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.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
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.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
More than just showers ...
There are days -- all of them, in fact -- when God reminds me why The Lord's Rain is there.
Yesterday (Tuesday), only a handful of people showed up -- which was just as well, because I didn't have any volunteer help -- and no one took a shower. But we still saw the value of the ministry.
There is a woman who's been coming in for the past six months. Let's call her Tina (which is a good idea, because that's her name). When she first came in, she told me that her son "went to the Lord in March". I had one of those embarrassing moments, when I started to rejoice in his salvation, and then realized that by "went to the Lord" she meant "died". He'd died of a heroin overdose, not long after Tina's father had passed away.
In the time since then -- and she comes in pretty much every time I'm there, Tuesday and Saturday mornings -- Tina has constantly declared God has had His hand on her life. She's been gradually coming off crack, cutting back on smoking, and restoring her relationship with her mother. She also works on a street-and-alley cleanup crew, run by the Bottle Depot down the street.
Like most of the women on the Downtown East Side, Tina used to be attractive. The ravages of the drugs and the tough living she's gone through have taken their toll -- not to mention her teeth. But in less than a year, she's gone from living on the streets and suicidal, to having a place of her own and with a joy an optimism in her life that would amaze people.
Yesterday, she was in a particularly good mood, having come into an additional $20 and, while she'd initially planned to buy a rock of crack cocaine with it, she took a deep breath and phoned her mother instead. Mom was a little "down" because, as it turned out, she had no money for cigarettes. So Tina bought cigarettes with the $20, hopped on a bus and went up to see her. On the DTES, that's a major victory!
But then she opened up about a situation she was trying to deal with. She'd learned that she's eligible to receive the WCB benefits her son would have received but didn't collect. (I don't know anything about WCB regulations, so I don't know how "on the level" this is, but since she wasn't trying to use that promise for collateral, let's go with it for now.) In order to do so, though, she'd have to obtain Ryan's death certificate and get her own documentation to prove she's his mother.
"I'm scared to do that," she said. "That will be the final confirmation for me that he's dead. I don't know if I can handle that closure."
At first, I suggested that she might not be supposed to obtain that money, anyway, considering how God tells us He doesn't dump blessings in our laps all at once, but doles it out as we can handle it (Deut. 7:22). She agreed that it might turn into a temptation, rather than a blessing. Then we talked some more, and she declared -- as she has done often in the past -- that she knows God has something better for her. She recalled how, after Ryan had died, she was ready to end it all, herself, and then she had a dream. Her father -- who was in a wheelchair when he died -- was standing, with his arm around Ryan's shoulders. They were smiling and waving at her. She woke from that dream and determined she was not going to commit suicide.
She also pointed out that her brother, who's been quite well-off and "good with money", has offered to set up a joint bank account where the money can be kept, and which would require both their signatures. He's also talked about socking it away in RRSPs, which would certainly prevent her from spending it on drugs. That puts a different light on things.
So I suggested that -- even leaving out the prospect of obtaining money -- the "closure" represented by obtaining the death certificate would allow her to let go of that part of her past and break through to that "something better". It's a matter of stepping out of the comfort zone -- a vital element in receiving God's promise for us. Tina's comfort zone involved grieving for her son, and the idea of living without that grief is new, different, and a little frightening.
(In the years since my previous marriage broke up, I've been separated from my kids, and that pain has been unbearable. For a long time, I was scared to ask God to take the pain away, because I thought that would mean I'd stopped loving them. It was a major step to spit out the prayer that He would remove it, but you know what? I'm much more confident about the relationship ... and the grief is almost all gone.)
The conversation ended with Tina feeling much better about the idea, and grateful to have had a sounding board. "I don't know anyone else I could tell about this," she said. When I write that ministry on the DTES needs disciples, that's what I'm talking about: sounding boards who can help put problems into perspective -- a smattering of Biblical knowledge helps, so that people realize there's an Absolute Authority, where they can get their guidance.
Once again, The Lord's Rain is in the right place, at the right time -- and it's more than coffee and showers.
Yesterday (Tuesday), only a handful of people showed up -- which was just as well, because I didn't have any volunteer help -- and no one took a shower. But we still saw the value of the ministry.
There is a woman who's been coming in for the past six months. Let's call her Tina (which is a good idea, because that's her name). When she first came in, she told me that her son "went to the Lord in March". I had one of those embarrassing moments, when I started to rejoice in his salvation, and then realized that by "went to the Lord" she meant "died". He'd died of a heroin overdose, not long after Tina's father had passed away.
In the time since then -- and she comes in pretty much every time I'm there, Tuesday and Saturday mornings -- Tina has constantly declared God has had His hand on her life. She's been gradually coming off crack, cutting back on smoking, and restoring her relationship with her mother. She also works on a street-and-alley cleanup crew, run by the Bottle Depot down the street.
Like most of the women on the Downtown East Side, Tina used to be attractive. The ravages of the drugs and the tough living she's gone through have taken their toll -- not to mention her teeth. But in less than a year, she's gone from living on the streets and suicidal, to having a place of her own and with a joy an optimism in her life that would amaze people.
Yesterday, she was in a particularly good mood, having come into an additional $20 and, while she'd initially planned to buy a rock of crack cocaine with it, she took a deep breath and phoned her mother instead. Mom was a little "down" because, as it turned out, she had no money for cigarettes. So Tina bought cigarettes with the $20, hopped on a bus and went up to see her. On the DTES, that's a major victory!
But then she opened up about a situation she was trying to deal with. She'd learned that she's eligible to receive the WCB benefits her son would have received but didn't collect. (I don't know anything about WCB regulations, so I don't know how "on the level" this is, but since she wasn't trying to use that promise for collateral, let's go with it for now.) In order to do so, though, she'd have to obtain Ryan's death certificate and get her own documentation to prove she's his mother.
"I'm scared to do that," she said. "That will be the final confirmation for me that he's dead. I don't know if I can handle that closure."
At first, I suggested that she might not be supposed to obtain that money, anyway, considering how God tells us He doesn't dump blessings in our laps all at once, but doles it out as we can handle it (Deut. 7:22). She agreed that it might turn into a temptation, rather than a blessing. Then we talked some more, and she declared -- as she has done often in the past -- that she knows God has something better for her. She recalled how, after Ryan had died, she was ready to end it all, herself, and then she had a dream. Her father -- who was in a wheelchair when he died -- was standing, with his arm around Ryan's shoulders. They were smiling and waving at her. She woke from that dream and determined she was not going to commit suicide.
She also pointed out that her brother, who's been quite well-off and "good with money", has offered to set up a joint bank account where the money can be kept, and which would require both their signatures. He's also talked about socking it away in RRSPs, which would certainly prevent her from spending it on drugs. That puts a different light on things.
So I suggested that -- even leaving out the prospect of obtaining money -- the "closure" represented by obtaining the death certificate would allow her to let go of that part of her past and break through to that "something better". It's a matter of stepping out of the comfort zone -- a vital element in receiving God's promise for us. Tina's comfort zone involved grieving for her son, and the idea of living without that grief is new, different, and a little frightening.
(In the years since my previous marriage broke up, I've been separated from my kids, and that pain has been unbearable. For a long time, I was scared to ask God to take the pain away, because I thought that would mean I'd stopped loving them. It was a major step to spit out the prayer that He would remove it, but you know what? I'm much more confident about the relationship ... and the grief is almost all gone.)
The conversation ended with Tina feeling much better about the idea, and grateful to have had a sounding board. "I don't know anyone else I could tell about this," she said. When I write that ministry on the DTES needs disciples, that's what I'm talking about: sounding boards who can help put problems into perspective -- a smattering of Biblical knowledge helps, so that people realize there's an Absolute Authority, where they can get their guidance.
Once again, The Lord's Rain is in the right place, at the right time -- and it's more than coffee and showers.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Deuteronomy and The Lord's Rain
Deuteronomy is one of my favorite books in the Bible. It should be required reading for anyone who's going through a tough time, wondering how he or she is ever going to pull through; it inspires one to think back over past crises and remember how God has come through in the past, and declare that He's not going to let them down now.
Deuteronomy (the word means "the second telling") is the last of the five "books of Moses", and consists of a recap of the previous 40 years. Moses, standing at the brink of the Promised Land (which he knows he'll only be allowed to see and not set foot in), reviews for the Israelites all the hardships and trials they'd gone through, all the victories God had given them, all the bad choices they'd made, and all the ways God had pulled them through. He also reminds them of the promise -- the land God had sworn He would give to their forefathers. Fired up with that reminder of His faithfulness in the past, the Israelites are prepared to cross the Jordan into that land.
I was prompted to pull out Deuteronomy early one morning recently and start re-read it, and it was even more impressive, as it goes over the battles in which the enemy seriously outnumbered ... or at least seemed more powerful ... than the Israelites; or had cities that had enormous walls that no one thought could be scaled ... and yet with God in command, the Israelites moved forward.
And why would I be "prompted" to get up at 3 am and read Deuteronomy? It had a lot to do with the headline in an issue of 24 Hours, the daily fishwrap handed out free at SkyTrain stations, which itself was arresting: "Gospel Mission in dire straits".
Having recovered from the near whiplash caused by the double-take (my comedy tends to make Kramer look understated), I realized the headline was referring to Union Gospel Mission -- not us. Regardless, the story was about the decline in donations at UGM, and the underlying theme is that donations are down all over. So, indeed, are they with us at Gospel Mission, which is why a sort-of Deuteronomy is in order at this stage, so we can all be fired-up with faith again.
The best records Barry can find show that Gospel Mission was founded "sometime in the 1920s", and I have seen one reference to the founding year as being 1929. Now at that time, the stretch of Hastings between Cambie (Victory Square) and Main was not the Downtown East Side. It was the central business district of Vancouver, with at least two major department stores (Woodward's and Eaton's), theatres, restaurants, night clubs, law offices, and at least one consulate. Why set up a rescue mission in the midst of such apparent prosperity?
Because God knew what was coming: in 1929, we ran smack into the Great Depression, which, coupled with the Dust Bowl days, landed a lot of guys on skid row -- and the Mission was sorely needed. Then came the Second World War, which may have revitalized the economy, but landed a lot more people in the area -- mainly guys who'd lost limbs or been left shell-shocked or otherwise unable to hold down jobs. And Gospel Mission was still there.
God, therefore, has provided for the Mission through the Depression, a World War, and through succeeding decades, including at least three major recessions. The current financial uncertainty is just the latest challenge. The Mission has remained alive and kicking, ministering the Word and preaching Hope -- the wonderful, intangible hope that comes in Christ.
Just as in 1929 and at succeeding times, people on the Downtown East Side today have been failed by the world's "systems". Their only source of hope is the knowledge that God is able to do what He's said He will do. Hey: we've not only stayed alive and kicking, but expanded this year, totally under the direction, leading and provision of God. God engineered the whole building of The Lord's Rain, providing the vision, the prophecy, the space and -- most importantly -- the people, doing what they can, as much as they can, to make it happen.
The construction has been nothing short of a miracle, and the expansion -- including the new daytime openings on Mondays and Fridays with our newfound sister Teresa -- has come exactly in His time. The Ministry has developed "by little and little", with God meting out the responsibility -- and the blessing -- as He knows we can handle it (that's also in Deuteronomy -- Ch. 7, v. 22).
If God knew what was coming back in 1929 and positioned His people with Gospel Mission on the brink of the Depression, it appears He sees something else looming, that will make the work of Gospel Mission even more crucial. I believe God wants to step up efforts to turn lives around and get as many of those currently on the DTES moving up and moving on so that the soon-to-be-poor will have someplace to come to have their hope and faith restored -- and so these newcomers will also see the example of others who have recently left the area.
Jesus says "the poor ye shall have always" ... but nowhere does He say they have to be the same poor.
Deuteronomy (the word means "the second telling") is the last of the five "books of Moses", and consists of a recap of the previous 40 years. Moses, standing at the brink of the Promised Land (which he knows he'll only be allowed to see and not set foot in), reviews for the Israelites all the hardships and trials they'd gone through, all the victories God had given them, all the bad choices they'd made, and all the ways God had pulled them through. He also reminds them of the promise -- the land God had sworn He would give to their forefathers. Fired up with that reminder of His faithfulness in the past, the Israelites are prepared to cross the Jordan into that land.
I was prompted to pull out Deuteronomy early one morning recently and start re-read it, and it was even more impressive, as it goes over the battles in which the enemy seriously outnumbered ... or at least seemed more powerful ... than the Israelites; or had cities that had enormous walls that no one thought could be scaled ... and yet with God in command, the Israelites moved forward.
And why would I be "prompted" to get up at 3 am and read Deuteronomy? It had a lot to do with the headline in an issue of 24 Hours, the daily fishwrap handed out free at SkyTrain stations, which itself was arresting: "Gospel Mission in dire straits".
Having recovered from the near whiplash caused by the double-take (my comedy tends to make Kramer look understated), I realized the headline was referring to Union Gospel Mission -- not us. Regardless, the story was about the decline in donations at UGM, and the underlying theme is that donations are down all over. So, indeed, are they with us at Gospel Mission, which is why a sort-of Deuteronomy is in order at this stage, so we can all be fired-up with faith again.
The best records Barry can find show that Gospel Mission was founded "sometime in the 1920s", and I have seen one reference to the founding year as being 1929. Now at that time, the stretch of Hastings between Cambie (Victory Square) and Main was not the Downtown East Side. It was the central business district of Vancouver, with at least two major department stores (Woodward's and Eaton's), theatres, restaurants, night clubs, law offices, and at least one consulate. Why set up a rescue mission in the midst of such apparent prosperity?
Because God knew what was coming: in 1929, we ran smack into the Great Depression, which, coupled with the Dust Bowl days, landed a lot of guys on skid row -- and the Mission was sorely needed. Then came the Second World War, which may have revitalized the economy, but landed a lot more people in the area -- mainly guys who'd lost limbs or been left shell-shocked or otherwise unable to hold down jobs. And Gospel Mission was still there.
God, therefore, has provided for the Mission through the Depression, a World War, and through succeeding decades, including at least three major recessions. The current financial uncertainty is just the latest challenge. The Mission has remained alive and kicking, ministering the Word and preaching Hope -- the wonderful, intangible hope that comes in Christ.
Just as in 1929 and at succeeding times, people on the Downtown East Side today have been failed by the world's "systems". Their only source of hope is the knowledge that God is able to do what He's said He will do. Hey: we've not only stayed alive and kicking, but expanded this year, totally under the direction, leading and provision of God. God engineered the whole building of The Lord's Rain, providing the vision, the prophecy, the space and -- most importantly -- the people, doing what they can, as much as they can, to make it happen.
The construction has been nothing short of a miracle, and the expansion -- including the new daytime openings on Mondays and Fridays with our newfound sister Teresa -- has come exactly in His time. The Ministry has developed "by little and little", with God meting out the responsibility -- and the blessing -- as He knows we can handle it (that's also in Deuteronomy -- Ch. 7, v. 22).
If God knew what was coming back in 1929 and positioned His people with Gospel Mission on the brink of the Depression, it appears He sees something else looming, that will make the work of Gospel Mission even more crucial. I believe God wants to step up efforts to turn lives around and get as many of those currently on the DTES moving up and moving on so that the soon-to-be-poor will have someplace to come to have their hope and faith restored -- and so these newcomers will also see the example of others who have recently left the area.
Jesus says "the poor ye shall have always" ... but nowhere does He say they have to be the same poor.
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