
Usually a country in part can be measured on how they treat their incarcerated . I consider myself very fortunate to be born a Canadian citizen and be afforded these rights ands freedoms that my forefathers fought and died for and would consider it a national tragedy to follow any part of the the US judicial system or any example or policy for that matter. We are a sovereign nation and we shouldn't look at their many failed examples as a guideline.
In closing i would like to add that it is my opinion that the media play an intregal part in perpetuating this problem in an attempt to sell advertising space and newspapers and the facts suggest we are still a very safe place to reside in relation to other North American cities and worldwide for that matter.
Usually I read your emails and always find some inspiring message in part or in whole . Today I found it interesting that the usual message of salvation and GODs work took on a political tone speaking to the issue of the drug problem. As I consider myself somewhat of an expert I felt compelled to respond.
As someone who has personally experienced the US federal penal system I would like to educate you a bit as I constantly see misinformation being put forward. First I would start off by saying the US policy on drugs has been a complete failure and my opinion is in accordance with many groups , politicians and even federal US magistrates. The US incarcerates more people per capita that any other country in the world for non-violent drug offenses. This leads me to my second point, the US prison system is more and more being privatized in an effort to enrich individuals that under the guise of saving the tax payers a small amount of money, have almost cut off basic services health care,dental and definitely any and all forms of programs designed to rehabilitate offenders and actually does the exact opposite by seizing all assets of people, alienating them from family and loves ones by placing undue burdens on them in respect to where they are serving their time usually 500 miles from their home.
I say usually cause that is the policy of the USBOP (United States Bureau of Prisons. I am very concerned here with the Conservative party taking steps to emulate them. We have to first of all accept someone using drugs (including alcohol, cigarettes and caffeine ) included is a consentual crime . Can we expect the Canadian government to legislate morality. isn't that defeating the purpose of exactly why GOD has put us here and given us FREE WILL . Aren't we responsible for the choices we make ? Why are we always looking for someone to blame ie the drug sellers . Isn't a simple case of supply and demand ? Would there be a supply if there was no demand?
I think our generation and maybe our society is too easy to blame others for our actions. I also find it ironic that the real problem the alcohol and cigarettes and prescription drugs get little to no mention even though the evidence supports that alcohol and tobacco alone kill more people every year than all other illegal drugs combined. So doesn't that make the provincial and federal governments the biggest traffickers of all. Not to mention the huge multi-national drug companies that fly under the radar and to the contrary boast of their multi-billion dollar fortunes. Hasn't prohibition taught us anything ?
Can't we look at modern examples in Europe and see that decriminalizing has stabilized the new youth wanting to experiment with the banned substances and moreover provide these substances in a clean safe place. The fact that they treat it as a health issue and realize that the people will steal, rob and worse to get it accept that although this is controversial, it actually saves the tax payers in the end.I think we get a mixed message here whether it is viewed as a health or criminal issue and personally would like to see the spaces in prison used for violent offenders and pedophiles.
The fact the federal government is using tax dollars to in effect to try and shut down alternative programs the safe needled injection site for example proves this theory, and would only compound the problem with the transmission of diseases, HIV AIDS to name a few seems quite ironic to me. Can we not be resigned that a percentage of people will continue to use no matter what programs or treatment options are offered. This may sound pessimistic to some , but I see it as realistic. I personally grew up in a home where alcohol destroyed mine and my siblings childhood and although the media like to glorify the DTES drug problems I find little to no mention of this huge problem.
After living in Rio De Janeiro Brasil i was shocked to see that the standard police stance there was to exterminate the problem literally, i still find that so cruel that it is almost unimaginable and it has done little to nothing to curb the problem. Even under the assumed penalty of death , the youths are not discouraged and have little to no alternative. The human being is capable of extraordinary things when faced with hunger, starvation or the difference of a their child dying if they aren't able to provide a simple medicine that we take for granted here, but there means the possibility of life or death. Do we want to follow that example I think not.
Usually a country in part can be measured on how they treat their incarcerated . I consider myself very fortunate to be born a Canadian citizen and be afforded these rights ands freedoms that my forefathers fought and died for and would consider it a national tragedy to follow any part of the the US judicial system or any example or policy for that matter. We are a sovereign nation and we shouldn't look at their many failed examples as a guideline.
In closing i would like to add that it is my opinion that the media play an intregal part in perpetuating this problem in an attempt to sell advertising space and newspapers and the facts suggest we are still a very safe place to reside in relation to other North American cities and worldwide for that matter.
Monday, April 27, 2009
It's the drugs, stupid!
Every so often, I get gobsmacked with the reason why we're doing what we're doing at Gospel Mission / The Lord's Rain. It reminds me of the need in the area -- and indeed, any area savaged by drugs and poverty, and those areas are becoming more numerous all the time -- and how we're evidently in the right place and the right time.
This past Saturday morning was an utter zoo at the Lord's Rain -- and I apologize to any cheetahs, wildebeests, lowland gorillas and giant cockroaches from the Brazilian rainforests that might be reading this. It was directly after Welfare Wednesday, a day when the drug traffic takes a sudden spike. People who came into The Lord's Rain were incoherent. One man, visiting us for the first time, sat on a chair, drinking coffee and talking to himself -- or to me, it was hard to tell; equally hard to tell was the language he was speaking -- and bursting out laughing from time to time. Davona, who's become a regular (and Danilo insists is not on drugs but is "only" seriously mentally ill), spent her time talking to herself and trying on piece after piece of donated clothing; while two others, Debbie and Shelley, were dancing the Pigeon Park Gavotte -- that sort-of wavering music-less shuffle that you see many people doing on the streets in the Hastings and Carrall area -- often with a cup of coffee in one hand.
Some others, who were not on drugs -- like Charlotte and Brendan, a homeless couple in their 30s, and a pair of Quebecois men who are also regulars -- simply sat and laughed at the floor show they were getting for free. It was hard not to laugh, even though we were watching the effects that drugs have on people who, at one time or another, had been beautiful, bright people with a world of promise in front of them.
Across the street, the drug deals were going down. I had come down the night before to lock up after the Friday night service, and spent some time sitting in my car, watching the scene. Lookouts were standing oh-so-casually at each end of the alley across from Gospel Mission. They're very effective at what they do: in the past, I've seen a whole herd of buyers and sellers in the alley vanish into thin air about 30 seconds before a couple of police officers stroll past. As we left The Lord's Rain on Saturday morning, one cop was zip-strapping two of those same lookouts and waiting for his backup to arrive. We said a quiet prayer of thanks and protection for the officer.
Then came Saturday night, and the regular service at Gospel Mission. It was a good crowd, and an unusual message -- based on Shakespeare's Sonnet XXIX. All these years, I'd assumed he'd been writing to a girl, but after reading an interesting theory that Shakespeare (or whoever wrote the works attributed to a certain gentleman farmer and actor from Stratford-Upon-Avon) was also on King James I's Bible translation team, it hit me between the eyes that he was writing it about Jesus. The message also spun off into a look at the implications of Jesus' assertion that He will come "as a thief in the night", and Jeremiah's description (49:9) that when a thief breaks in, he trashes the place and doesn't leave anything behind. So it will be when Jesus returns.
But the message was punctuated with outbursts from one fellow off at the side. I'd met him earlier in the year at The Lord's Rain: his name is Joseph, and he came in that morning stinking drunk and wanting to find the part in the Bible that lists the Seven Deadly Sins. There is no such reference: according to Wikipedia, the Seven Deadly Sins were listed by the 4th Century monk, Evagrius Ponticus. But what became apparent as we talked was that he knew Scripture, was incredibly intelligent, but for whatever reason was busily drinking his life away.
I usually cut people a lot of slack, but Joseph reached the end of my patience when he made a personal remark about one of the other guys there, and I warned him that if he made one more outburst, he'd be out of there without supper. He quietened down, then lay down on the pew and went to sleep.
The message ended, we served supper, and as people were lining up for seconds, I realized Joseph was still asleep. I went over to wake him, and he wouldn't budge. He was breathing, but absolutely un-wakable. John, who, two weeks before, had woken up to find his roommate dead on the kitchen floor, checked for a pulse, and that's when we saw the staples in Joseph's scalp. Someone said, "call 9-1-1", and I did. Fritz, one of the regulars, helped me roll Joseph onto his back.
The firefighters were first to arrive. "Oh, look," one of them said, "it's the chain guy!" Apparently, Joseph had been whacked in the head with a chain the day before and these same firefighters had treated him. They managed to rouse him just as the paramedics got there.
Joseph basically was OK -- except for being drunk and drugged and having a dozen staples holding his head together. The paramedics got out of him that he'd smoked rock cocaine earlier, on top of the booze. They checked his vital signs, took a blood sugar test, and packed up and left. I gave Joseph his hamburger, some cookies and a glass of Coke, and we talked.
"You need to spend more time here," I told him. "You know your Scripture, man." He laughed. I pressed the point. "I'm serious: you could be an awesome witness to others."
One of the things about Joseph is his quick laugh and a wry sense of humor. I walked with him down the stairs -- going ahead of him in case he fell. Not surprisingly, he pretended to fall. We laughed. He left in the direction of Pigeon Park, and I truly hope he comes back -- and often.
But I went back upstairs wanting to break something. Joseph was just the most recent in a long list of people that day, who were beautiful, intelligent, worth no less in God's eyes than you or I, and who had been written off by society. "Let them have their drugs -- who cares?" That's the attitude that comes off so much of the approach our society takes. But who's counted the cost here? Look at the resources deployed when we called about Joseph: three firefighters, four paramedics, two ambulances and a fire truck -- all to deal with someone who was drunk and on drugs. What if someone had had a heart attack, or there'd been a fire, or a building collapse, or a traffic accident, with those seven people and three vehicles tied up?
It's the drugs, stupid!
In Canada, we take great delight in sneering at the United States, and one of these exercises in smugness has been to declare that the War on Drugs has "failed". But what are the fruits of Canada's "peace treaty" with drugs?
If you need an answer to that rhetorical question, look at the multiple black eyes Vancouver has received over the past decade for the state of poverty in the shadow of such opulence. The further our city gets away from God, the more frequent and painful those black eyes will become.
Neither approach has been a resounding success. "Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it." With Jesus reduced to Just Another World View (and a politically-incorrect one at that), people have tried to go ahead without God's guidance.
That's why The Lord's Rain and Gospel Mission are in the place they're supposed to be in. One reason has been for us to be a refuge for people on the street -- especially those who need an ambulance. But more than that, we've noted before that the history of Gospel Mission has involved its being established in advance of various social catastrophes that have required its services. When the church moved to 331 Carrall Street in the 1940s, who would have predicted that Pigeon Park would be the fulcrum of despair that it started becoming in the 60s. More than that, it's directly in the face of the worst alley in the city for open-air drug dealing, and establishing The Lord's Rain on the ground floor has given us an up-close-and-personal view -- and no end of people to pray over and minister to.
This past Saturday morning was an utter zoo at the Lord's Rain -- and I apologize to any cheetahs, wildebeests, lowland gorillas and giant cockroaches from the Brazilian rainforests that might be reading this. It was directly after Welfare Wednesday, a day when the drug traffic takes a sudden spike. People who came into The Lord's Rain were incoherent. One man, visiting us for the first time, sat on a chair, drinking coffee and talking to himself -- or to me, it was hard to tell; equally hard to tell was the language he was speaking -- and bursting out laughing from time to time. Davona, who's become a regular (and Danilo insists is not on drugs but is "only" seriously mentally ill), spent her time talking to herself and trying on piece after piece of donated clothing; while two others, Debbie and Shelley, were dancing the Pigeon Park Gavotte -- that sort-of wavering music-less shuffle that you see many people doing on the streets in the Hastings and Carrall area -- often with a cup of coffee in one hand.
Some others, who were not on drugs -- like Charlotte and Brendan, a homeless couple in their 30s, and a pair of Quebecois men who are also regulars -- simply sat and laughed at the floor show they were getting for free. It was hard not to laugh, even though we were watching the effects that drugs have on people who, at one time or another, had been beautiful, bright people with a world of promise in front of them.
Across the street, the drug deals were going down. I had come down the night before to lock up after the Friday night service, and spent some time sitting in my car, watching the scene. Lookouts were standing oh-so-casually at each end of the alley across from Gospel Mission. They're very effective at what they do: in the past, I've seen a whole herd of buyers and sellers in the alley vanish into thin air about 30 seconds before a couple of police officers stroll past. As we left The Lord's Rain on Saturday morning, one cop was zip-strapping two of those same lookouts and waiting for his backup to arrive. We said a quiet prayer of thanks and protection for the officer.
Then came Saturday night, and the regular service at Gospel Mission. It was a good crowd, and an unusual message -- based on Shakespeare's Sonnet XXIX. All these years, I'd assumed he'd been writing to a girl, but after reading an interesting theory that Shakespeare (or whoever wrote the works attributed to a certain gentleman farmer and actor from Stratford-Upon-Avon) was also on King James I's Bible translation team, it hit me between the eyes that he was writing it about Jesus. The message also spun off into a look at the implications of Jesus' assertion that He will come "as a thief in the night", and Jeremiah's description (49:9) that when a thief breaks in, he trashes the place and doesn't leave anything behind. So it will be when Jesus returns.
But the message was punctuated with outbursts from one fellow off at the side. I'd met him earlier in the year at The Lord's Rain: his name is Joseph, and he came in that morning stinking drunk and wanting to find the part in the Bible that lists the Seven Deadly Sins. There is no such reference: according to Wikipedia, the Seven Deadly Sins were listed by the 4th Century monk, Evagrius Ponticus. But what became apparent as we talked was that he knew Scripture, was incredibly intelligent, but for whatever reason was busily drinking his life away.
I usually cut people a lot of slack, but Joseph reached the end of my patience when he made a personal remark about one of the other guys there, and I warned him that if he made one more outburst, he'd be out of there without supper. He quietened down, then lay down on the pew and went to sleep.
The message ended, we served supper, and as people were lining up for seconds, I realized Joseph was still asleep. I went over to wake him, and he wouldn't budge. He was breathing, but absolutely un-wakable. John, who, two weeks before, had woken up to find his roommate dead on the kitchen floor, checked for a pulse, and that's when we saw the staples in Joseph's scalp. Someone said, "call 9-1-1", and I did. Fritz, one of the regulars, helped me roll Joseph onto his back.
The firefighters were first to arrive. "Oh, look," one of them said, "it's the chain guy!" Apparently, Joseph had been whacked in the head with a chain the day before and these same firefighters had treated him. They managed to rouse him just as the paramedics got there.
Joseph basically was OK -- except for being drunk and drugged and having a dozen staples holding his head together. The paramedics got out of him that he'd smoked rock cocaine earlier, on top of the booze. They checked his vital signs, took a blood sugar test, and packed up and left. I gave Joseph his hamburger, some cookies and a glass of Coke, and we talked.
"You need to spend more time here," I told him. "You know your Scripture, man." He laughed. I pressed the point. "I'm serious: you could be an awesome witness to others."
One of the things about Joseph is his quick laugh and a wry sense of humor. I walked with him down the stairs -- going ahead of him in case he fell. Not surprisingly, he pretended to fall. We laughed. He left in the direction of Pigeon Park, and I truly hope he comes back -- and often.
But I went back upstairs wanting to break something. Joseph was just the most recent in a long list of people that day, who were beautiful, intelligent, worth no less in God's eyes than you or I, and who had been written off by society. "Let them have their drugs -- who cares?" That's the attitude that comes off so much of the approach our society takes. But who's counted the cost here? Look at the resources deployed when we called about Joseph: three firefighters, four paramedics, two ambulances and a fire truck -- all to deal with someone who was drunk and on drugs. What if someone had had a heart attack, or there'd been a fire, or a building collapse, or a traffic accident, with those seven people and three vehicles tied up?
It's the drugs, stupid!
In Canada, we take great delight in sneering at the United States, and one of these exercises in smugness has been to declare that the War on Drugs has "failed". But what are the fruits of Canada's "peace treaty" with drugs?
If you need an answer to that rhetorical question, look at the multiple black eyes Vancouver has received over the past decade for the state of poverty in the shadow of such opulence. The further our city gets away from God, the more frequent and painful those black eyes will become.
Neither approach has been a resounding success. "Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it." With Jesus reduced to Just Another World View (and a politically-incorrect one at that), people have tried to go ahead without God's guidance.
That's why The Lord's Rain and Gospel Mission are in the place they're supposed to be in. One reason has been for us to be a refuge for people on the street -- especially those who need an ambulance. But more than that, we've noted before that the history of Gospel Mission has involved its being established in advance of various social catastrophes that have required its services. When the church moved to 331 Carrall Street in the 1940s, who would have predicted that Pigeon Park would be the fulcrum of despair that it started becoming in the 60s. More than that, it's directly in the face of the worst alley in the city for open-air drug dealing, and establishing The Lord's Rain on the ground floor has given us an up-close-and-personal view -- and no end of people to pray over and minister to.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Who really killed Hubbard?
Vancouver Police Sgt Mark Tonner has a column in today's Province about the shooting death of Michael Vann Hubbard, that says what many of us are probably thinking but may be drowned out in the hysteria of the media to attack the police and the rush to judgment (and headlines) of the anti-police "advocates" on the Downtown East Side. Mark's argument goes like this:
- man is stopped on suspicion of breaking into a vehicle
- man pulls knife from backpack
- man refuses to drop knife when told
- man is shot
Of course, the victim's family has now surfaced (recall that this man was homeless while alive) along with the head of an advocacy group that claims to serve the people on the Downtown East Side, planning to sue the police for wrongful death. But did the police really kill Michael Vann Hubbard?
At Gospel Mission, we see all sorts of activity going on in the Hastings and Carrall area, and we hear a lot of chatter about how the police are "hassling" the homeless. It's also been in the papers and on the air. The advent of the winter Olympics is the latest "hook" for this sort of talk -- that the police are going to be turning up the heat on the poor and destitute so that the area looks good in time for us to "welcome the world". (I do recall that, during the 2006 World Junior Hockey Championships, there was a sign taped to the dashboard of the shuttle vehicles that took media and officials from the Westin Bayshore to Pacific Coliseum, reminding drivers NOT to go via Hastings and Main. They had to go over the Georgia Viaduct, take Prior/Venables to Victoria and then cut down to Hastings and out to the PNE.)
One hot rumour has the homeless being invited to a "free lunch", then herded onto buses and, before you can say "concentration camp", whisked away to an undisclosed location in the Interior.
"They're ticketing people for jaywalking! They're hassling people for loitering!" That's the kind of shrill warning we get from the Pivot Legal Society and its activist lawyers, taking a quantum leap of logic to show it's proof that the police are targeting "the homeless". Well, this just in: jaywalking and loitering are illegal. So is possession of stolen property -- which includes shopping carts, and seeing the number of shopping carts being pushed around the DTES tells me the cops are not exactly enforcing the letter of the law on that one (I can only imagine the screams from PLS and its ilk if they did!).
Want to know how to keep from being hassled by police? Don't break the law. What's more, the Word of God tells us we have to obey the law, no matter how unjust we think it is (I Peter 2:13-23), and God will bless us for it.
But the activists on the DTES have an agenda that isn't necessarily to bless the poor and homeless: they'd rather fight "the man" than Behold The Man. With all their ravings, is it any wonder that people in the area don't trust the police and that someone challenged by police officers would be so paranoid that he would pull a knife rather than comply?
Who really killed Michael Vann Hubbard? The police officer who pulled the trigger? Or whoever planted the seeds of paranoia?
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Now playing at The Pantages
A friend of mine recently sent me an invite on Facebook to join one of those online "grassroots campaigns". This is the same kind of campaign that demanded 24/7 operation of SkyTrain so that people could party until 4 AM closing time and not miss the last train home (personally, I believe that if you have to keep drinking up till 4 AM, you don't need a SkyTrain - you need a doctor), and picked up its Warholian 15 minutes when a couple of the local fishwraps picked up the fact that several thousand people decided it would be a good thing to support.
This particular Facebook campaign sounds laudable - save the old Pantages Theatre, which began life as a vaudeville house over 100 years ago and saw such greats as Charlie Chaplin, Fred Allen, Stan Laurel (possibly as the Stan Jefferson Trio, before he was teamed with Oliver Hardy), Babe Ruth, and others. It later changed its name to the Avon, where it was the home to the Everyman Players, one of Vancouver's first professional theatre troupes (and where my parents first met). By the 60s, it had morphed into a Chinese movie house, first called the Sun Sing Theatre and then the Shaw, and for many years now, it's been boarded up and perpetually for sale or lease.
A civic minded group has been trying to take it over for quite a few years, trying to raise money and get City support to get it retrofitted and refurbished and restored to something of its former glory -- kind of like the work done on the Orpheum in times past. Now, it's become apparent that the City of Vancouver is not willing to spend money on the project, and the owners are looking to unload it to developers.
This, of course, is regarded as a Travesty Of Vancouver History, and a Great Shame if the theatre isn't preserved.
The problem here is that this piece of Vancouver History is right bang in the middle of Vancouver Present: Hastings Street between Main and Columbia -- surrounded by drug-dealing, open-air drug using, prostitution, and general utter despair.
So this raises an interesting question: in what parallel universe should Saving The Pantages be a civic priority -- or anyone's priority, for that matter?
See, while ministering the Gospel on the Downtown East Side, I've come to realize that the main enemy we are battling -- perhaps even greater than hopelessness -- is the spirit of abandonment. People who wind up there feel they've been abandoned -- by family, friends, the world ... even by God. There's little to dissuade them of that: police are seen as the enemies, allegedly cracking down on them and moving them along; slumlords take advantage of them; welfare workers are woefully overworked and seem (seem) to be not overburdened with heart; methadone clinic workers (and we'll blog about this separately) take government money, kick some of it back to their "clients" and verbally abuse these people; and there's an official line supporting the idea that the best thing for them is to provide a safe place to shoot up, which means that drug addicts are beyond redemption.
In other words ... they've been abandoned.
Now, along comes a group of "well-meaning arts-loving citizens", wanting to attract funding to spruce up this dilapidated pile of bricks into ... what? An art gallery ... theatre ... "performing space" ... ?
I knew a woman once whose natural father stonewalled for years on sending support payments, then one day showed up with a high school grad present: a car. The implication was that this was essentially in lieu of the support payments (although I never got the full story) ... but the story here is relevant, because it analogizes the folly of this whole exercise:
This particular Facebook campaign sounds laudable - save the old Pantages Theatre, which began life as a vaudeville house over 100 years ago and saw such greats as Charlie Chaplin, Fred Allen, Stan Laurel (possibly as the Stan Jefferson Trio, before he was teamed with Oliver Hardy), Babe Ruth, and others. It later changed its name to the Avon, where it was the home to the Everyman Players, one of Vancouver's first professional theatre troupes (and where my parents first met). By the 60s, it had morphed into a Chinese movie house, first called the Sun Sing Theatre and then the Shaw, and for many years now, it's been boarded up and perpetually for sale or lease.
A civic minded group has been trying to take it over for quite a few years, trying to raise money and get City support to get it retrofitted and refurbished and restored to something of its former glory -- kind of like the work done on the Orpheum in times past. Now, it's become apparent that the City of Vancouver is not willing to spend money on the project, and the owners are looking to unload it to developers.
This, of course, is regarded as a Travesty Of Vancouver History, and a Great Shame if the theatre isn't preserved.
The problem here is that this piece of Vancouver History is right bang in the middle of Vancouver Present: Hastings Street between Main and Columbia -- surrounded by drug-dealing, open-air drug using, prostitution, and general utter despair.
So this raises an interesting question: in what parallel universe should Saving The Pantages be a civic priority -- or anyone's priority, for that matter?
See, while ministering the Gospel on the Downtown East Side, I've come to realize that the main enemy we are battling -- perhaps even greater than hopelessness -- is the spirit of abandonment. People who wind up there feel they've been abandoned -- by family, friends, the world ... even by God. There's little to dissuade them of that: police are seen as the enemies, allegedly cracking down on them and moving them along; slumlords take advantage of them; welfare workers are woefully overworked and seem (seem) to be not overburdened with heart; methadone clinic workers (and we'll blog about this separately) take government money, kick some of it back to their "clients" and verbally abuse these people; and there's an official line supporting the idea that the best thing for them is to provide a safe place to shoot up, which means that drug addicts are beyond redemption.
In other words ... they've been abandoned.
Now, along comes a group of "well-meaning arts-loving citizens", wanting to attract funding to spruce up this dilapidated pile of bricks into ... what? An art gallery ... theatre ... "performing space" ... ?
I knew a woman once whose natural father stonewalled for years on sending support payments, then one day showed up with a high school grad present: a car. The implication was that this was essentially in lieu of the support payments (although I never got the full story) ... but the story here is relevant, because it analogizes the folly of this whole exercise:
- 50 years after the heyday of the Pantages/Avon, there is doom and despair on the DTES
- a group of people wants to convince others that spending big bucks on this theatre is a priority
- if your life was on the DTES, what would you think?
- that people outside the DTES aren't willing to provide what we need, but are willing to shell out for some old pile of bricks
- translation: more abandonment
It's not even about the money, you realize. It costs nothing to minister hope to people. Keeping the rent paid at Gospel Mission / The Lord's Rain is a pittance, compared to the cost of restoring the Pantages.
Interesting side-note: one of the principals in this movement to restore the Pantages is also involved with the group that took over the lease on the building that housed Rainbow Mission. In 2006, Rainbow Mission, which had served the DTES for almost 60 years, was evicted, to make room for a women's shelter society. Not that there's anything wrong with a women's shelter society, but the Rainbow was ministering to everyone as Jesus did, regardless of race, gender, or religious background. There are a lot of guys who were regulars at the Rainbow, whom I have not seen since we closed the place in January 2007. Rainbow Mission was their hope-line, and I don't know where or if they've found it since. Add to that the notion that they have to be of a certain gender and possibly of a certain ethnicity in order to "qualify" for help, and you can see, again, the sense of abandonment.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Another satisfied customer ...
It's more confirmation of God's purpose for the Downtown East Side, as exemplified in The Lord's Rain. Earlier in the week, I told you about Tina, and the breakthroughs she's been experiencing lately. On Saturday, we heard of another.
Rich is probably in his mid-30s, and started coming to The Lord's Rain in the fall. He was newly-arrived from Ontario, and there was definitely "something different" about him. Articulate, unfailingly polite, he refers to taking a shower as "de-grittifying" himself. He has been coming regularly to the Gospel Mission services upstairs. You take a "watch and pray" attitude towards anyone in the DTES, and recognize that anyone has multiple sides to their personality and background.
Rich came in Saturday morning and informed us that he had checked into the Salvation Army's Harbour Light rehab program, to get rid of marijuana and alcohol from his life. "I came to the realization that I was no better than the crack-heads on the steps of the Carnegie," he said. "So what if marijuana was my 'drug of choice'? It's still addiction."
And then he added, "and one of the reasons I came to that realization? Because you guys had an open door here. You've always had a smile and a friendly greeting for me when I walked in, and I gotta thank you." At this point, I could see the rims of his eyes start to redden, and then he regained his composure.
There you go: another indication that God has intended The Lord's Rain for a purpose beyond helping people make it to the next day. His purpose is for us to provide hope to people by reaching out in new ways. Rich didn't find the hope because we hammered him with the Word of God -- although we make no bones about who we are and what we're doing there -- but because people showed him unconditional love and have been there for him to hang with and get off the street.
When people have had The World constantly trying to drag them backwards and away from their salvation -- away from their lives -- it's a major task to give them the hope that Jesus bought for us on the Cross, that they can shed their past and the things that have held them back and get on with their lives.
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