The Visiting Has Begun! Here I come...

Finally the trip is on it's way!
I have spent a lovely past couple of days with my mother in Long Beach California. I don't know who talked more withing the first couple hours upon my arrival; we talked as if we only had a couple hours to catch up on half a years worth of information... It has been great to see where my mother goes to church and where she lives--meeting the kids in the neighbourhood... I will be here with my mom in the LA area until Tuesday March 3rd, and then head up to Northern California/ San Jose area. I have had a lot of time while my mother is at work to read and reflect and work on an art piece. I have been reading through Luke realizing just how much Jesus talks about the Kingdom of God, his upside down kingdom and the difference between God's wisdom and power vs. the power and wisdom of us. i am only half way through (chapter 13) and the KOG (kingdom of God) has been directly mentioned 19 times (that is not including the places where he is alluding to it or referring to the upside down understanding of what God's wisdom is like. Such a great read...

Reading past Liturature

I just spent the morning at the Regent Library reading poems and other creative writings on the topic of Justice. It was an anthology of Literature called Cry out for Justice, full of controversial poetry, art works and writings throughout time; all written in defense of the poor and Oppressed. It had a Forward by Jack London. The book swept from the perspective of the oppressed to the advocates and their disdain for the present circumstances,God's call for Change, the helpful and the hurtful things the church has done, and the hopes for the future, also a section on remembrance and one on Children.
I sat there soaking up this great literature, thinking about how much of it still applies to today, and how we are so selective of the writings from the past that we read so that we read Romeo and Juliet a million times over and neglect some of Shakespeare's provocative stuff same with Emerson and Whitman, and Adams and a hundred other writers.
I left thinking about how today these writings still speak of places like the DTES, and if only we realized how continual this problem has been and that we could cause it to cease...

On my way home i sat on the bus next to a guy who could not read and was asking which buses to take to get home.

It is a privilege and a responsibility to read.

All in a days work

Two stories: (i will leave them without my usual trying interpretation and just leave them as experiences...for now)Similar circumstances, but totally different. Two guys down on their luck on the street.

Yesterday: it was a fairly sunny Mid afternoon. Compared to all the fog that we have had. Though the sun was out a bit it was still cold, and i walked quickly up Commercial Drive to the pottery studio. There was a guy in a wheelchair asking for money. His Name was Randy. I said i didn't have any but i stopped walking and asked him how his day had been going. he told me how he was cold and today had been not so good for busking--He hadn't got a thing since the small cup of coffee early in the morning; A couple days ago he had been hit by a car--he was fine but it had damaged his wheel chair and it was going to take a bunch of paperwork or money to get it working well again...and a couple other rough events he mentioned. I stood there and listened nodding at appropriate times, and then he said "...but what about you? you seem to be in a good mood?" Then i got to say how some friends and i had been talking to guy guy who we knew and hadn't seen in a while and he told us that his recovery was a tough road to pull but that he felt encouraged to continue, the sun was a bit brighter today than yesterday and that i saw one of the first signs of spring peeking out of the dirt just down the road." Randy smiled and held out his hand. As we shook hands he thanked me for sharing, "...your bits of joy have encouraged me for this moment."
i turned to walk away, a bit slower this time even though it was still cold. I wonder to myself...what lasting change does an encounter like this have on the world at large.. but i know i am asking the wrong question. For one moment one man in a wheelchair that had been being passed by and written off all day, felt a sense of worth and dignity--even for a moment.

Today: i was coming out of a thrift store on the far east end of Hastings street. Today unlike yesterday (or the past two weeks really) the sun was all the way out and warming our faces. I had walked all the way to the store on the sunny side of the street just to make sure i caught as much of the sun's warmth as a could. Having found what i had been looking for made me even more happy to go home and show the others in the community. HE was sitting there against the wall and had just heard me tell another lady who asked for money and hurried on by, that i didn't have money to hand out, but he asked anyway. when i said the same to him, he went off yelling about how he knew my type i was the type that had thousands of dollars saved up for only me and i was the type to get fancy education and go guild to make millions more and buy things on credit cards. I stood there listening, "...and I've never had a credit card before! all i have is a hard slab of cold cement and ..." he ranted for a minute or so about his lack of money interspersed with some colorful language, all of which he said in such a loud voice that i am sure everyone on the block could hear. I finally said "Look there are more useful things in the world than money--like friends, and right now your yelling is making it really difficult for me to even want to be your friend..." waving his hand at me as if swiping away a pesky fly he shouted louder than the rest of his ranting "Aaww, F** off!"
I said OK and walked away.
As i walked away i thought there is something ironic about being told to F** off on such a beautiful warm day. Some people have a hard time seeing the sun even when it is in their face.

Just another day's work in the life of the DownTown EastSide...

We cry out for your Mercy, may your Kingdom Come Here

I see him lying there. The question that comes to mind "...is he dead?" but i already know the answer. he is not dead, he is drunk...past drunk. We were on our way to Mosaic (the church i have been attending on Saturday nights) He was laying there motionless. We waited at the corner just past the bus stop where he was and the crowd that surrounded him. I don't know if we were waiting for the light to change or for some idea as to what to do about the guy in the middle of the crowd. As the light changed the bus came to the stop and people stepped around and over his motionless body. We turned and helped him on his feet. He couldn't stand on his own. Legs spread like a baby dear trying to stand he stood and looked at me. There was a smile on his face but his eyes were a cry for help.
l looked and i saw him. I saw the lame man by the pool, i saw Zacchaeus, the lost son,the samaritan woman...i saw the people of God's heart all alone and wasting away.
It was just a few seconds after we got him vertical the police came and took over...
We continued on our way.
Where were his buddies to at least take him to some place safe to crash? Was the guy really so hopeless that he didn't even have a friend to watch his back? How many times he probably has been picked up from the same situation and put in jail till he was sober just to do it all again... my thoughts tumbled over themselves.
One of the guys i was walking with to Mosaic said "it must be so difficult to be a police officer picking up the same people again and again and not get a hard heart..."
I started to hum to myself as we walked. "...the Lord is gracious and compassionate slow to anger and quick in Love..."

How easy it is to get a hard heart and walk in the opposite direction of the hurt, the broken, but we find that Jesus went to the center of that pain and had compassion, loved and lived in our midst. It is in the middle of all the darkness that we see the light of God's kingdom here on earth...a hopeful cry for mercy and reconciliation. There is a song we sing here written by Tom Wuest that speaks to this same heart, inviting Jesus to come into the center of us and establish His Kingdom on earth here in the deepest dark. We cry out for not our own selves alone but for the world.
"For the hungry we cry out for your mercy
For the hurting we cry out for your mercy

come Jesus come, come Jesus Come.
May Your kingdom come on earth
as it is in heaven.
Come Lord, come.

For the waring we cry out for your mercy
For the dying we cry out for your mercy."

i roll over in bed trying not to get mad at the people outside my window who have been shouting for the past half hour. Before frustration sinks in, my thoughts are directed to the psalm we read in evening prayer just a few hours earlier. I lay thinking halfway between sleep and being awake. all i want to do is roll over and go back to sleep, but i sense the prompting to get up and write down my thoughts about this Psalm 26.
I spent the Next three and a half hours writing and praying through the thoughts. I don't know why the Lord had me do it (maybe it would not have made such an impression if i had not written it), but as i was writing the last bit down the computer does what it is inevitably going to do periodically--it shut down and lost the three hours of writing...
You have been spared a really lengthy update. Maybe it was for me, maybe to come out ate some other time.
In summary the thoughts went along these lines:
First, The psalm opens up by seeming to boast with how unwavering, and how pure and holy David thinks he is, but a closer look will find that he is saying God has set His ways in front of David to Love and His faithfulness; David is saying i see it and i walk in the direction that God heart goes with a whole determination of mind soul and Body.

Second, David is saying that he doesn't fool himself into thinking that doing things for His gain, or say one thing and then do whatever he wants; he doesn't allow himself even the opportunity to be mixed up with them. (a bunch of my reflections were on this section. The people most commonly thought of as the group this section talks about are the "non-believers" the people who do the drugs, who fill our prisons, who take advantage of the Charity that "good" people give, who sell their bodies and get polluted with alcohol...you know what i mean. But i don't think that is the crowd this section is talking about being far away from. --if these were them then what am i doing here in the DTES because a large percentage of the people i hang with would fall into these categories. But what about those who say...this is the way of God follow me, and yet it is hard to find any trace of the Faithful and loving God that David sees, what about those who say i see where God is moving, or promise to take care of the poor and oppressed that God loves and then abandons these commitments and insights to do what they want and what will be comfortable for themselves, trying to compromise and say that doing half of God's will is good enough, or those who do good and care for the needy during Christmas and Easter, in order to pat themselves on the back and say i am a good person i have given to the poor but don't do anything for the other 363days of the year, or the people who God pushes on their heart to get out there and minister to the poor, but decide instead to give their money to a shelter and say that is good enough without getting dirty or meeting the the people face to face....) Just some thoughts...

Third, David says that his putting into action the heart He sees in God, gives him an innocence that he can "go around the alter". This to me i saw as a beautiful picture, because the alter is why most people came to the temple, but if he is going around the alter he has come to the place where he can by pass the place of constantly needing to ask for things and ask for blessings, but to a place of dwelling in the presence and enjoying just seeing the presence of God...to tell of God's wondrous acts...The active heart of God in Daily practice, in the faces and people he meets, for there is where the Glory of the Lord dwells.

Fourth, He realizes that this Love and faithfulness and God's grace is what he needs too. He is not above any other but is in as much need as the next person...blessed to be a blessing.

The voices of the people outside my window are the voices of the people who are created to carry the image of God. May all things be reconciled and made holy in Him by the blood of the Lamb Jesus, so that we may go past the alter and dwell in the presence of the Lords Heart being active and rejoicing in the Miracles of our God. May we be continually made into the image of Jesus--the word of God that dwelt among us

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYBODY!!

I had someone ask if we celebrate Christmas... Yeah, we crazy people do celebrate Christmas Anything to celebrate , after all-it is one of the Five values !
We try not to celebrate the birth of Jesus in the normal rushing around, focus on gifts and how busy you can be but rather to reflect on God's heart and why he sent Jesus as a baby. There was a friend of the community who got together about 12 people to do a bit of a prophetic act in one of the malls. They wanted to call attention to the reason for the season (and how the meaning is lost in all the hubbub of buying and consumerism; buying the perfect gift for the person in your life who has everything, when really the majority of us in our culture have everything we need already...
So this group wanted to do something that would call people to slow down and maybe remind them this is a time for reflecting on God's goodness and grace to send Jesus... In order to show how fast everyone was going they went slow. REALLY Slow. They simply started at on end of the mall and walked to the other, but they went slow. I don't know how slow they went but it was slow enough that the security guards got pretty upset. They told our friends to leave, and they responded "...that is what we are doing, we are on our way out." They said, but go faster!!! The guards even went up to the people who were just watching, and from everyone that had taken photos--they deleted the pictures from their cameras!! can you believe that! A huge mall and only twelve people just walking slow, not stopping anybody from doing what they want to do, could get such a aggressive response. What a prophetic act in our society and culture.

Last night at Creative World Justice we went through the scriptures looking at the ways the prophets and their prophetic acts, The responses were hardly ever great, but they did the word of the Lord like the Lord wanted. Such creativity too! there must have been a lot of unhappy onlookers when Jeremiah buried his loin cloth 400 miles away and then turned right back around to get it walking 1600 miles in total in just a loin cloth --or naked. Or the laughter that must have occurred at the absurdity of choosing to lay on one side for 390 days just to roll over and do another 40 on the other side.

Doing the absurd and the creative to make the points that God lays on our hearts is a powerful image and continuation of the creative voice of God through his people. There is a strange freedom to find that though i don't always have words, but that i do have a voice in different ways; actions sometimes speak louder than words. (like that day in the mall).

Merry Christmas to all of you, and may we remember the prophetic side of Jesus being sent as a baby; the King available to the least by starting life amongst manure and hay, and the first visitors being sheep herders.

Little Mountain and Artists

I went painting at Little Mountain Apartments last Sunday. Here is a link to some of the images( mine included) :
www.photobucket.com/littlemountain
Also here is a write up about it:

Backgrounder: Little Mountain Art-In/tervention

Last Sunday, working in a chill wind under sunny skies, 50 people painted.

More than 50 pieces of art created by professional and amateur artists will go on exhibit starting Monday, December 15, at the Little Mountain Housing complex. The paintings are mounted on the boarded-up windows of vacant apartments slated for demolition during the next few months.

The artists include professionals like Tiko Kerr as well as current and former residents of the complex and their children. Kerr has contributed silhouette representations of former tenants forced to displace other families on BC Housing’s 14,000-name wait list.

Monday’s event will include an opportunity to interview artists, a tour of the paintings on display, opportunities to see the interiors of the homes of the some of the 16 families who remain on site, and the appearance of Santa Claus above one of the boarded-up doorways.

The artists’ goal is a re-opening of the 15-acre site to ease Vancouver’s housing crisis, which is becoming more and more severe as overnight temperatures drop to –10. B.C. Housing Minister Rich Coleman intends to demolish the 224 homes within the next few months. At the earliest, redevelopment would start in 2011 and perhaps much later, yet the homes could be refurbished at a modest cost to house at least 700 of the thousands of people living on the streets and others in desperate need of affordable housing. The refurbishing could begin immediately and the homes kept open until new construction is ready to begin.

The provincial government has pledged to replace the lost social housing units, but not to increase their numbers. CALM wants the entire site to be used for housing for people with low and modest incomes.

Lisa Hawthorne from Dublin, Ireland, kneeled over a 4x5-foot piece featuring the Vancouver skyline and a lost child. “I came here 3 months ago and right away saw how bad the housing is here. There’s housing problems in Ireland, but…I felt I had to do something.”

Tiko Kerr said: “Building social housing and ending homelessness are our greatest social challenges,” said Kerr. “I felt I had to get involved.” Kerr, other participants, Opus Art Supplies and Benjamin Moore Paints donated materials for the Art-In.

Several of the 16 families still living at Little Mountain participated in the Art-In despite concern they might antagonize their landlord, BC Housing. Sammy Chang, 75 years and virtually blind, contributed two sheets of Chinese calligraphy and an English translation by the daughter of his neighbour, Pen Ke Mi. His dry, warm basement is where many of the Art-In works were stored to dry.

“This art event marks the importance of supported and affordable housing and the absurdity of tearing Little Mountain down during the city's housing crisis," said Barry Growe of Community Advocates for Little Mountain Housing (CALM).