Pray one for another ...

The developing theme in the messages in my Saturday night services at Gospel Mission is based on James 5, and the passage that begins, "confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed". The idea is that the people we serve -- "street people", "downtowneastsiders", whatever you want to call them -- are just as qualified to witness to and minister to others as any preacher. That's what Jesus' Ministry was primarily about: bringing God home to people (and vice versa) with His Son as the connection (and only connection, I might add). The Lord's half-brother is telling us that when we sit face-to-face and talk out our issues and pray together not for validation but to be healed of those issues, Jesus is with us to support us. It's important, too, to talk out those issues with people with whom we have a common experience.

This morning at The Lord's Rain, we saw some of that in action. Cherie is a young(ish) woman who's been a fixture on the DTES for quite a few years. Achingly pretty, and when she smiles, you want to bottle whatever it was that made her smile and give it to her to inhale whenever she can. She doesn't smile much. Indeed, there are times when she snarls at everybody and everything and is someone who, when I see her approaching, makes me either cringe or cry.

There's a line in one of our songs, "Daddy's little princess/pokin' her arm/she was a beauty once, they say": I thinks of Cherie when I think of that line.

Anyway, Cherie came in this morning, quite obviously whacked-out on drugs: barely able to stand, much less hold a cup of coffee. She had that peculiar gait that you see in people on drugs: their centre of gravity manages to stay put, but their knees bend slowly, and they rock back and forth - never quite falling, but not someone you'd let hang onto the Royal Doulton. She needed fresh clothes, and I was able to rustle up some new underwear and a pair of women's jeans that came in recently.

I've mentioned Shannon before: a 30-something woman who comes in with her husband. Both are weaning themselves off a variety of drugs, and she's one of the very few women I've met who's actually told me -- in a very matter-of-fact way -- that she had been a prostitute to support the drug habit.*

It wasn't just drugs that were Cherie's problem this morning. She also had a black eye. She told me she'd been beaten by two guys last night over $10. She was trying to eat as she told me, but her jaw still hurt and it was hard. Evidently, this girl needed to wash up and change. Shannon was outside, so I went and got her.

Shannon has been helping out at The Lord's Rain for a few months now, often just by sitting and listening to people and talking to them. "Confess your faults, one to another," right? She came in and sat with Cherie for a few minutes, then took her into one of the shower stalls. Shannon came out a few minutes later, fuming. "She's a working girl, eh? What makes guys think that just because a woman's a prostitute they can just beat on her?"

There's no constructive answer to that. 15 minutes later, Cherie came out in her fresh clothes, blow-dried her hair ... and smiled.

It was a morning where I saw James 5 at work: Shannon -- who certainly has her "stuff" together more than Cherie does -- talking to her, encouraging her, helping her with both the spirit and the physical need of getting her into the shower and getting her changed, and giving her hope.

Hope. That's the smile inducer Cherie needs, and it can't be kept in a bottle. Instead, it needs to flow in a constant stream -- from God, through Jesus and then through each of us, as we build one another up.

Just like James says.



=========
*I gag when I hear the expression "survival sex trade". It sounds so legitimate, doesn't it? Doesn't anyone realize what an indictment that is on our society? I remember an anecdote about New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, who would in his role as Chief Magistrate for the city, preside over Magistrate's Court one day a month. One day, a man was brought before him who was charged with stealing bread. The man told him he was unemployed and unable to feed his family. LaGuardia accepted the guilty plea and fined him $50. Then he suspended the sentence, and fined everyone else in the courtroom $1 for living in a city where a man had to steal to feed his family and ordered the sergeant-at-arms to pass the hat, starting with himself. He then turned the money over to the man. LaGuardia could have stopped at suspending the sentence and called it something like "survival larceny", but he made the others present -- and those of us now, three generations later -- stop and think about where we are in this mess.

Letting go after 20 years ...

I realized this past week that it was 20 years ago that I got a chilling phone call. It was from the mother of a friend of mine, Peter Hegan. Pete and I had been friends since childhood -- had played together and, as we got older, jammed together with him on guitar and me on piano. We wrote songs together -- or actually, worked on each other's songs, bringing new dimensions to each other's material. He was quite a good poet, with a Biblical background: mine tended to be love-struck pop-flavoured mush, but it was all part of the growing up experience.

Probably the most important thing about my friendship with Pete was that most of the world had long since dismissed him as a waste of skin. He had been adopted as a baby, and for whatever reason never did fit in with anybody. He was smoking cigarettes by age 8, and while I had been on a one-child campaign to wipe out smoking in our lifetime (starting with my parents) and basically wanted nothing to with anyone who smoked, I still hung around with Pete.

He failed a couple of grades -- something he wore almost as a badge of honor -- and, since being a misfit was his main claim to fame, cultivated that sort-of outlaw image. Pete's salvation, it turned out, was Salvation. Around 7th grade, he dropped out of sight, and re-emerged around 9th or 10th grade as a completely different person. He had gone to some kind of juvenile rehab camp and then, he told me, "I woke up one morning and said, 'Pete, you are one f**ked-up kid!'". He immersed himself in two things: the Bible and his guitar.

Musical talent was something he had going for him. He quickly outgrew his local guitar teachers, and having spent some time driving cab and working in the bush ("ya gotta come loggin', Drew! Money's good, and you can buy an electric piano so we can play gigs together!"), he headed off to California to study guitar with the legendary Vicente Gomez.

"I walk in there, and the first thing I say is, 'hiya, Vince!'. Jeez! He nearly threw me out right there! From then on, it was 'Professor Gomez'!"

I noted that it was one of the first times I'd ever seen him show respect to anyone.

We had this cool idea. We'd come out for a show. I'd sit at the piano, and then he'd come out in his plaid work shirt, battered jeans and cork boots, with his 1957 Fender Stratocaster ... then sit down and blast out this Bach sonatina on the guitar ... then rip into some Chuck Berry.

Of course, that never happened, but it was fun thinking about it. Indeed, we never did play a gig together: the only time I ever recorded anything of his was ...

just about 20 years ago ...

Our on-and-off friendship continued as we both wound up in Victoria in the late 80s, but between his business and my work, we hardly ever got together. Getting together to jam became one of those "one of these days" things. His business went under. He seemed to get his head together and find companionship with a motorcycle club that consisted mainly of older people who just wanted to head out on the highway. It looked like he was going to come through this crisis OK.

And then came the phone call.

"Drew, it's Shirley," his mom said. "Peter committed suicide last night."

I'll spare you the details.

Shirley paid for a recording session so I could lay down some of the songs Pete and I had written over the years. My friend Patrick sat in on bass and a session guy filled in on an electronic drum kit; significantly, there was no guitar track. I was able to find a tape Pete had recorded, and we mixed that in with one of his songs. We scattered his ashes around a Douglas fir in Mount Douglas Park and every so often I'd go back and visit the spot -- finding where some of his ashes were still visible.

Unlike George Harrison's rush to the studio after John Lennon was murdered, it took Elton John a few years to come up with "Empty Garden", which is one of my two favorite songs of EJ's ("I Feel Like A Bullet" is the other). Similarly, a "song for Pete" took the better part of two decades to come together.

It started with a riff ... and the lyrics at first sounded like another lost-love piece of tripe: "I can't say that's the way that I thought you would end it/But as they say, that's the way of the world".

Then the lyrics started morphing into something about suicide, and I realized that this was the "song for Pete" ... I titled it, "To Whom It May Concern ..." A little blue-eyed reggae, if you can imagine that ...

During Worship at Gospel Mission on Saturday night, I threw it in -- both as a message to others and a tribute to Peter. I told the guys it was a bit of "self-indulgence", but doggone it, some were reading the lyrics and trying to sing along, anyway ... and as it cross-faded into "Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus", I heard the Lord say, "you can let him go now".

And a couple of songs later, I heard Him say something else. "Peter's life is not wasted. He encouraged you, influenced you -- and turned you onto Me as Salvation for anyone. This whole Worship service is his legacy."

At last, I've let him go ... not grieving any more, so much as revelling in the myriad ways we influence one another. As Shakespeare's Mark Antony said, "the good [men do] is oft interred with their bones". Pete's music was the exception to that rule; let's work to make sure that our lives are, too.

There's no way you can say it's what the Father intended

Life is His, all alone, to give and return

There's no way you can say that I thought you would end it

But as they say, that's the way of the world.

"That guy positively GLOWED!"

Confess your faults, one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual, fervent prayer of the righteous man availeth much.

-- James 5:16

In sermons both at Gospel Mission and at Westpointe Christian Centre, where I have fellowship on Sundays, the recurring theme has been evangelism and the necessity to pray for others. The words of Jesus' brother (well, half-brother, anyway) are key: we have to go to one another and humble ourselves to recognize our own faults, speak them out and pray for healing; doing so in agreement because Jesus promises that if two or more are gathered in His Name, He'll be there with us. Calling Jesus into the situation guarantees the healing that we need.

One of the interesting things about The Lord's Rain is that, being a street-level outreach without overt preaching, people come in who wouldn't ordinarily set foot in a church. But since it's impossible to hide the light of Christ under a bushel, many of these people also have a measure of faith in God and Jesus Christ, but for one reason or another, are more comfortable talking about it in the less "formal" setting of The Lord's Rain.

Saturday morning, a man came in whom I hadn't seen before. He needed to talk, and so we did: he'd fallen back into a crack habit after being clean for six years, and was trying to pull out. "I haven't used in six hours now," he said, "but I don't know if I can make it. I'm starting to think thoughts that are not me. I'm thinking of hurting someone ... or robbing a bank ... that's not me, man!"

He had been a Baptist youth pastor in years gone by. He explained that, in his recent fall, he'd burned all his bridges with others in the world -- or so he thought. So we prayed together for healing, for answers, for clear direction. It was obvious that he needed to get into detox and rehab ... and fast.

We called Triage, which is a first-level social service group, and since they usually have no beds (one of the earliest entries after the opening of The Lord's Rain tells you something about their lack of space but abundance of compassion), we prayed over the phone call and asked God for favor. This time, they actually had a bed for Terry, so he hustled off to Triage -- and new hope.

Yesterday (Wednesday), he called me to say he had been accepted for Union Gospel Mission's six-month rehab program, and so we keep praying for God's grace and mercy -- and strength. A true desire to be clean, and knowing where to turn to get that strength (recognizing that we humans are hopelessly feeble creatures without Him), is rewarded -- and so is the perseverance that comes with going into a recovery program knowing it's going to be a long haul, not a quick fix.

Then there was Nelson. Nelson has been in before -- totally wrecked on something (probably heroin) -- and he was in no better shape when he came in on Tuesday morning. He spent much of his time slumped over one of the sinks, washing his hands, his face, his hair, over and over again. A shrink would probably have a field day with that imagery. At one point, he fell into a state of incoherent muttering, and then -- as often happens -- would snap back into reality when one of us spoke to him. As I was preparing to leave to go to the office, Shannon, another street person who's been volunteering with us, asked if I would pray over her, especially in light of some trials she's going through with her son (who's 19 and also drug-addicted). I did, and after that was done, Nelson was standing there, looking at us.

"Would you pray for me, too?" he asked.

I laid hands on him and prayed for him: prayed for healing -- the kind of healing God gives, when He reaches past the outward symptoms -- like drug addiction, poverty and loneliness -- and gets to the very root, yanking it out so we can see it, name it and cover it with the blood of Jesus. We all need the courage to face one of our peers and confess our faults, so they can come out into the open and we can hear ourselves talk about them ... and then pray for that healing, as James writes. The prayer over Nelson was for that courage so he can have the breakthrough God wants for him.

The prayer finished. Nelson looked at me and smiled. "Thank you," he said, and left.

"Did you see that?" Shannon said. "He positively GLOWED when you prayed over him!"

"That's God at work," I told her.

We need people willing simply to pray over others in the Downtown East Side. Prayer doesn't cost money ... and doesn't take a holier-than-thou man (or woman) of God: just a willingness to listen and love and see and build on even the slightest improvement in someone's life. Like Terry, fervently desiring to be clean. Or Nelson, positively glowing.

Protest notes and dischords ...

Ever since the riot on Georgia Street on the first Saturday morning of the Olympics, the media have been playing up signs of a "rift" within the protest movement that's been around ever since Vancouver started preparing its bid all those years ago. Certainly, it was a master-stroke of messaging by Vancouver Police, to declare that the trouble was caused by a criminal element, burying itself within the ranks of legitimate, peaceful protesters. But then there came criticism from within the movement itself, breaking a sort of omerta, according to the media reports.


If one of the Olympic "legacies" is for the "social justice" advocates to re-examine not just their tactics but the raison d’être of these protests, this may have been somewhat worthwhile. Driving past the tent city on Hastings Street this morning, I was struck by the multiplicity of causes: homelessness, the war in Afghanistan, poverty in general, native rights, violence against women; there was even a poster saying, "HARPER + (Olympic rings) = (swastika)".


So the questions go like this:

• What do you really want?
• How are the Olympics responsible for these problems?
• What does "success" look like?
• Why do you think this will accomplish that?
• After all these years, maybe it's time to change tactics?
• Where are you when the Olympics are not an issue?
• What are you, yourselves, doing to alleviate the situation? (and don't say, "I'm protesting" or "I'm staging a sit-in to draw attention to ...")

See, the causes these people claim to espouse are generally worthy ones (with the possible exception of the Harper/swastika poster -- what if the PM's kids saw that?*), but as such, the solutions require discussion and dialogue, not slogans that polarize factions.

My daughter, who turns 18 in a couple of weeks, gave what's become the stock position: "all this money being spent should be going to the homeless".

But would it? As Vancouver Councillor Geoff Meggs pointed out in an interview just before the Olympics, millions of dollars are already being spent on the Downtown East Side, much of it on social housing. I personally know of three people who've benefited from that. But there are still problems. The fact is, the money being spent would not have gone towards housing: it would have gone towards something else where people think they can make a buck. And look at all the people who have been given jobs and been able to feed their families because of the Olympics. And look at the infrastructure projects -- many of which are transportation-related and will help reduce dependency on private automobiles (need I point out that you will likely find many of these same protesters taking part in the "Critical Mass" bike rides?).

The biggest problem I see with the protesters here is the lack of cohesiveness. The image they're projecting is that of a bunch of people with a mad-on against the world in general. They may see social injustice and want something to be done about it, but when the rubber meets the road, it's always up to somebody else to fix it.

True activism is to roll up your sleeves and do something yourself -- and I don't mean march in demonstrations. Encourage people who are struggling with life. Comfort people who are grieving. Re-examine your approach. Look for open dialogue with decision-makers to decide on solutions and with people who can contribute resources to make the solution happen. Here's another way of putting it: "... visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and keep [yourself] unspotted from the world." Translation: you have a responsibility to do something constructive to help others -- and don't fall into the world's way of doing things, which can often be to rely on money, power and everybody else to do the right thing.

And where does that wisdom come from? The Epistle of James, part of the Bible ... which has never been more relevant than it is today. And do it quietly, without drawing attention to yourself, because your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you openly (Matt. 6:4), with the satisfaction of success. That is what you want, isn't it?

I, by the way, happen to be enjoying the Olympics immensely. We went to the victory ceremonies this past Sunday, when the entertainment was provided by Trooper and Loverboy. Who among us does not know Trooper's signature song, "Raise A Little Hell", which, aside from being a great way to rev up the crowd at a basketball game, is also encouragement for social activism.

But I got to thinking about that: since, as Paul writes, "we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places" (Eph. 6:12), do we want to raise a little hell; or is it more effective to call down a lot of Heaven?

=========

*Actually, the statements of some of the lead protesters in the group have led me to believe that that question is a non-starter. They've already shown they have no conscience about the impact of their words and deeds on innocent people.

UBC Hoops Gives Assist to Gospel Mission (blatant plug)

UBC's men's and women's basketball teams will be giving a needed boost to Gospel Mission this Saturday, February 6th, with a "fun-raising" event for the Mission.

The Mission is selling tickets to the games against the University of Victoria, and half of the proceeds from those sales will go to the Mission. More importantly, the evening will help raise awareness of the Downtown East Side and encourage students to consider ways that they can make a difference in that troubled part of town. The women's game is at 6pm; the #1-ranked men tip off at 8. The games are entertaining and great family fun.

Tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for seniors and students from age 7 to the end of high school. To purchase tickets, please contact Ass't Pastor Drew Snider by email: drewsnider@gospelmission.net.

Today's Riddle ...

Vancouver City Council has just voted to allow Mixed Martial Arts events in the city.

Last night, one of our elders at Gospel Mission was mugged: beaten and robbed of $40. We are praying for Bill's quick recovery, that the money will be restored to him and then some, and that the people who did it to him are forgiven and will be brought to repentance.

But here's the riddle: why is one form of people bashing people legal and the other not?

And here's another: are the people cheering the Council decision the same ones who would be outraged at the revelations of animal cruelty at a Wild Animal Park? Or those who nod sagely at the large adverts on buses telling us to buy free-range eggs because cages are cruel to chickens?

Sports Illustrated has, or used to have, a whimsical little section titled, "This Week's Sign That The Apocalypse Is Upon Us".

I think I have a suggestion for this week.

Pigeon Park - back open again!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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