THE LORD'S RAIN -- a review

Every so often, it's a good idea to take a step back and review where one is and how one got there. (About a year ago, I preached a sermon called, "It Seemed Like A Bad Idea At The Time," which involved reviewing the things that have "gone wrong" in one's life and realizing that "good" stuff that has happened was actually a result of the "bad" stuff.) With The Lord's Rain, it's important to look back over its history to remind ourselves how God has mandated the project and brought it through all sorts of challenges.

The Lord's Rain is a project we undertook at Gospel Mission in the Fall of 2007, to provide showers to people on Vancouver's Downtown East Side. The whole project has truly been a move of God, with beginnings in a prophecy spoken over our senior Pastor, Barry Babcook, some years back and another spoken over me in September 2007. The word spoken over Barry was that Gospel Mission would expand its influence, reaching out to people on the street; the word over me was that God would start providing me with new ways of reaching people -- and that He would send me on a journey.

The man who spoke the prophecy, Lee Grady, had no earthly way of knowing that I was about to leave on a trip to New York 2 weeks later. That certainly got my attention and opened my mind to these "new ways" while on the trip. I looked in at the Bowery Mission and saw that they have a program to provide showers to people, and I'd been thinking about how the street people could get clean. But we had no place to build showers at the Mission, so it seemed to be just A Neat Idea.

Then we learned that the group which had occupied one of the two ground-floor spaces in our building (Gospel Mission is on the second floor of an old 2-storey walkup) had moved out because they couldn't afford the rent. So Barry asked the landlord if he could give us two weeks to come up with a plan for building and funding the project. He said "yes".

That was really the first sign that God wanted this to go ahead. The landlord is a businessman, and apparently he had at least one prospective renter. But he was willing to put that on hold to give us a chance.

We had $0.00 in the bank for this, so I had to start from square one with the fundraising. I wrote to a prominent Christian businessman, asking if he'd underwrite the project. We were turned down flat. I sent an email to anyone I could think of in my Christian circle of friends and acquaintances. Nada. My home church sent an email to its members.

Two days before the deadline, we had maybe $150 per month in pledges. We estimated that we needed $1500. Then came two phone calls, totalling $4000 in cash. We met the landlord the Saturday, and picked up the keys.

Then the media found out about it and started giving the project exposure. More people started contributing and others stepped forward with offers of help. My former church in Duncan, which has a lot of tradespeople in its congregation, put together a work party, which made three trips to Vancouver to build the sub-floor and frames. As Barry and I discussed where we'd actually get the showers, the Lord spoke to me, "Andrew Sheret".

Andrew Sheret is a bath and plumbing supply company, and in 1992, I MC'd their 100th anniversary dinner at the Empress Hotel in Victoria. I hadn't had any contact with them since, but it was worth a shot. I emailed the president, asking if they could give us a discount on the supplies we needed. He emailed back, saying, essentially "we'll give them to you".

Another sign that the Lord was going to see this through no matter what: the miracle that happened when I made a costly mistake. I thought I'd locked the door to the jobsite, but it turned out I hadn't, and someone walked in and helped himself to some plumbing tools. After beating myself up for a few hours, the Lord told me to do what I do best: write a news release. "People who put their money and time into this have to know that this isn't going to stop it," He said.

Two TV stations picked up on the news release -- which was an upbeat release, stating that we're still going ahead, despite the setback. One of the reporters, CTV's Peter Grainger, very carefully did not turn it into a "whine" festival. Rather, he focused on the vision of the showers project, and only mentioned the theft as almost an afterthought. Then, Pamela Martin picked up on the theft and suggested it'd be nice if people could help replace the tools.

The next day, the phone rang at my home. It was a businessman who didn't want his name used, and whom the Lord had told to help out. I met him at his office and he planked down a roll of bills. "You think $8000 would help?"

There's a passage in the Book of Isaiah, which says, "the Lord of Hosts hath purposed it, and who shall disannul it?" In other words, if God decides something is going to happen, nothing will stop it. The success of The Lord's Rain begins with God's determination that it's what the area needs. It's also due to the fact that it's been conceived, funded, built and supplied by a variety of people bringing their own gifts to the table. It's not the work of a large organization or a single contributor: it's people who care about what's going on in their own city, and want to help in whatever way they can.

The project finally opened its doors April 30, 2008, and to this date, some 9,000 showers have been taken. The place is open 5 early mornings a week (one of those mornings is for women only), plus one midday, and on Sundays, people with disabilities can take part in the Gospel Mission services upstairs via closed-circuit TV.  

The Lord's Rain has been about more than hot water, soap and towels, too. It quickly became a place where people could come for fellowship, free coffee, and a place to escape from the street where they can talk with people who don't judge them. We soft-pedalled the connection with the church upstairs for a while, but it was clear that you couldn't hide that Light under a bushel. People who would never come into a church, would come in and start asking about the Bible, or asking for prayer. Some have started coming to the Gospel Mission services. 

One thing that's become apparent is that people "on the outside" want to support The Lord's Rain. There's so much negative publicity about the Downtown East Side: people see that there's poverty and despair, but they also see and hear activists making wild demands, protesting, occupying private property and essentially trying to shame governments into action -- pointing out there's a problem but demanding that someone else fix it -- with little tangible result. Over and over again, though, we've seen that when people hear about The Lord's Rain and see a project that is more of a hand-up than a hand-out, they get behind it.

We really saw that in the spring of 2013, when funds dried up and it was becoming likely that we'd have to close The Lord's Rain. A reporter with Metro Newspaper -- the free daily paper handed out on the public transit system -- wrote a story, and within a week, enough funds came in to keep the place open for the foreseeable future. Two Foundations stepped up -- one, The 625 Powell Street Foundation -- guaranteed the budget for at least a year (and still hasn't stopped with the support), and the other, The R. Howard Webster Foundation, issued a fund-matching challenge, which led to over $27,000.00 coming in.

I believe it's all an indication that God wants more for His people than feeding programs and emergency shelters: Hope. If they don't have Hope, why should they take the steps needed to get treatment and turn away from the street life?

Where do they find that Hope?  

Jesus tells us that the signs of His presence are: the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk, and the poor have the Gospel preached to them. (Matthew 11:5, Luke 7:22) And that's more important than "the world" might say: so many people come into The Lord's Rain -- even though it's not an overtly evangelical operation -- asking for prayer, or asking questions about God and the Bible, and we've realized that we've been providing another Basic Human Need. That's the need to know that God still loves them.

Got Water?

And whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward. -- Matt. 10:24

It's hot in Vancouver. I know it sounded silly to the lady from Mississippi whom I met last week - back home, for her, it's up around 100 F with 80% humidity - but here on the left coast, when the temperature hits 30 (upper 80s Fahrenheit), we start to seek out stores with air conditioning.

It's going to be a concern for the homeless and otherwise street people on the Downtown East Side. They don't have as many options for staying hydrated. So this is an appeal to you today: if you could pick up a case of bottled water (London Drugs has them on for $3.99 for a case of 24) and bring it to Gospel Mission, 327 & 331 Carrall Street - (not to be confused with Union Gospel - and they're giving out water, too), we can hand them out both at The Lord's Rain and upstairs.

You probably won't find anyone at The Lord's Rain this afternoon, but come to the church upstairs on Sunday after 12 noon.

When Cigarettes Saved Lives

Let me preface this by saying that I don’t smoke. I grew up in a time when kids who smoked were considered juvenile delinquents, children with whom “good children” (like me) didn’t associate. I pestered my parents until they quit smoking. A relationship fell apart because she smoked and I tried to get her to quit. (She did try, but then, looking for a replacement for the hand-mouth motion associated with smoking, decided to have coffee, instead. She complained of hyperventilating by 11am. This may give some insight into the relationship as a whole.)

(I should point out that I have no use for the current social battle against tobacco use. No, I don’t want people smoking in my air-space, but I’d rather give a smoker the opportunity to be courteous and give myself the option to be gracious, than have some law forcing the issue.)

Anyway, the headline there is not Orwellian newspeak, like many other attempts at justifying the unjustifiable. But a few years ago, I wrote about a Vietnam veteran and his face-to-face encounter with “Charlie Cong” – an enemy soldier – just after the rest of his unit had been wiped out in an ambush. After staring at each other for what seemed like ages, the VC soldier held up two fingers to his mouth. Rudy – the American – realized he was asking for a cigarette. Rudy had some, so they sat together, had a smoke, and communicated as best they could with sign language. The VC soldier showed Rudy photos of his family. They went separate ways, and when Rudy got back to camp, he told his CO he couldn’t kill North Vietnamese anymore.

So I got thinking the other day: what if Rudy and “Charlie” didn’t smoke? What shared social experience would they have had, that would have led to that turning point in their lives? A drink? I doubt either would have had a hip flask or a canteen of water, and would they have shared? What if one was a mean drunk? How about marijuana – the smokable weed that’s apparently exempt from the social convention against smoking? Again, I doubt they would have had any handy.

Also, consider the circumstances: Rudy had just seen his entire unit wiped out. Who knows how many VC were killed in that exchange, but “Charlie” was all alone when it was over, just like Rudy. Smoking would have calmed their nerves, and smoking together broke through the barrier that war imposes, turning the Invading Imperialist American and the Ruthless Jungle Guerrilla into two men, sitting together, chatting.

Rudy was medical’d out within a week after telling his CO that he couldn’t kill “those people”. “Charlie” disappeared into the jungle – who knows what happened to him? Maybe he was killed the next day; maybe he, too, realized he couldn’t kill people and got out of the war and back to his family. We probably couldn’t count the number of people whose lives were saved, because Rudy had a couple of cigarettes that day.

Gospel Mission and the 3 P's

In one of his sermons on Living Truth, Charles Price talked about the three items in the Ark of the Covenant: the stone tablets containing God's Law, a jar of manna and Aaron's staff. Each represents a different aspect of our relationship with God. The tablets represent God's purpose, the manna represents His provision; Aaron's staff represents His power: this is the staff that blossomed and bore almonds while the staves of the representatives of the other 11 tribes of Israel remained sticks; Aaron's staff manifested God's power and life through Him.

Does that not apply to Gospel Mission? God's purpose has been playing out pretty much since the Mission was founded in 1929, in the Mission's principle of "God's food first" and its emphasis on being a place of Worship, ministry of the Gospel and demonstration of the love of Christ.

God's provision is represented in numerous ways, particularly in The Lord's Rain. It provides a place to meet a Basic Human Need, which is to be clean; but the fact that the facility has always met its rent and utility bills, often through miracles (OK: consistently through miracles), shows how God has made sure the ministry's worldly needs are being met.

And now we come to God's power. From what I've been hearing and reading on the Gospel Mission Society Facebook page, that has been descending, big-time, on the Mission. I'm getting reports of healings, people receiving the Holy Spirit, and other demonstrations of God's love and grace. It bruises my ego to say it, but it's happened since I was moved out (by God, I should point out) and Wesley Chadwick was moved in. (God has His way of moving us around like chess pieces: we usually have no idea what He's doing at the time, but He eventually shows us when we need to know it.)

This is exactly what God has shown me the Mission would be doing, and exactly what the Downtown East Side needs. It doesn`t need more money, more programs or more handouts: it needs a dose of the Holy Spirit and the Gospel, straight-no-chaser, to bring the hope people need to keep moving forward and turn their lives around -- for His name's sake.

Gospel Mission is an Ark in another way: like Noah's Ark. Years ago, God showed me that there would be Revival on the Downtown East Side with the Holy Spirit coming in like a flood, rising up and catching people unawares in its tide. The Cross would be the Ark for people to grab onto to avoid being swept away and drowned, and so long as Gospel Mission puts the Cross and all It represents first -- God, Jesus, Redemption, Forgiveness, Grace -- people will find the refuge and the hope they need there. With the manifestation now of God's power, going with His provision and purpose, we're seeing the two types of "ark" melding into one.

From The Lord's Rain: The Wedding Miracle

On the face of it, this miracle has nothing to do with water and wine, and everything to do with the fact that the wedding happened at all. This past Saturday (May 9), Janet Klassen, the Assistant Pastor at Gospel Mission with responsibility for The Lord’s Rain, married Kim Mogenson, who has been around the Mission in one way or another for at least as long as I’ve been there – 8 years, now.

I’ve written about Janet before, the struggles she’s gone through and her victories. Just before Barry Babcook passed away unexpectedly, we learned that she and Kim had become an “item”. General reaction: "al-RIGHT!" (and various other cheers and unbroken Hallelujahs).

Yes: what did happen to that guy?

Kim has often asked the rhetorical question, “Whatever happened to the man who used to wait outside and then come in between ‘Amen’ and ‘Pass the food’?” 

Actually, it’s a pretty good question. I first met Kim in 2004 at Rainbow Mission: drunk, sometimes spaced-out on something else, obnoxious – the kind that would make you cringe. And indeed, because we didn’t lock the door at Rainbow once the service started, people would arrive just in time to miss the message and get to the “important part”.

But a few weeks after John, Danilo, Amelia and I moved to Gospel Mission, Kim showed up, flashed a grin, and said, “You tried to get away from me, eh?” And something was different. He started bringing a Bible to the Saturday night services. He started asking questions about the Bible before, after – and sometimes, during – the sermon. One night, he stood in the doorway of the kitchen and told Amelia, “I’m going to turn my life around.”

We learned that he had been a chef, working at a restaurant in Port Renfrew. For whatever reason – and they are usually legion – his life fell apart: chronic health issues, drugs, booze, all lined up against him and he wound up on the Downtown East Side.

Pastor David Brown, Kim and best man Justin, awaiting the grand entrance

As I write this, I’m hearing Brian Houston of Hillsong Church, telling us that God has a special purpose for every one of us. I get the feeling that Kim was able to regain that sense, not quite sure how it would manifest itself, but it was there, and would become apparent, so long as he kept turning towards the Lord.

Kim would sometimes get up and share something he’d read or observed. One day, he came up to me before a service and said, “I think I’m ready to give the sermon.” The next Saturday night, he took the mike and spoke about the need for us to be salt and light in the world, illustrating it with his own experience as a chef.

While this was going on, he took courses at FreeGeek, which provides IT training for people on the Downtown East Side; he joined a guitar class at the Carnegie Centre; he got more and more involved with the Mission. When Janet was shattered by Barry’s unexpected passing, Kim became her support and also her buffer, the initial point of contact when the rest of us had questions about the running of the Ministry. Others, like Pastor David Brown and Liane Hyatt, the Mission’s treasurer, took on a lot of the load, and Kim was the rock Janet needed to lean on.

So this past Saturday, there was a sense of the climactic ending to one chapter and the bright, hopeful beginning of a promising new one. Watching Janet walk down the aisle on her dad’s arm, in her magnificent white dress, it suddenly struck a lot of us how huge this occasion was. She read her personalized vow to Kim, and there was not a dry eye in the house. Tears, laughter, love, and you knew that God was watching over it all, seeing this raw, obvious example of how He had made it all happen.

In fact, you don't have to stretch too far to see that this is a "water-into-wine" miracle, do you?

**

The seventh anniversary of the opening of The Lord’s Rain came and went with little fanfare, but it’s important to note that we have now passed the 8500-mark in the number of showers taken since we opened. On Tuesday, 25 people came in to get cleaned up, and one has to wonder where they would have gone and what they would have done if The Lord’s Rain hadn't been there. I've been reviewing the history of the building of The Lord’s Rain, and have a hard time believing that we took the dilapidated, rat-infested space and, beginning with a vision but no money, built this facility that meets a basic, and vital, human need.

But we did -- and not by any strength of our own. The people, the finances, the supplies, all came together exactly as and when they were needed, as God made it clear that the project was going to go ahead, no matter what the worldly evidence might say. If you ever want a “wow!” experience, consider the fact that you've been involved with this in one way or another. There are more people than I could count, who are grateful for your support.

(If you would like to contribute to The Lord's Rain, you can send your cheque or money order to Gospel Mission Society, PO Box 98802, The W PO, Vancouver, BC V6B 0G0. The Lord's Rain can always use more volunteer help, too: please contact me through the "contact/comment" box for more information.)

"I could be in Pittsburgh!" (special from Hawai'i)

One of the more prominent features of Lahaina, the historic Royal Capital of the Kingdom of Hawai’i, is a spreading banyan tree outside the old court house. From a single trunk, its aerial root system spreads over 2/3 of an acre: the roots, which appear to be branches, dive down into the ground and take root, themselves; others spread outward and up.

The ficus benghalensis, which was planted in 1873, is a favorite spot for tourists to take photos, and people of all ages mill about, posing, snapping pictures, and gazing in wonder at the this tree. And nearly invisible are the half-dozen or so people who actually live there.

By “live there”, I don’t mean in Lahaina: I mean “live under the tree”. These are some of the homeless on Maui.

I know what some might be thinking: "So you're homeless - you're on Maui! Sleep on the beach ... under the stars ... must be nice!" Yeah - right.

One man is hunched over in a wheelchair, with what looks like a plate lunch in a Styrofoam container in his lap. He seems unwilling or unable to brush away the flies that seem to be enjoying the lunch more than he. A friend is sitting next to him and doesn't seem bothered by the flies, either. On a bench nearby, a man with a grey beard is lying on his back, a few shopping bags with belongings and cans on the ground beside him; a grey-haired, tanned woman is sitting beside him, reading a book to him.

Another fellow is sitting on a bench next to them with a dog beside him. Clean-shaven, tanned, and clear-eyed, he tells me the dog isn’t his: “I’m just watching her for her mom,” he says.

“Him,” I say, noting the obvious.

The man tells me his name is Mike and that he had been a casting director in Hollywood. “It was a lot of work: I’d go twenty straight days without a break, and I’d be just about to take some time off when they’d call me and I’d have to go to another set and work there. When I had my last heart attack, my doctor said I had to retire.”

“Your ‘last’ heart attack?”

“I had a mild one, then I had a serious one, and that’s when the doctor told me to get out of the business.”

But the Hollywood glamor did not come with a decent retirement plan, so with a Social Security income of $509.00 a month, Mike headed for Maui. “You can’t buy much on $509 a month,” he said, “and you can’t afford rent.”

“At least you don’t have to worry about heating bills,” I offered.

“My brother in Pittsburgh spends more in a month on heating than I get in Social Security,” he says. “If it gets ‘cold’,” he said, making “quotation” signs with his fingers, “you might need to use one sheet or a blanket. So, you know: I could be in Pittsburgh!”

At another point, he told me about working for his brother, who’s a lawyer. “I had a job going around to the pharmacies and picking up medication just before they were going to expire, then taking it to the homeless people.”

“What kind of medication?” I asked. “Prescriptions? Methadone?”

He shook his head. “Antibiotics. People on the streets – “ he looked around him “—they don’t take care of themselves. They get sick … they need antibiotics.” Around Lahaina, there are no facilities like The Lord’s Rain. Mike manages to get to the public swimming pool from time to time to wash up, but for the most part, it’s a basic human need that’s still unmet.

I thought those who support The Lord’s Rain would like to know that: that it's provided -- and continues to provide – something not readily available in other parts of the world. When I see some of the infections suffered by binners on Vancouver’s Downtown East Side – like the time, a few years ago, when Ron nearly lost an arm because a “nick” from a dumpster got infected (doctors had to open up Ron’s entire forearm to treat the infection) – I think how much worse things could be if The Lord’s Rain weren't there to at least provide an option. 

**

SROs, Maui-style

The next day, I learn that there are some individual efforts around Maui to help people get clean. I got the opportunity to ride along with “A Cup of Cold Water”, a mobile ministry set up by St Joseph’s Episcopal (Anglican) Church in Wailuku. (And whoever gives one of these little ones only a cup of cold water in the name of a disciple, assuredly, I say to you, he shall by no means lose his reward. – Matthew 10:42) Maui doesn't have a skid row area per se, so the trick in ministering to homeless people is to know where to look. 

ACCW is a white-and-blue van, which carries a stock of “basic” food items, and “on request” items like underwear, socks, t-shirts, dog food and hygiene products. In the van are Lawrence, his mother Juanita, and Dutch. All three are Hawai’ians by ancestry; Lawrence and another man, Keku, who organized this “ride-along” for me, are retired police officers. We go first to Kahului, leave the main road and hit a badly-maintained dirt road near the shore.  I had just explained what an SRO is (single-room occupancy hotel) is when Lawrence said, “Here are our SROs.” He pointed to a row of derelict cars and trucks along the dirt road.

Each vehicle had at least one person living in it. I was reminded of the "rubber tramps" that Rudy, a fellow I knew at Rainbow Mission, told me about after he'd finished his hitch in the Vietnam war.

We were first greeted by a small dog, leashed to a tent that had been made out of the back of a pickup truck. Presently a young woman squirmed out of the tent, pulling on a dress. We hand her a “single person” bag – one can each of cocktail sausages and Spam (As the late John Pinette said, “I love Hawai’i: there, Spam is a vegetable.”) – two bottles of water, a pudding cup, fruit cup, granola bar and Rice Krispie square.

There was a familiar pong in the air. Dutch motioned towards the buildings at the end of the dirt road – the sewage pumping station.

Lucy, a petite woman about my age, emerges from another truck. “How’re ya doing?” I ask. “Hanging in,” she says. “Hangin’ in.” She then reaches out to me and gives me a huge hug and clings to me for a long time.

“The owner of my place suddenly decided to sell,” she says. “We got 30 days’ notice and nowhere to go. I went to get a camping permit but you know what? They (the County) wanted $45 a day! I can’t pay $45 a day! So I’m here.”

We pray together, then she goes and gets her bag. As we drive away, Lawrence explains that the County inspectors had gone to the place where Lucy had been living and found that no one really knew who owned it. When they finally found out who the owners were, the owners decided to sell rather than upgrade. And Lucy and others were out on their collective ear.

We move on. There’s a little shack in a parking area behind the pumping station and we pull up and honk the horn. A reddish dog bounds out to say hello and in the doorway we see a large woman hurriedly putting on a robe. She comes out to us with one hand on her cheek.

“How are you?” Dutch asks.

“Got a bad toothache,” she says. “You don’t have any Tylenol, do you?” We don’t. We hand her the bag and a couple of tins of dog food and move on.

Dutch explains that there are some areas where they don’t always go – areas inhabited by known criminals and drug dealers. “We especially don’t let the women go in alone,” he says. “If it’s me and Keku,” Lawrence puts in, “we might, ‘cause we can take care of ourselves; but if it’s just ma and some of the other women, they don’t go.”

“We also don’t want to be ‘enablers’,” Dutch adds. “If we go to these guys, they’ll barge in and take whatever and then sell it.” He motioned to a group of tents across the river from our next stop. “But if they come across the river to us while we’re here, we’ll give them something. If they cross the river, they’re exposed, so if they're making that effort, we figure they really need it.”

I ask them about options for cleaning up. In Lahaina, they point out that there are hoses on the docks used for washing down the boats (wonderful! Let’s bathe in tepid sea-water!) and the Family Life Center in Kahului offers showers. Lawrence’s brother, a lifeguard at the public swimming pool in Kihei, has arranged to allow homeless people to shower at certain times of the day. Even that was a tough sell, but he was able to make it happen.

We drive on … to a spot where two men are living in a makeshift shack in a location where other shelters had been destroyed by the storms this past winter (yes, Maui gets winter storms, and they can be nasty). We had gone to see if anyone was left. As we left, we saw a County park inspector drive by – possibly to “encourage” them to move on.

We hit Kalama Beach Park, where a lot of un-housed people set up their homes. Because it was Wednesday, most of them had moved their vehicles out onto the road so the County could clean the park, which is done every week. “They call it ‘resting the park’,” Dutch explains. 

We come across one man – probably in his 60s – who’s installed solar panels on an old pickup truck and uses that to power his truck radio, a TV (with satellite dish) and a few other things. 

A young woman emerges from a minivan, carrying a little girl – maybe 18 months old. It’s not clear where the woman’s husband is, although it’s possible he’s at work, and doesn't make enough to afford a place to live. But where you might think there would be despair, there is love in the mother’s eyes, and joy in the baby’s: the little girl is still blowing kisses to us as we climb back into the van.

At our next stop in the park, we find three generations all together.

“There are actually three or four clans here,” Lawrence says, as Juanita and I throw together “family” bags.

“Why aren't you in school?” Dutch asks one little boy.

“I'm sick today,” he says.

Back into Kahului, we wind our way through the industrial area, past the warehouses and big-box stores, finding one or two people in various places. Lawrence has a keen eye: “There’s some (people) there,” he says, as we pull up at a traffic light. He’s spotted a shopping cart off to the side of the road, with four or five guys huddled around it. We hand out single bags and chat for a bit, then head on.

We then pull up near the Family Life Center, but Lawrence makes sure he parks on County property. The Family Life Center, which is run by another church organization, has made it clear it doesn’t want ACCW parking on its property. Whether it’s jealousy among ministries, a sense that one’s turf has to be protected, or a misunderstanding, it’s something I've noticed in Vancouver, too. A few couples come over for bags; one fellow pulls up on a bike laden with bags. As we drive off, Lawrence mentions the fellow with the bike.

“He was a great athlete,” he says, “but just couldn't handle it all. They get all that money, and then the drugs and something goes wrong …” Lawrence doesn't mention his name or what sport he played: right now, that doesn't make much difference.

Families … drug addicts … the mentally ill … but for the most part, Just Plain Poor – people who work but still can’t afford a house … others, too old to work but for whom the “social safety net” has holes a humpback whale could jump through … A Cup of Cold Water, like The Lord’s Rain, is “Jesus With The Skin On,” a reminder that they haven’t been forgotten, they are loved by people who hardly know them – and especially, that they are still precious to God.

That may not seem like much, but neither does a seed, until it’s planted.

You Just Never Know ...

One of the recurring -- and possibly overworked -- points I make when I talk about the Downtown East Side is that anyone is just one misstep away from winding up in a situation similar to the "street people". It might be something obvious or it might be something seemingly minor, that sets off a cascade of events.

I've known Mike since I started at Gospel Mission eight years ago. Nice-looking, pleasant, polite, 40-something, he would sit at or near the back and sing lustily during Worship. He loved singing, and had been in his school's choir in Prince Rupert, which had won awards in festivals.

But as the years went by, one could see changes in him. He'd be prone to outbursts of anger -- not directed at us, but he would come in and bend our ears about the way some of the advocacy groups he was involved with, like VANDU (the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users) would treat him. He was angry that they would ask him to leave meetings for being disruptive. How he was disruptive was never clear.

Certainly, Mike could be candid and maybe less than judicious in the things he said. When supporters of InSite -- the supervised injection facility -- turned out en masse for a court ruling regarding federal health-care funding, Mike was a no-show. "I missed out on thirty-five bucks," he said, explaining that had been promised to those who came for the demonstration. He then told me that he and others were given box lunches and a trip to Victoria for a demonstration at the Legislature.

Aside from exacerbating Mike's anger issues, the drug use has savaged his physical state, with ghastly open sores appearing on his face. I found it very easy to judge him, saying to myself, "so how are those 'drug users' rights' working out for you?"

Then, a couple of weeks ago, he shared a piece of information.

"My mother died 35 years ago this month," he said. "She, my auntie, my grandma, my sister and brother -- all killed in a car accident. It was just outside Edmonton on Highway 16 and they hit a tanker truck."

That was a jolt. I remembered that crash well. It was one of a number of fatal crashes in 1980 along what the papers were calling "Death Highway". Shortly after that, I had to drive that highway en route to my first radio job, in Lloydminster.

And now, here was someone directly affected by that string of disasters.

He went on. "My grandpa said, 'I got a bad feeling about Mikey going with you.' He didn't want me to go. 'I got a bad feeling,' he said."

"Wow," I said. "So you stayed home."

"Oh, no," Mike replied. "I went. I was the only survivor."

Suddenly, a lot of things fell into place.

So now, it becomes understandable that Mike would turn to drugs as the solution to his pain and his lingering grief ("survivor's remorse" is probably a part of that). Personally, I'm no more in favor of people doing drugs for any reason -- and certainly not in favor of making them "safer" to take. But Mike's experience reminds me that there are so many deep-seated issues that need to be dealt with and frankly, only God can reveal and only Jesus can heal. Anything else is a damned lie.

==

"My mother. Did. What she thought. Was right."

Denise spoke very deliberately, as if she was forcing the thought out of her mouth and into the light. Her mother had handed her over to a children’s aid agency when she was a baby, and her point was that she couldn't hold any anger against her. Mind you, her determined way of saying it suggested she had had a long and difficult time to get to that stage.

Ironically, Denise, herself, parted ways with her children. She talks with them from time to time, and then they go about their lives; but there's still a sense that there are still a lot of gaps in their relationship.

Denise is the one who said, "I'd have to kill you all!" when I asked if she'd share her life story for my "In His Image, Too ..." video project, so this was a remarkably candid revelation. She's in her mid-fifties, petite, still attractive with grey threads through her black hair and has definitely “seen it all”. But she refuses to play the victim and blame the myriad people who could be and are regularly blamed for what happens to our Native brothers and sisters. Instead, she’s what I'd call an actionist – someone who just gets in there and does what she can to help. In her case, it’s serving at the women’s centre on the Downtown East Side, helping other women – particularly the young ones – cope with the situation.

“Just show me a Native woman who hasn't sold her body at some point,” she said recently. Someone had had the face to ask her if she'd ever been a prostitute and she was her usual direct self. But with the annual Memorial March for Missing and Murdered Women about to happen, Denise was equally emphatic that it would have to go ahead without her.

“Nothing changes,” she said, meaning the impact of the marches. “But more than that: I'd like to see a march for missing and murdered men. You never hear about that, but that’s what happened to my husband and I wish someone would talk about that.” But almost immediately, she added, “Not me, though: I'm not goin’ on that crusade!”

Denise believes that handing her over to a child protection agency (ironically, the same one that was under the microscope last year in connection with the death of a little boy in Ontario) was not the right thing to do. And yet, it's clear that the experiences Denise went through as a result have led to this calling on her to help others. Who knows how many people she's blessed, just by being there for them?

I would say Denise has a calling of God on her life: I don't know if she'd see it that way, but I'm reminded of Romans 8:28 "All things work together for good, for those who love God and are called according to His purpose."

==

When we went to Australia in December, we walked around Circular Quay in Sydney (I love the Aussies' directness in many things in their language: it's a quay; it's shaped like a circle; therefore, it's named "Circular Quay") and one of its features is "Writers' Walk". This is a series of plaques, in tribute to the writers from Australia and around the world who have, in one way or another, had a connection with Australia. Alongside Nevil Shute, Jack London, Rudyard Kipling and James Michener, there is this plaque from Kath Walker, an Aborigine who took the name Oodgeroo Noonuccal -- the name of her tribe.

I could tell you of heartbreak, hatred blind,

I could tell of crimes that shame mankind,

Of brutal wrong and deeds malign,

Of rape and murder, son of mine.

But I'll tell instead of brave and fine,

When lives of black and white entwine,

And men in brotherhood combine -- 

This would I tell you, son of mine.

Note that this poem was written in 1964, at about the same time Martin Luther King was delivering his speech, in which he said, in part, "I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood ... that ... one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers."

Eloquence from two different parts of the world, at the same time, with the same thought towards brotherhood, equality and, yes, integration. For what it's worth, it's my own prayer for our First Nations in Canada, because the current situation, I believe, is geared to keep them oppressed -- just in a different way. But it's one thing for whitey, here, to talk about integration and brotherhood: hearing it from the oppressed people themselves, gives it credibility.