Unclear on the Concept ...

... a little venting: don't mind me ...

I heard a theological postulate today that absolutely made me cringe. A friend of mine related a teaching she'd heard from a theologian who’s also something of an activist on the Downtown East Side. He re-told the parable of The Good Samaritan as “The Good Drug Dealer”. The idea, apparently, was to illustrate the extent to which Samaritans were reviled in Jesus’ time.

Nice try, but …

I have written in the past that the Downtown East Side is Vancouver’s Samaria, but this is not what I mean. The warping of this parable may give us an idea of the antipathy towards Samaritans, but I think this theologian owes the Samaritans an apology for comparing them to drug dealers. After all, Samaritans did not choose to be Samaritans, but no matter how you slice it, drug dealers are in that occupation by choice. Their sole purpose is to make money for themselves, and they have little concern for the people whose lives are ruined or cut short because of that “purpose”.

The flip side of this polemic is even more chilling: that’s the idea that we should consider drug dealers to be like Samaritans – downtrodden and discriminated against by virtue of their place in society. It sounds like the prelude to a clever civil liberties lawyer's argument for a mistrial on the basis of chronic harassment.

Now, if this theologian had used the story of Zacchaeus in Luke 19:1-10 instead, that would have been an interesting parallel. Zacchaeus was a tax collector, and in those days, tax collectors were reviled for ripping off people, handing over money to the Romans and raking down a fair bit of it for themselves. Zacchaeus was so short, he had to climb a tree to get a look at Jesus as He walked by; Jesus spotted him and invited Himself over for dinner. By the time Jesus gets to Zacchaeus’ place, Zacchaeus has repented, is restoring to those he has robbed four times over, and gives half of his goods to the poor. If we substituted “drug dealer” for “tax collector”, that would have made for a great story of redemption.

Or was this theologian trying to make us feel warm-fuzzies for drug dealers and decide they’re really not so bad and are just misunderstood like Samaritans and we should let our daughters marry one?

In the words of Sam Goldwyn, “include me out”.

This is the same kind of thinking that leads purported Christian leaders to have a choir sing "Amazing Grace" when a court case involving InSite is heard: as if it's God's will for His people to be kept in a drugged-out zombie state, so long as it's "clean"; or to side with the "Occupy" movement, when Scripture calls on us to submit to authority, no matter how "bad" it may seem to us. I wonder if this is why it's so hard to get churches outside the DTES to get involved with ministry there?

She just happened …

What brought her to the city was some sort of scholarship –

Some fancy New York fashion institute.

Her junkie boyfriend took to crime which took up too much of her time:

It only took a year until she took a different route.

-- “She Just Happened”, Mighty Mighty Bosstones

I’ve found myself slipping into my anecdotage this past month. It was partly to do with turning 57 and explaining to people that yes, I am old enough to collect my pension, albeit a “reduced” one; but also to do with meeting up with my high school grad class for our 40-year reunion.

The experience was fun, but it was tempered more than somewhat by the discovery that 17 of our classmates – well over 10% of our total number – have already passed away. One of my friends noted sadly that, with the women, it appears that cancer took many of them; many of the guys died from drugs.

And then there was Vicky. Murder, we were told.

According to one of the few people who had any contact with her after graduation, she had fallen in with a seedy crowd. I had heard that she had found employment “displaying her shape”, as Damon Runyon delicately described it, at various clubs around the city. At the time, I had simply said, “hmm”, but didn’t think much of it.

But at the time, I didn’t know what that crowd could be like, and apparently, neither did Vicky. I don’t know any more about the circumstances, and I don’t think I want to – the more I’ve thought about it over the past couple of weeks, the more I’ve remembered how dear she was to me. The idea of her being killed by someone else’s hand is something I don’t want to contemplate.

Vicky and I were never an “item”, although I did ask her in 11^th grade if she’d “go around” with me. She laughed in my face, not unkindly, kissed me on the cheek and said it would be best to keep it as “just friends”. Cool: I was no stranger to rejection and she was a nice friend, anyway. At least she was honest. 

Vicky was the partner for my first "stage kiss". In 10th grade, we played boyfriend-girlfriend (I was the boy) in a student drama festival production. In one of those ironic situations that can only happen in high school, I was cast as her father in My Fair Lady the next year: Alfred P. Doolittle to her Eliza (although I pulled out of the production due to schoolwork); and the year after that, she played my aunt in Arsenic and Old Lace. 

In fact, Vicky learned Cockney for her role of Eliza and would use it outside of rehearsals. In class, she would mutter, “I ‘ave ter git me pensoh” in that accent. Even now, I hear Vicky’s voice when I look for a “pensoh” to do the weekend crossword, although I had long since forgotten why that phrase and voice were so embedded in my mind.

So while we weren't "involved", Vicky and I were fairly close friends and she opened up to me in ways you could only open up to a good friend. We sat together in Socials 11, talking about places we wanted to go to and things we wanted to do with our lives. Over the phone, she once read me a poem she’d written: “it’s not about anything I've done,” she said, as if she needed to explain something beforehand; there’s no doubt that the line, “and then he impales you with his sword of love,” did require some background.

It was about a year or so after grad that I heard my “good friend” was doing a strip act. That was the last I heard of her until I saw her name on the list of “angels” passed around by the organizer the reunion.

What just happened?

She just happened, she just happened to cross my mind.

Without warning, she crossed my mind:

What just happened to me?

The other night, I found myself letting out a heavy sigh from time to time, for no apparent reason. I hope my wife will forgive me.

Not to diminish what it was

Well, there’s no reason to, because

Ago, it was so long and away, it seems so far.

Whom are we kidding, guys?

This spring has brought a new crop of people into The Lord’s Rain, although the new young women have not started arriving. High school isn’t finished yet, so I suppose that influx is a month away, as girls, talented, confused and starry-eyed, fall in with guys who promise easy money and “things”, so long as they “do a little work for them”.

One of the new girls: the guy in the shades
appears to be "with her".

Other “she”s have just happened to cross my mind lately: women who would come into The Lord’s Rain and then, not come in anymore. Shannon, Leanne, Chrissy, Charlotte, Cherie, “Little One”, who was the first woman to have shower at The Lord’s Rain: have they stopped coming because their lives have turned around and they’ve moved away? Or have they, like Vicky, run afoul of their “boyfriends”?

Jade

(On reflection, Shannon is a slightly different case: she was a bright light at the Mission, overcoming her own issues to talk to others and, if nothing else, expressing a pure love to them that reached out in ways I couldn’t seem to. She and her husband, Brannon, found a place on the south end – a considerable distance away from the DTES – where it was quiet and Brannon could rest and take care of his various kidney and liver problems. The last word I got about Chrissy is that she goes to Ontario for extended periods to see her family.)

Jade, who came in to Ladies’ Day at The Lord’s Rain when it first launched on Friday nights in 2008, died of blood poisoning a few months later.

I have hopes for Davona. It’s now three years since I saw her with her baby, Shine. We collided in Waterfront Station, which is sufficiently removed from the DTES that, it appears, she has turned things around.

This leads, by a grand leap in thought process, to musing about the Great Stupid Question about the disappearances of women from the DTES a decade ago. By “stupid question”, I refer to something a former colleague in Victoria radio, the late Joe Easingwood, used to say: “The only ‘stupid question’ is the one that doesn’t get asked.” In all the finger-pointing at police for the way they handled those cases, I never heard anyone address the question of how those women wound up on the DTES in the first place. Why had they left their homes? Why were they reduced to selling their bodies to get drugs? 

Why, indeed, did Vicky get lured into a world that eventually took her life?

(Another "stupid question" is, where were the media, which leapt all over the revelations but didn't start digging until relatively late in the game? I remember getting a call from one of the women's relatives in 2002, when I was assignment editor at a station in Victoria. Because the answers had to come from Vancouver Police and we had limited resources as it was, I seem to recall we decided to "leave it to the Vancouver stations". Maybe I should have pushed to get our Vancouver reporter to do some digging. I wonder ... But if I was getting calls in 2002, how many reporters were getting similar calls at that time or earlier? What happened with the story then?)

Of course, the view from the bleachers is always clearer than the view on the field. I remember the experience of a woman I knew in Victoria about twenty years ago, whose daughter fell in with “the bad crowd”. Shari was a single mother, raising two children and holding down a job, so she wasn't at home when school let out. Her son had activities like sports that kept him occupied, but the girl quickly found other "interests", and it wasn't long before certain young men started convincing her that her mom didn't really love her but they could give her something her mom couldn't. 

Shari tried everything she could think of, including showing up at one hangout with her (large and imposing) boyfriend and a camera, snapping pictures of everything and everyone before dragging the girl home. It made a lot of people nervous, at least for a time. There was even a “scared straight” session with Victoria Police, in which one cop told the girl, “I carry a gun, and I won’t tangle with those guys!”, but the impact was only temporary. The lure of the vast opportunities in Vancouver and a nice trip to Hawai’i with some very nice gentlemen, coupled with the repeated conviction that she was being denied something on the home front, proved irresistible.

(Another flashback takes me to the killing of Reena Virk 20 years ago in Victoria: the crowd she had fallen in with -- and which ultimately turned on her like a murder of crows attacking an injured member -- had also convinced her that her parents were preventing her from "living".)

It's tough - especially when parents who try to "train up a child in the way he (or she) should go" (Proverbs 22:6) are portrayed as "stifling" their children and denying them their freedom. 

So while that “unasked question” may appear to be rhetorical and not a little judgmental, there are answers, and none of them is simple. 

The Lord's Rain: Curfew Shall Not Ring Tonight!

Once again, a prompt from the Lord pans out! Did I ever doubt it?

Last week, I told you about the front-page story in Metro last week about The Lord's Rain's financial concerns. That was followed with a piece done by Breakfast Television on CityTV, which aired on Thursday.

I didn't see the TV story (and they don't post their stories online), but as for the newspaper item, I do believe the Lord had His hand on Kate Webb's shoulder as she wrote it, because it's brilliant and uses that 200-words-or-fewer format effectively to convey both the financial and the social need.

(Heck, I can't even say "good morning!" in fewer than 200 words!)

And now, the update. In the two days since those stories ran, we received enough donations to keep The Lord's Rain open for several more months! It proves that when more people know about The Lord's Rain and what it means to the people it serves, they will invest willingly. All it takes is a little publicity -- and now, we have an even stronger "hook" for that publicity: testimony from the people who use it. As I said in my last email, it's no longer just a "neat idea", but something that's actually showing positive results.

Give God the glory, working through the media and touching those who see the stories! It's certainly not the first time He has told me to "do what you do for a living: write a news release". The media have stepped up time and again to get the message out, and people have responded. In 2007 and 2008, as we were building the place, they caught the vision and came forward to make it happen; and now it's happening again.

We still have the issue of long-term continuous funding, and to that end, I'm working on a presentation to take to churches and organizations, describing then opportunity to be part of something operating in a mission field in their own back yard. It is a mission field, and a highly important one, at that.

The Lord's Rain celebrated its 5th anniversary on Tuesday (April 30), and support like this means there'll be a 6th anniversary ... and so forth.

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.

People Moving Forward ... and a contest

It's hard to believe it's almost quarter-past 2013 -- and harder still to believe it's spring, with snow penning in my mother-in-law in Toronto and the weather here (at least, this past Wednesday, as I started to write this) reminding one of the Two Ronnies gag: "today's weather will be hot in Stott, cool in Goule, choking in Woking ... and those living in Lissing Down are advised to carry an umbrella." And for those coming into The Lord's Rain, the hot showers and/or coffee have been a relief and a blessing.

 

It was similarly awful weather a couple of weeks ago, when I accompanied Frank to OnSite. OnSite is the cousin of InSite, the "safe" drug-injection facility on the Downtown East Side, where nurses keep vigil over people as they shoot up their drug(s) of choice. If someone feels they finally want to take a crack (pun intended) at kicking the habit, they can go across the foyer to OnSite, to see if they have any beds available. Frank has been trying to beat his addiction for years, so this was his latest attempt. I offered to walk there with him and give him moral support. It was 8:30 when we talked and OnSite didn't open until 10, so I told Frank I'd meet him at The Lord's Rain at quarter-to and we'd walk up together. I had a twofold reason: supporting Frank, also to see what was inside the place. As I've expressed before, I'm skeptical of the "harm-reduction" approach, so even a cursory look would be instructive. 

 

It was a good sign when Frank came back to The Lord's Rain at 9:30 -- he was serious. We walked up and stood in line: other addicts, waiting to get their hit. A couple of them started banging on the window around 9:58 (the slight peevishness shown when the coffee isn't quite ready at The Lord's Rain is positively virtuous patience by comparison) and when the door finally opened, they all surged through and were directed to a door leading to the injection rooms. When Frank said he wanted to go to OnSite, he was sent to another counter. Two people ahead of him were told to "come back tomorrow," which was not a good sign; Frank went up and was told the same. I hazarded a question. "What treatment method do you use here?" "Oh, a number of things," was the reply, "like acupuncture, meditation, whatever the client thinks will work." "Does anyone help them make that decision?" "Oh, yes: we have counsellors here."

 

I didn't ask anything more, because I was afraid they might think I was spying and that might have affected Frank's situation, so I just nodded and Frank and I left. We agreed to meet there the next day, just before 10.

 

Frank was there before I was and this time I stayed outside while he went in. There was a curtain over the window looking into the OnSite reception area, but I found an opening and peered through. It gave me a good view of the front desk and I saw Frank wait in line, then step up. A few words were exchanged, and then he turned away and went to a different part of the building and through a door. Had he gotten lucky? I waited another 10 minutes as the rain intensified. A guy standing next to the door was calling out, "jib-jib-jib!" -- "jib" is the street term for crystal meth, and I couldn't tell whether he was selling or looking to buy. Finally, when Frank didn't come out, I squelched away, figuring he had gotten in.

 

That was Thursday. The following Tuesday, Frank was back at The Lord's Rain. "What happened?" I asked. "They said, 'come back tomorrow'." "Did you?" "No." He didn't explain where he went when he went through that other door.

 

I haven't seen Frank since. It strikes me that that particular facility is built on the premise that drug addicts have freedom of choice: that they can choose to come off the stuff, and until they do, the "clean" shooting gallery will keep them alive. Then, when they make that decision that enough's enough, there's a facility to help them. On top of that, the treatment facility gives them a choice as to how to be treated.

 

But doesn't being an addict, by definition, mean that they've surrendered freedom of choice? Anchor House, a treatment facility I visited in Brooklyn in 2007, recognizes that, and the house rules are strict. Pastor Roger Jamison took me around the residential portion. In one room, one of the beds wasn't properly made. "This room is a freakin' mess!" he growled at the man sitting at a desk, reading a Bible. "Get this place cleaned up!" The man jumped-to, right away. In another, there was some artwork on the walls that might best be described as bizarre. "What do you make of that?" Roger asked. "Demonic," I said. I'm not one to look for a demon behind every bush (largely because if you do that, you could miss the ram in the bush), but there was little mistaking it in this case. Roger got on his walkie-talkie. "Can you tell (so-and-so) I want to see him in my office?" Roger extends tough love -- and discipline the residents never had while growing up. The Anchor House premise is that people can get well and don't have to be consigned forever to the life of the addict, but they have no freedom of choice at that point. Eventually, though, as they recover, they get back their freedom of choice, along with their families and their lives. (By the way, the nightly Word-and-Worship service ROCKS!)

 

Do I believe addicts should be forced into recovery? I'm not so sure. Part of me still feels that it has to begin with the person wanting to break out of that existence, and that we have to be ready to support him or her not just with treatment plans but with prayer and encouragement so they know that a better life is not only desirable, it's possible.

 

(How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb? Just one - but the light bulb has to truly want to change!)

 

But the Anchor House experience makes me wonder. As I recall, Anchor House residents are generally people who've been arrested for crimes and are given the choice of the program or jail. Hobson's Choice, really.

 

What I do know is, we as a society can do a whole lot better at helping people who have crashed and burned -- like those on the DTES -- to regain their lives; and I don't think you accomplish that by surrounding them of ways of making the cycle easier -- or "safer". I believe that removes the hope that they can ever be anything but drug addicts. Mind you, if enough people step up to the plate and instill hope in these individuals, you could have a safe injection site on every corner and they'd all be empty.

 

Selah.

 

As for Frank, it's hard to say: he may turn up again; he may try to get into Union Gospel's program. He's been beaten up so much by his addiction -- not to mention his family and himself -- who knows how many more knocks he can take?

 

***

We've been watching others going through their struggles to get clean and free. Michael is planning to go to Day-tox -- another program aimed at helping people get off their substances. Mike's is mainly alcohol, and at age 41, he has an inflamed pancreas and liver trouble -- and some other symptoms he described to me the other day sound a lot like what I went through when my gall bladder finally said no mas! to the fat and salt I'd been loading-up. He suffered a broken collarbone a while back, and the doctors decided not to repair it surgically: they feel that, because he's an alcoholic, there's too much danger that he could fall, re-break the bone, and get an infection. It's not the first time I've heard of that medical decision, but for Mike, it means constant pain and a bone that sticks up crazily beside his shoulder.

 

However, it was also a wake-up call to get serious about recovery. He's also looking into Wagner Hills Farm, which is a Scripture-based recovery program in the Fraser Valley. Stay tuned, and keep him in prayer, as well.

 

Marty is someone else trying to reclaim his life. He was suspended from his job as a teacher for drug use, and a number of other life challenges also took their toll. It's hard to say how well he has the habit under control now, but he's still determined to turn things around. "I thought I could do construction," he told me the other day, "but I'm way outta shape and that's a young man's job. But teaching is what I love." He's putting out feelers to teach ESL or adult literacy around the DTES. We've seen him quite ill, and we've seen him at his best: through it all, he does have a ready laugh (some of my more obscure one-liners in my sermons might go over everyone else's heads, but I can always count on Marty to crack up). We pull for everyone who comes into The Lord's Rain, but one can't help but have extra-high hopes for Marty.

 

And then there's Herbie. Bad knees -- and painkillers -- pretty much shot down his career as a plumber, but over the past year and a half, he's been working hard at building his academic credits. He's setting his sights on social work, and has been learning a lot just by volunteering at The Lord's Rain. Tuesday morning, I gave him directions on how to take SkyTrain to Douglas College in New Westminster, so he could personally hand in his application for courses. He still has to line up grants and scholarships through the various options available on the DTES, but he is a wonderful example of dogged determination and I have no doubt he'll succeed.

 

The trick is to shut out the voices that say, "you can't" -- and sadly, there are plenty of those around the DTES, physical voices as well as endless yammering in one's own head. People can learn from the example of a fellow I heard from this morning. Stu (not his real name) has quite a testimony, which includes a "turnaround encounter" with Jesus Christ, just as he was about to take that Final Step off the Lion's Gate Bridge several years ago. A couple of workplace injuries left him in a great deal of pain and hobbling around, but he was determined to be useful. But there were those voices -- "you can't" -- and finally, Stu simply separated himself from the area. Now, he's been building up a small business doing renovations and installations, and his past is exactly where it belongs: passed.

 

My former employers at the BC Electric Railway Company unveiled a strategic plan just over a year ago, called "Moving Forward": a detailed description of the improvements needed to the region's integrated transportation system. It also -- and this is the really important part -- counted the cost. I think about that expression when I think of the guys around The Lord's Rain who are so determined to bust out of the cycle of poverty and addiction -- especially the part about counting the cost. In many ways, the "cost" involves pushing through pain and frustration, and also giving up that notion of free will, at least until they're free enough to have a will.

 

***

I've mentioned this before: there is an amazing amount of creative talent on the Downtown East Side. A fellow named Dale astonished us one night with his guitar-playing. We had a guest worship leader who sang and played the guitar. After the service, Dale came up and shyly asked if he could try the guitar. Sure, she said. We continued cleaning up, and suddenly, there came the familiar riffs from "Taking Care of Business". Dale, it turned out, was a brilliant rock guitarist, and for a few more weeks, our cleanup time was accompanied by his playing. He never played outside that very private situation. We contemplated getting him a guitar, but because he was homeless and his shopping cart would often get stolen, we figured that wouldn't be a good idea.

 

(Dale was one of the inspirations for The Lord's Rain. Before just about every service, he would make a bee-line for the laundry tubs at the back of the Mission and wash himself, drying his hair with a dish cloth. Ironically, he has never taken a shower at The Lord's Rain.)

 

But there are also many brilliant artists -- many of them Native, who draw and paint wonderful images and scenes. So over the next few weeks, we're hoping to tap that talent with a contest: design a logo for The Lord's Rain. This is Pastor Janet's brainchild, and the submission deadline is April 30 -- the 5th anniversary of the opening of The Lord's Rain. A panel of judges will choose the winner, and the winning design will go on letterhead and signage and anything else appropriate. Some great sponsors have donated prizes, too: a home-made birdhouse, courtesy Janet's uncle, a gift certificate to Army and Navy, and a prize pack from the Vancouver Canadians baseball club.

 

By the way, if you'd like to see some examples of this creative talent, check out www.indianartfromtheedge.com -- it's a project by Marylee Stephenson, specifically to promote and sell work by DTES aboriginal artists, many of whom we know personally at The Lord's Rain. I've always thought their work was undervalued, and now, someone is taking steps to fix that.

 

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.