Gentrification is not a four-letter word!

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

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





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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You have to wonder why.

"Please Pray for Me"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Mohammed."
 

INNER VOICE: "no kidding ..."
 

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

Hair Days (good & bad), quakes and high IQs

Craig walked in the other morning, looking like something one of my cats had left on the doormat (you don’t want to know). “Morning,” he managed to say.

“Nice‘do’, Craig,” I said. “Want some gel to keep it that way?”

“Took me eight hours to get it to go like this,” he replied.

Indeed, Craig was sporting that pulled-through-a-hedge-backwards look that can only be accomplished by a cheap bed or an expensive stylist. Chances are, some latter-day Vidal Sassoon or Paul da Costa in the gentrifying Downtown East Side has already spotted Greg’s hair and thought, “hmm ...”

===

Debbie, on the other hand, is spending extra time on her hair. I think I’ve mentioned her before: bent double from a severe curvature of the spine, once pretty, but now toothless and weaning herself off heroin through methadone, she still has some self-esteem left – as evidenced by the tattoo on one wrist: “FN 99”, which she says means, “Darn Near 100%”. Or something like that.

Anyway, Debbie is one of a growing group of regulars who come in regularly to make full use of this facility. Danilo already knows her routine and sets it up as soon as she walks in: soap, shampoo, two towels, conditioner ... and gel. (That’s how I knew we had gel for Craig if he wanted it.) Then, after the shower, the blow dryer and a brush, both of which live behind our reception counter. (The brushes and combs are kept in a Barbicide jar, which our friends at Hair Mode in North Vancouver donated (they didn’t ask for the plug, by the way, but I thought it was about time we thanked them); between that and the sit-down shower supplied by Andrew Sheret when we built the place, Debbie is able to do the washing-up she needs.)

===

“You got a phone? I need to call my mom to see if she’s OK.”

Almost overshadowed by the unbelievable destruction of Sandy along the Atlantic Coast was the fact that a couple of days before, there had been a major earthquake in Haida Gwaii – formerly the Queen Charlotte Islands – off the north coast of BC. It registered 7.7. The one asking for a phone was Darrell, a native man whose home town and family are in Haida Gwaii, and just a couple of weeks ago, he was telling me that there is never a day when there isn’t an earthquake there. So beyond the media reporting – which may well have been affected by the fact that it happened on a Saturday night, there was no NHL hockey to report on and a tsunami warning was attached – a good measure of the quake, I figured, would be Darrell’s attitude.

We don’t have a public phone, but I handed him my BlackBerry. If it was causing Darrell concern, it had to be serious. As it turned out, his mother was pretty shaken up by the event, and they had just had a major after-shock. That's why the phone call was so important: it’s not as if Darrell could just zip over and see her in person: it’s a 7-hour ferry ride from Prince Rupert to Skidegate – cost $35 if you’re a walk-on passenger – and of course, you have to get to Rupert in the first place– in the neighbourhood of $250 on Greyhound. It’s amazing how you can be so separated and still be in the same province.

===

“So tell me,” the bus driver said, “what’s the education level like there?” Being one of the front-of-camera spokespeople for the BC Electric Railway Company, which has supported my ministry habit for going on seven years now, front line staff tend to recognize me and strike up conversations. This transit operator (to use the correct industry term) was curious as to why I had been turning up on his #19 bus at 6:20am lately.

“Actually,”I replied, “there are some pretty darn intelligent people there.”

“You know, I’m not surprised,” he said. “You just never know, do you? Something goes wrong ...”

True, that. The email I passed around on Friday, appealing for cold-weather items to be donated to the Vancouver Police horse patrol for the men living in Stanley Park, reminded me of that fact. I’ve known a couple of the guys in the park – 21^st-Century hobos, in fact, living their lives, trying not to have to rely on The Man to get by; if it means kipping in a hollow tree or with a tarp hung between a couple of branches, so be it. We had a fellow who used to come into The Lord’s Rain regularly, bringing his back pack. He might shower-up or just sit and have a coffee and chat, then hike back to Stanley Park and vanish. He was on a “quest” – mainly to find his head again: he never actually told us what had happened. He eventually did, moved back to Winnipeg and when last heard from, he was working with at-risk youth in the Even Windier City.

As the bus driver noted, many of “the guys” are remarkably well-read. A lot of them know their Scripture and some of their questions and insights are amazing. I think I’ve mentioned Guy before: a fellow who came into the old Rainbow Mission and who laid an alternative interpretation of the story of the “Rich Young Ruler” on me that blew my socks off. I was just launching into the standard commentary about choosing the things of the world over eternal life with Jesus, and Guy piped up from the back and said, “what if he was sad because he had so many things he didn’t think he could ever get rid of them all?” I’ve never thought of that passage the same way again.

There’s Ron, who spends his days pushing a cart around the back alleys, gleaning whatever he can and often fixing things up and then selling them to second-hand shops, but is a voracious reader. He invariably has his nose in a book, even during the services at Gospel Mission upstairs. But that doesn’t worry me and I’ve never considered it rude: both Amelia and I can tell that he’s listening to the service and often, he too will come over and share some very poignant observation from Scripture. Mario is another who has often asked questions about Scripture that have sent me scrambling to the prayer closet to ask the Lord about it.

Ron still has all his marbles. Len, on the other hand, drifts in and out of coherence. He is – or was – a Professional Engineer, and still puts “P.Eng.”after his name, and spends a lot of time writing things on 3”x5” slips of paper and occasionally pins them up on the cork board. His sentences are usually well-constructed, except the actual words have absolutely no connection to one another.

Case in point: we had a brief hailstorm a couple of weeks ago, but when I called it “hail”,Len corrected me and said they were “ice pellets”.

“What’s the diff?” I asked.

There was a long pause, while Len tried to concentrate. “I’ll ... I’ll let you know.”

A few minutes later, he handed Danilo a slip of paper to hand to me.

CHANGE IN BAROMETRIC PRESSURE BY ICE PELLETS AFFECTS THE SYR OPS.

“Huh?”I said. At first, I thought it was a conspiracy-theory reference – he’s fond of those.

“You know,” he said, “air pressure changes and the sy rops move differently in the tree.”

“Oh– syrup!” I said. “Got it,” I lied. (I considered saying I felt like a sap but thought better of it.)

And yet it’s not as if Len is totally out of touch. A couple of years ago, a guy we’d never seen before got angry because I wouldn’t give him more than the two pastries we allot to each person. The long and short of it was, he cursed a blue streak; I kept my cool (something I'm not accustomed to doing), looked him square in the eye and calmly told him that if he didn’t like our rules, there was a great big city out there where I was sure he could find another free coffee, he kicked the reception desk, threw his cup of coffee at me (missed) and stormed out. John immediately started praying for him.

The place had gone quiet, as the others watched to see how this would be handled. A few minutes later, Len handed me one of his slips of paper.

“GRACE AND FORGIVENESS – NOW ON DISPLAY AT THE LORD’S RAIN”

===

You've probably noted the common theme this time has been the older guys. They can break my heart -- possibly because I'm a middle-aged guy, myself, and there's a lot of commonality among us. These guys have had jobs, lived a long time, and have made one or two mistakes that were handled ... well ... differently. Sure, it's easy to say, "they brought it on themselves" -- except, well, aren't we all just one slip-up away from being in the same boat? Are the mistakes I've made along the road from there to here any "better" than theirs?

But as the bus driver said, you never know what might cause them to throw a piston and wind up on the DTES. Are they too smart for their own good? Is it like Jackson Browne’s lyric, “Was I unwise to leave [my eyes] open for so long?” The really sad part is when they themselves say, "I brought it on myself," and that's when they need someone to tell them that God has long since forgiven them, even if they haven't, and has provided a Way for them to break away from the shackles of the past. They need to know that trouble is only temporary, so do not adjust your faith. That's particularly important at a time of life when "temporary" can look more and more like "constant".

God has His reasons for things, and we need to keep asking Him what He's up to. I've had "someones" like that in my own life, telling me those things, and I'm sure you have, too.

We have to get on with our job and work while it’s still the daytime: help those as much as we can and underscore it all with Hope. Sometimes, knowing that there is a turnaround available is enough of a turnaround, right there.

Another farewell to a friend ...

He was a frequent sight on the Downtown East Side. Very short grey hair, a pot belly, shambling walk, usually two or three days' stubble; and invariably wearing some article of clothing that proclaimed, "JESUS IS LORD". Usually, the clothing in question was a yellow puffy vest, with a large Cross drawn on the back in felt marker. Sometimes, it would be a sweatshirt or a ball cap, but the message, if you thought long enough about it, was unwavering: "no matter what I look like to you, Jesus is what it's all about". Barry Babcook, our senior pastor, has been at Gospel Mission for 17 years and Clifford "Barry" Smith had been there since long before that.
 

Barry Smith died last Friday. He had a number of health issues, but his heart got to him first: suffered a heart attack a couple of weeks ago and drifted in and out of consciousness at St Paul's Hospital until late Friday night, when God said, "come on home".
 

The fact that he loved the Lord, loved to worship and share his faith was unmistakable. I remember he would often be the only one in the congregation who would stand during Worship time at our Saturday night services, sometimes just raising his arms with his eyes closed; other times mouthing the words.
 

He could be seen around Oppenheimer Park, praying for people specifically or in general, or for the area as a whole. He was one of those guys who could cite book, chapter, and verse of the Bible, which frustrated the heck out of me, since there are times when I think I have to look up Genesis 1:1. He would get into, shall we say, lively discussions of Scripture, either in the weekly Bible studies or sitting around the table in The Lord's Rain, going over some interpretation with Ross or old Joe Trepanier, none of whom was likely to give an inch when it came to their interpretation.
 

He was something of an enigma: cranky at times -- perfectly understandable, given his health issues -- other times, coming out with an out-of-left-field compliment or a bright word and a laugh. He was a loner and had no family that we knew of -- a fact that was driven home when Janet had to put herself on the hospital documents as "next of kin" -- and when you get down to it, the people in the missions on the DTES were his family, fractious and fluid as that might be at times.
 

He'll be missed a lot. He was someone who was just... there. And now he's not. But this I'm sure of: that like the beggar Lazarus, he's now in Abraham's arms; the sickness is gone, the pain and loneliness are over, and he's doing what he's always loved to do: praise the Lord.

 

Unity Happens

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And there, friends, is Exhibit D.

Dear Tina, Wish you were here.

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

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

"Hiya, handsome!"

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

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

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

Tina died on Tuesday.

That was it.

Pfft.

Gone.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

===

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

"So what happened?"

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

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

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

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

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

Health care, timing and a room full of Higgs bosons

I'm constantly amazed at the good that one finds on the Downtown East Side.

That shouldn't be a surprise to you, I suppose, since we do talk a lot about the positive things we see in that part of town; but I still marvel.

Case in point: Wednesday morning, a woman came in in very bad shape. She was drunk, she was feeling ill, she wanted someone to call an ambulance to take her to hospital. And she was pregnant. Rhonda is her name. I had been upstairs, making sandwiches, and Danilo pointed her out to me. She was leaning against one of the pillars outside. I went out to talk to her and pray over her until the ambulance arrived. It didn't take long.

The paramedic came out to get her. "I'm the ambulance guy," he said. "Do you need to go to the hospital?" Rhonda nodded. "I'm drunk and I'm pregnant," she said, "and I'm sick." She climbed into the ambulance on her own. "Anything else to add?" the "ambulance guy" asked us. Danilo shook his head. "She says she's missing her son," I added. "You mean she can't find him or she's just lonely?" The assumption was that this was a child who had been taken from her by Social Services. "How old is he?" the ambulance guy asked her. "26." "Oh. Lonely, then."

Lonely, in a city of over 2 million.

As the Psalms say, "selah". (Pause and think about it.)

The ambulance guy talked to Rhonda quietly and with immense kindness. She would likely be taken to St Paul's Hospital, which is the nearest facility to the DTES. Since it's also in the West End, where I live, I've found myself in the emergency ward a few times, too, and have seen their dealings with "street people". They'll treat patients who are drunk or drug-sick, but let them know, in varying degrees of severity, that they can't expect to get treatment when they keep doing it to themselves. Rhonda will likely get a stern rebuke from the nursing staff -- but she'll still get treatment.

I was reminded of Lesley, a woman who was having a "drug episode" just over a year ago and we needed to call an ambulance for her. By the time it arrived, though, she had second thoughts about going and the ambulance guy and I had to convince her to get aboard. I said to the paramedic as he was about to leave, "I'd hate to think what would happen if someone had a heart attack or there was a bad traffic accident or something." "If there was," he said, "another car would handle it. This is what we do."

(Don't misunderstand: I've often seen the tough-guy side of paramedics, like the time they refused to transport a fellow who was smashed and rude and abusive inside one of the local "pharmacies" (basically a methadone dispensary). That would be the incident that gets reported to DTES "activists" as an example of the harsh treatment locals get from The Man. The dozens of times each day they go to help someone, regardless of the cause or circumstance, often go unreported.)

Almost overlooked in this is the fact that The Lord's Rain was one door that was open at a time when she needed it -- and other places might not have been open for business. Again, right place - right time.

===
Richard, one of our favorites, is currently in St Paul's. He had been walking home when he started to feel weak and get a deep pain in his back. So he sat down on a bench until the pain went away and then he got up again. But he felt dizzy and sat down on the sidewalk. A friend from the same SRO (single-room occupancy) came by, saw him and called an ambulance.

Turned out, Richard had some sort of infection that had gotten into his vertebrae. He's been in the hospital for the past three weeks now (I only learned about it two weeks ago -- communication can be one of the hardest things on the Downtown East Side: people can go for weeks without being seen and then turn up as if nothing had happened; sometimes, they like it that way), receiving antibiotics and getting his strength back (he's in his mid-60s). He's also bored out of his tree and spends a lot of time reading sci-fi and westerns.

And Richard is getting good care, which is a real blessing. But it occurred to me, what if he had had to pay for his health care, or if he even balked at going to hospital because he might not be able to afford it? His is certainly not a case where he "brought it on himself". I'm gratified for a health-care system that wouldn't turn people away for lack of funds. (It might be tempting for a Canadian to draw a comparison with the US system, but Reggie Stutzman -- former pastor at the Bowery Mission in New York and now heading-up Real Life Church in the Bronx -- tells me Richard likely wouldn't have been turned away in the States, either.)

===

So a Higgs boson walks into a Catholic church, and the priest says, "we don't allow your type in here". And the Higgs boson says to the priest, "but without me, you cannot have mass."
-- don't boo me, that wasn't my joke (Milton Berle)

As it has been in scientific circles, pool halls and executive suites at ballparks, I'm sure, the discovery of the Higgs boson -- the so-called "God particle", because it's supposedly the catalyst that creates matter (or something) -- was a topic of hot discussion at The Lord's Rain. The discussion went something like this:

ONE GUY -- Hey: didja see they discovered the God particle?
OTHER GUY -- Yeah! Hey - ya know what? You're a "God particle"!
FIRST GUY -- Yeah! And so are you!
OTHER GUY -- And so's he (me)! And so's she ... and him ...

Within about 3 minutes, it was declared that all of us in The Lord's Rain -- and everyone we'd meet outside -- was a "particle of God".

And we all went about our business.

Bravo for perspective.