The Showers Saga 21 - Humble Beginnings

It's not often that the expression "the next level" means going from the second floor to the ground floor, but that's the intriguing paradox of The Lord's Rain. I find myself standing outside 327 Carrall St., watching the passing scene and contemplating what God has gotten us into now. The legendary drug deals go down in front of and beside me; people older than me and younger than my son, wander back and forth, zombie-like, while a steady parade of squad cars with two and sometimes three cops in each, cruises the area.

"Welcome to the Next Level," the Lord says. I know He never gives us anything we can't handle, so obviously He figures we at Gospel Mission can handle what He's about to throw at us.

Janet has already remarked that she's never really had a window on the street before. It's easy to feel like you're in a cocoon on the second floor, but that's OK, because if any of us had been dropped, like Mr Bean, into the middle of the DTES without the gradual "pressurization" -- the experience of dealing with people who have long since stopped trusting others and the time spent gaining a reputation as people who walk in Love and not judgment -- we'd have been discouraged from the start. Now, praise God, we know that He is strengthening us in this task, lifting us up and will not leave us unattended. He's already decreed that, but, as with many other things we face, the trick is to convince ourselves of that truth. Now, we're ready.

The other Word that keeps coming to me as I watch people do their drugs and make their deals and generally stomp around the place with those convulsive movements that mark someone who's strung out on crack or crystal meth is, "these are somebody's children". A young woman -- heck: a girl -- came up to us a couple of weeks ago as we were leaving from the Saturday night service. We had some cookies left over, and she saw them and asked for one. Amelia gave them to her, and after she left, I said, "she's just a girl. She could be my daughter!" "Keep praying that it won't be," Amelia replied, "and pray that if ever it is, there'll be someone to give her a cookie."

(Don't Get Me Started Dep't: the BC Nurses Union is demanding more funding for the safe injection site. One nurse says her heroin-addicted sister might be alive today if she'd had a "safe place to shoot up". Indeed? Let's not blame the lack of a "safe place" for that wasted life: the responsibility lies with the people who introduced her to heroin in the first place, and before that, those who created the situation leading to her even wanting to try it. People have kicked the habit in the past. People need encouragement to get off the drug and the hope that there's a reason for doing it. Handing someone a needle and saying, "here's a 'safe place': go ahead and shoot", simply tells them they're always going to be a drug addict so they might as well give up hope. But of course, the best hope is in Christ, and a lot of people don't want to tell anyone that.)

Back to the showers ... People are coming in for a coffee and some stick around to chat and some actually have a shower. In five openings so far, we've served 17 people. Some might call that a slow start: I look at it as being exactly what God wants for the place. K-Mack said it perfectly last Saturday night: imagine what it will look like in a couple of years!





Painting day: Kathy (a/k/a The Towel Lady) and Sean putting Coat One on the Lord's Rain

Amelia too!

Ladies' Night got underway this past Friday. Janet is ready to do manicures, and the others -- Amelia, K-Mack and Sandy -- were there to greet whomever wanted to come in. One woman came in for the shower, but K-Mack (K-Mack = Kathy McPhillips who is, among other things, Worship leader on Saturday nights; this differentiates her from Kathy Kinahan, a/k/a The Towel Lady) was the only one who got a manicure. Janet drew a neat little flower on one fingernail. Unfortunately, in order to show it to me, K-Mack had to make a rude gesture, and I hold Janet fully responsible for that!

In terms of numbers, these are humble beginnings. But in terms of outreach, we're already doing our job. We weren't going to do any overt preaching -- Barry calls it "soft evangelism" -- but there's no doubt that the showers project is the work of a Christian organization, motivated by a touch from God to provide a basic human need to people. It's getting us onto street level, giving us a better view of the world we serve -- and giving people in that world a better view of us -- and, we pray, of Jesus.

Further to previous message ...

Well ... note "Positively Jim"'s comment below, re "They Must Be Smoking Something" ... it proves my point, which is rather sad.

But I do love him, and will pray for his eyes to be opened and God's truth revealed.

They Must Be Smoking Something

"We smoke pot! We smoke pot!"

That was the chant from a rally on Saturday in Vancouver: something which a news report described as commemorating the "Million Marijuana March", whatever the heck that was. It was, simply put (so that even those smoking something can understand it), another demonstration demanding the "right" to smoke marijuana without being "hassled" by "pigs".

To begin with, giving the demonstration a name that echoes of the "Million Man March" is an affront to the sacrifices of Martin Luther King, Medgar Evars and all the others who laid down their lives for the cause of civil rights. Comparing their struggle with someone wanting the "right" to smoke dope indicates the total self-absorption of a bunch of privileged children who've been denied one more cookie.

But even more striking was the contrast between this event, and something that was going on just a few blocks away.

First, some words about the marijuana advocates.

The inane chanting was one thing (probably all they could get out of their mouths when stoned), but a careful analysis of the sound bite from one of their spokespeople shows the kind of convoluted, distorted thinking that you find when people demand the "right" to do something that is patently not right. They'll say anything to make their point, and remarks like "prohibition only encourages organized crime" is the sort of inside-out thinking that would have made Orwell proud.

Rather than prohibition, organized crime has received carte blanche from the multiple-message attitude our society has promoted. We tell kids not to do drugs, yet our media make heroes out of the likes of Mark Emery, who's been fighting extradition to the United States to face drug-related charges. Anyone who suggests that marijuana is an entree to other, stronger drugs is immediately vilified as a stick-in-the-mud.

Well, at least you know where a stick-in-the-mud stands. Besides, it doesn't take a psych major to know that if someone gets a "wonderful feeling" from something, they'll want to take the experience deeper. It's human nature. And we know that marijuana grown these days is more potent than it was in the 60s, when Cheech and Chong were making it seem oh-so-romantic and exciting. Evidently, the demand for a bigger "high" is already there, even without switching to other substances.

Now, about that contrast: at the same time that the rally was being organized, a group of us had opened the doors on Day 2 of The Lord's Rain -- the showers project at Gospel Mission. Outside, there was the usual array of drug dealers and users, plying their trade openly in the street: Shelly, the street duchess, who's set up camp in the doorway of a disused building next to ours, had her group coming and going, dealing and using; others were handing out their little white nuggets (crack cocaine) in the alley or next door in Pigeon Park.

Inside The Lord's Rain, there was a girl, barely out of her teens, passed out on a makeshift bed of chairs. She had come in crying and shaking and shivering: it was wet and raining outside, and she was wearing nothing but a tank top, jeans and runners without laces, with a wet, dirty blanket around her shoulders. We finally got her lying down and she fell asleep.

As I prayed over her, I asked God to send me a solution -- someplace she could go, someone to take care of her. What do we do with such people? We're giving showers and coffee to people -- we wish we could also feed and clothe and provide homes for them all ... and jobs ... and health ... the showers and coffee are a start -- the seeds to be planted that someone does care and that they are all worthy as God's children. But how do we deal with the immediate need -- like a place for this girl to go?

The fact that the girl looks barely older than my own daughter is all the more upsetting.

She was showing the effects of heroin and cocaine. Isn't heroin and cocaine a "speedball" -- the very thing that killed John Belushi? Belushi's world -- Hollywood and stardom and fame and money -- is so far removed from the Downtown East Side, and yet here is this child, destroyed by the same thing.

God answered my prayer, for someone to come and help: about an hour and a half later, a middle-aged woman walked in and said, "What's my daughter doing here?"

The mother stayed with us and made a few phone calls, and as we were closing up, helped her get dressed in dry clothes we found for her. We loaded the girl into the back of my car and drove around, eventually winding up at Triage, where they let her sleep on a couch while waiting for a place to take her.

(There's some question as to whether the "mother" is actually a blood relative, or is actually a "street mother", who watches over these kids. Regardless, the girl called her "mom", so there was some kind of mother-daughter relationship there: likely a relationship lacking in the girl's biological family.)

Would someone like to tell me that this girl did not begin her life on drugs by smoking marijuana, graduating to things that will give her more of a "good" feeling? Do we seriously believe that she went directly from being absolutely clean to Heroin Hotel, with a brief stopover at the Coke Cafe? Do kids with their raging sores and tempers to match, caused by crystal meth, begin with crystal meth, or were they not given a foot in the door with that "harmless recreational smoke"? (It has been shown that a lot of joints are now being laced with crystal meth, to give first-timers a taste for it.)

Is one not excused for wanting to drive a cement mixer through the Million Marijuana March?

No, Lord, one is not excused for succumbing to the flesh like that. Rather, all one can do is hand this to You: and I pray that You will reveal Yourself to the people in that march, their supporters, and the media who paint this in such sympathetic colours, and that their eyes will be opened to Your Truth; and I also pray that Your love will cover these people on the Downtown East Side -- and anywhere else where they have turned into walking, breathing corpses because of drugs; and that You will forgive us all, for the mixed messages we have permitted, allowing things to come to this point.

And help us to keep seeking You, Lord, even at such a time as this.