The Deserving Poor

Not long ago, I read a blog that raised an interesting question: why do Christians and churches in North America tend to give more to the poor overseas (especially to Africa and to places where natural disasters have occurred) than to the poor in their own cities?

Robb Davis, the writer of the blog I read, thinks it has very little to do with the fact that overseas poor people are poorer than our poor people.  He thinks it has more to do with the fact that we generally see overseas poor people as deserving, and our own poor people as undeserving, or at least less deserving.  I tend to agree.

Whether or not we care to admit it, I think we all have a subconscious scale of who really deserves our help (money, mission trips, prayers, attention).  It probably looks something like this:

MOST DESERVING

Children born into poverty in third-world countries

Victims of natural disasters
Adults in third-world countries
Prostituted women in other countries, trafficked into North America
Children born into poverty in North America
Adults in North America who have lost their jobs due to the recession
Adults in North America who have never had stable jobs
Prostituted women born in North America
Drug addicts
Drug dealers and other criminals
Sex offenders

LEAST DESERVING 

Ok, maybe that list is splitting hairs a bit.  But I do think we have this natural tendency to decide who deserves our help based on how much we think their choices led them into their circumstances, that is to say, based on how much we think their poverty is their fault. Children in Africa definitely didn't choose to be born into malnourished, war-torn environments where they will receive little education and few opportunities.  We have no qualms about helping them.  Natural disasters are nobody's fault (or the developed world's fault, if you consider climate change), so we're definitely supposed to help those people.  Trafficked women were kidnapped or tricked into prostitution, so they're deserving - the worst we could accuse them of is naivete.


But prostitutes in my neighbourhood?  The popular opinion is that they're choosing to do that work.  And probably choosing it because they need to fund their drug addictions, and it's their fault that they're addicted.  No one forced them to do drugs.  And look at all the social assistance programs and advantages they have!  They get an education and plenty of opportunities like everyone else in North America.  So if they're still poor, obviously they lack initiative; they're just working the system, choosing to remain poor and taking welfare money from hard-working middle class people.  Why would we enable their bad choices by giving them more hand-outs?

This sounds harsh, and most of us don't go that far in our thinking, but believe me, when I am dumb enough to read the comments on online news articles about the DTES, I see far more scathing opinions about the poor people in my neighbourhood. 

I have begun to learn the real meaning of "choice" in the midst of the oppressive and degrading structural inequity that most people in my neighbourhood face.  Just this week I met a woman, who has likely been prostituted, in recovery for her addiction, using our hard-earned tax dollars.  She shared with me that she had been in twenty-four different foster homes over the course of her life.  Yes, she got an education... in fourteen different schools.  "Never really fit anywhere," she said.  No kidding.  The choices she has had to make and odds she has overcome just to get into recovery far outweigh any of my good life choices as a middle-class, stable-familied Masters-educated white girl.



So in light of this, who deserves our help? Who deserves our love? Who deserves our self-sacrificial giving?

In her book "Jesus Freak," Sara Miles tells a story about hosting a group of grade four kids at her church's food pantry program, and some of the questions they raised. They were concerned that some people who came to get food didn't really need it, or were cheating and taking too much. Like many adults, these kids didn't want anyone to take advantage of the church's generosity. Here's what Sara writes:

      "I talked with the kids about the idea of “taking advantage,” explaining that it was impossible to be taken advantage of as long as you were giving something away without conditions. “If it's a trade, than it's fair or unfair,” I said. “But if I'm going to give it to you anyway, not matter what you do, then you can't take advantage of me.”
     “How many of you have ever taken the best piece for yourself, or stolen something?” I asked, raising my own hand. Slowly, every hand went up.
     “How many of you have ever been generous and given something away?” Every hand went up.
     “Yeah,” I said, “You know, poor people cheat and steal and are really annoying. Just like rich people. Just like you. And poor people are generous and kind and help strangers. Just like rich people. Just like you.... In my church, we say that judgment belongs to God, not to humans. So that makes things a lot easier for us. We don't have to decide who deserves food.” (37)

I think Sarah Miles is on to something here. All of us do beautiful things and awful things, simply by virtue of being human. Yes, poor people in Canada cheat and steal. Poor people in Africa also cheat and steal, as I just confirmed in a conversation with a friend of mine who works in Darfur. Regardless of nationality, people who have been repeatedly abandoned and betrayed by others get used to cheating and stealing to survive. And yes, rich people cheat and steal, in ways that are often rewarded by society. All of us are sinners and letdowns, even the "noble" poor in the World Vision commercials. It's just that we're close enough to the poor in Canada to see their shadow sides. And they're close enough to make us feel very uncomfortable and guilty, and we can't just change the channel to push them out of our view.

Now, I do think we need to think carefully about the ways we try to help the poor, whether they're here or overseas, because our methods can often decrease their dignity and self-worth and increase their predisposition to want to cheat the system. Peter Maurin, a good friend of Dorothy Day's, said that we need to strive to make the kind of society in which it is easier for people to be good. This is a society in which we assume the best of one another, strive to see the image of God in one another, draw out each other's gifts and skills, love each other unconditionally over the long term, and uphold each other's dignity. In that society, no one will want to cheat the system, because they will belong; they will know they are needed, and they will have what they need.

This past Wednesday night at our worship service at Jacob's Well, a friend of mine did something that is really quite strange. She drew a cross on my forehead with ashes and told me that I was made of dust, and that one day I would die. She did the exact same thing to everyone in the circle, all of us, rich and poor... all of us bags of ashes and water, all of us sinners and sinned-against, all of us selfish screw-ups... all of us unable to be good on our own, unable even to sustain our own lives... all of us undeserving...

...all of us created in the image of God, the grateful recipients of unearned and undeserved grace, of each new day and each next breath...all of us empowered and sent to care for one another and to share with one another and to be healed and sanctified together. 

So, all of us - let's share what we have with everyone who needs it, in Africa, in Japan, in Canada, in the DTES, whether or not we think they deserve it.  And let's love each other so much that we want to be better people, in the knowledge that we'll never be good enough to deserve the love and grace God seems to want to keep lavishing on us.

The tale of an up-and-coming fancy dancer

Every Monday night since July, I have been trying out a new activity: First Nations traditional dance classes.

(Well, it hasn't been every Monday night... I took a bit of a break from dance after I stepped on a sea urchin while on vacation, but that's for another blog entry.) 


I will say this up front: I am the whitest regular attender of the drop-in class.  Last Monday, several new people joined us, so we did the customary go-around-the-circle-and-say-your-name thing, but we were also asked to share our tribal background.  There were Miqmaqs and Plains Crees, two Squamish girls, a Haida woman, a Gitxzan, and a few people from Tsawwassen nation.  When it was my turn, I said, "I'm Beth, and I am British/Irish/Swedish/Czech."

I am not only the whitest dancer, but also possibly the dancer with the least natural talent for dance.  Sure, I can move in time with a piece of music, but I have always lacked the confidence required to do it creatively and convincingly.  For much of my life, I have avoided school dances, and have made awkward small talk with other non-dancers during wedding receptions.


My whiteness and my lack of dance training combined to produce a fair amount of anxiety the first night I headed out toward the Vancouver Aboriginal Friendship Centre for dance class. As I walked, I rehearsed the reasons why I was going.

I need exercise.
The Friendship Centre is only a fifteen-minute walk from my house.  
The classes are free.

Those reasons were convincing (especially the last one, on a low-income pastor's budget), but they could apply to a lot of other potential activities.  They were not adequate to get me through the doors of the Friendship Centre.

I was invited to the class.  That was a better reason.  The teacher, who was fancy dancing at a National Aboriginal Day celebration put on by a local church, had invited the whole crowd to come to her class.  But I could still rationalize that the invitation wasn't specifically intended for a white non-dancer like me.

I tried to think of another reason.  I love to watch fancy dancing.  Fancy dancing drew me in from the first time I saw it, in Saskatoon, during my undergrad years.  I watched, dumbstruck, as the colorful ribbons of the dancers' shawls spun around them.  They seemed to spend more time in the air than on the ground, traveling by tiptoe, their feet stepping deftly, as though the grass under them were actually a bed of hot coals. Perhaps if I enjoyed watching it, I would also enjoy doing it.  Still, I had little faith I could reproduce such beautiful and free movement.

Thankfully, there was one more reason I had for learning to fancy dance, and this was the reason that pushed me over the edge: I believe I have a responsibility to protect and appreciate the cultures of my brothers and sisters, especially if those cultures have been denigrated, or threatened with assimilation and extinction. 


I co-pastor a predominantly low-income First Nations congregation in a neighbourhood that is home to one of Canada's largest off-reserve Aboriginal populations.  About a century ago, my people tried to take away the dances of their peoples; we called them evil and outlawed them in the name of Jesus.  We tried to rob them of many of the ways they worshiped their Creator and expressed their uniqueness.  We cut their hair, changed their names, and muted their languages.  It was only by their ingenuity and collective memory that they kept these cultural elements alive.  Today, some First Nations languages and practices are still very much in danger of extinction.

I have a responsibility to protect these cultures by virtue of being human, but even more so as a human who claims to follow Christ.  I believe that what my people did was sinful and unjust.  My Creator loves variety and values culture.  His plan for humanity is not for us to merge into a monoculture, but for all the kings and nations of the earth to march (or maybe dance!) into the holy city in our glorious diversity, bringing all our splendor (Rev. 21:24).

I did not think that learning to fancy dance would in any way undo the damage caused by my people.  I did, however, hope that it would take me a few steps closer to appreciating and understanding the beautiful culture I sought to protect in the name of Christ.  Besides, the slight discomfort and embarrassment I might feel as a white girl in dance class would, at most, be a small taste of the many marginalizing experiences most First Nations people face daily.

It turned out that my first dance class wasn't nearly as awkward as I expected.  Rather than explaining the steps, the teacher stood in front of me and demonstrated them over and over, which is a typically First Nations way of teaching.  She told me to keep trying them for the next hour of dancing.  I left exhausted but exhilarated.  It took me a full month to get a feel for the heartbeat of the drum, and many more months before I was able to combine the steps more creatively.  Now, I notice myself loosening up and relaxing.  I am even making a couple of friends. 

I am always ready to share my reasons for learning to fancy dance.  Yet to this day, not a single person at dance class has asked me why a pale-faced redhead would keep showing up.  Maybe in the future they will pop the question, but for now, they simply accept me as a fellow learner, laughing complaining with me during the warm-up abdominal exercises, and poking fun at me when I fail once again to anticipate the ending of a song.  It is a privilege to be so welcomed, and to work with them to preserve and promote something so beautiful.

Watch for me on the pow wow circuit years down the road.  I'll be the one blinding you with my white skin and my boss moves.

A video of one of my teachers fancy dancing.

Remembering Ricky

I don't want all of my blog posts to be about friends who have passed away, but, well, there's been a bunch of them lately.  Tonight, we're having a memorial for Ricky Lavallie.  Ricky was probably the closest and dearest DTES friend I've lost yet.  His death took a whole day to sink in (not to mention we didn't hear about it until 3 weeks after it happened), and I found myself weeping before falling asleep that night, remembering him and wishing we'd had more time together.

photo by Murray Bush - I hope he's ok with me using it everywhere - it's the best one!

I met Ricky a couple of years ago... maybe it wasn't even that long.  He would come into Jacob's Well on Fridays for our coffee hour.  He was a big Cree man, hunched over with his head sunken into his shoulders.  He lumbered slowly along the sidewalk with a bit of a sideways lean.  He always wore a ball cap and a leather jacket and sweatpants, and he never smelled very good. ;)

I remember the first time I really talked to him... he called me over and said I was "the only one who could pray for him."  This happened several times.  While I reassured him that everyone was capable of praying, not just those on staff or those known as pastors, I still enjoyed being chosen to lift up his requests, which were usually related to problems on his reserve back in Manitoba.  He focused particularly on First Nations children and suicide.

Over time, he opened up about his own childhood, and how his brother was killed with a cattle prod when they were both very young, at the residential school they were both forced to attend.  It never made sense to me how someone carrying so much church-inflicted pain could still be so eager to pray to God.  Ricky somehow figured out God was a God of justice, and that this God called him to share his story and fight against continuing injustices.  He lived out at Occupy Vancouver full-time only a month before he died.  He could endear himself to anyone, from anarchists to Christian conservatives.


About a year ago, Ricky started bringing his guitar to coffee time at Jacob's Well.  "His guitar" was always changing - I don't know if I ever saw him with the same guitar twice, and though he'd always say the last one was stolen, I'm pretty sure they were in and out of the pawn shop.  Ricky played with a barred finger in open D, which is easier than learning chords, but his skill came in that he could immediately figure out the chords for almost any song, and he could pick out the melody on the high frets, too.  He'd play with the guitar resting on his big belly, hunched over, eyes often closed.

He would jam with whoever wanted to play with him.  In fact, I think music didn't mean much to him unless it drew people around him.  I can't really picture him playing alone in his room.  He'd play on Commercial Drive, busking for money.  He'd play at all of the DTES Christian gatherings and missions and community centers and protests.  He'd play whatever he thought people would want to hear and sing along to, from worship songs, to gospel, to country, to blues.  His favorite was bluegrass.  He'd often make up songs on the spot, singing about whoever and whatever was near him, working in all sorts of humour and little joking insults.  My favorite songs to do with him were "I'll fly away" and "Ring of Fire" and "Folsom Prison Blues."

I miss you, Ricky.
I miss playing the chords while you riffed on the melody.
I miss tuning my guitar to open D so you could play it.
I miss the way you'd say "Jesus" when you prayed to him.
I miss your banter with Gary.  "Ask Gary..."
I miss you referring to people in the third person even though they were right there. 
I miss you asking "Where's Beth?" when I was in the office, and you wanted me to come to the table.
I miss making you posters to advertise your concerts.
I miss you asking when the next group of "young people" was coming in, so you could come meet them.
I miss the way you gathered people.
I miss your playful teasing.
I miss your threats to "bannock slap" me.  I'm glad I never found out what that felt like.


I wish I could have given you all those guitar picks I'd been collecting for you.  They were still in my pocket the day I found out you'd died.  


I wish we could have found a Santa costume so you could be our Santa at our Christmas tea, like you wanted.  It's ok though, we had a good time with those carols.



Remember the time when you played worship songs with us out on the Hastings sidewalk at the end of our Welfare Wednesday party in August, as the sun set over the old hotels, and the sky turned pink?


Remember when you surprised all of us by joining in on our dance party at Creative World Justice?  You were "party rocking" with the best of us, glowsticks stuck in your ball cap?


Remember playing old worship songs around the campfire at the same festival?  We stayed up until all hours of the night because you wouldn't let any of us leave.  You were in your prime.

Remember when you drew a picture of a buffalo dance, and drew a face in the sun, and told me I was the sun?


Remember when I came to speak at RAW, and I was still recovering from pneumonia, and you wouldn't let me go up and talk until you got a few people I didn't know to pray for me?

Thank you for being my elder and my friend.  
Thank you for sharing yourself with me.  
We will keep fighting your fights and singing your songs.
(We're gonna sing up a storm tonight, in your honour, you'll see!)
 
We'll see you soon, buddy,
hallelujah by and by.

Selma

I have lost a lot of friends on the DTES in the last couple months.  I don't always know how to grieve them, because sometimes their deaths are bittersweet.  A lot of them carry a lot of pain, and I'm glad to finally see an end to the pain.  But I miss them.

Selma was more of an acquaintance than a friend.  She passed away a few days ago.  As I've been remembering her this week, I started working on a poem about one morning I spent with her.  I have struggled over whether or not to share it online.  My hesitancy in posting it is that I don't want to sentimentalize or sensationalize her.  She was much more than this moment I had with her; she was a whole lifetime of moments.  In the end, I decided to post it because I want to try to let you in more on some of my experiences on the DTES.  I want to do so in a way that humanizes and does not exploit or commodify my friendships.  I really hope this is one such way.


Selma

today,

      she was calm

didn't remember me

asked for my name

first and last

she's named for her aunt

but her mom's name is Katherine.

I fixed her coffee.

      she was distracted

repeating little things

lipstick lips pursed

all whispers and mumbles

not looking at me

eyes fixed on her red Converses

thoughts a world away.

I watched her.

      she was delicate

slender fingers like a dancer's

small controlled movements

painting her fingernails

with invisible brushes

what colour? I asked

green

green like my dad's eyes

trailing off.

I couldn't make it all out.

      she was lost

her hand

her newly-painted nails

moving up her bare scarred arm

her thumb closing in on two fingers

an invisible plunger

my mom taught me

how to do powder

showing me

instructing me

delicate and careful

over and over

but my mom said

don't do it every day.

I didn't say anything.

      she was content

loved the room

loved the fireplace

said she wished she could

be 

in here

all the time.

Joy Will Find A Way

I just heard the bells ring at the Russian Orthodox church down the block.  It's Christmas.

My Advent season has been spent mostly with folks who wait not with eager expectation of Christmas, but with a certain amount of dread, because of the grief and loneliness that are so much more palpable during the holidays.

One woman said she tried to come up with a project to do in the last week of December so she didn't have to think about Christmas. Several others told me they didn't celebrate. It was just a time of year to be endured.

Last year this caught me off guard. I was accustomed to approaching Christmas with nostalgic, warm, fuzzy feelings. I didn't know what to do with my friends in the DTES who struggled to find reason for hope. I didn't know what to do with my own grief, as it was the first time in my life I'd missed the Christmas Eve service at Emmanuel Baptist in Saskatoon. Rain poured down on our poorly-attended church service in the DTES, and I longed for the familiar.

This year, I let myself enter into the grief a little earlier. I participated in several 'Blue Christmas' services that my colleague Al led in the DTES, where we provided space for less-than-merry emotions people were experiencing. People could light candles for loved ones they missed, or for other pain they carried, and we remembered together that the Creator held our stories, and would not leave us.

Tonight, we did our church Christmas Eve service. We were blessed with nicer weather, and we partnered with another community, so there were more people, and a real tone of celebration. I was grateful. We closed our service with a song we've been singing at church throughout Advent: "Soon and very soon, we are going to see the King". We inserted our own longings... "no more dying there... No more violence there... No more loneliness... We are going to see the King!". We remembered together that just as Christ came as a child to inaugurate his kingdom, he will come again and wipe away every tear, and bring total shalom. Nothing will be missing or broken. No one will be missing or broken.

I want to share one more song with you. At the end of each of the Blue Christmas services, Al played this song, by Bruce Cockburn, called 'Joy will find a way'. It's a song about death, but it has also become a Christmas song for me. This is the hope I cling to for myself, for my friends, and for any of you who may carry grief or disappointment or illness or family brokenness this Christmas. Whether we are blessed to taste this now, or whether we must continue to wait, know this... Longing will become love, night will turn to day, everything changes, joy will find a way.

Soon and very soon.

May this dangerous, inextinguishable hope break through the darkness for you, especially today.

This band I like.

So I was changing my laundry, and I found a glow stick in the dryer, among the clothes.  And I thought, I'd like to switch up the tone of the blog for a change, and write about Dave Matthews Band.

Over the Labor Day weekend, my roommates and I drove down to the Gorge Amphitheatre, which is in the desert plateau of central Washington, about halfway between Seattle and Spokane.  Kat was about to turn 30, and her birthday request was for us four to spend the weekend camping and enjoying concerts for three days and nights at the Dave Matthews Band Caravan.  

I've been listening to Dave Matthews Band for a good chunk of my life now - in fact, when I met Danice six years ago, they were one of the only bands in my collection that Danice actually approved of. :)  Seeing DMB live has been on my bucket list for some time.  It turned out this was the perfect year to cross it off.  DMB plays the Gorge every Labor Day weekend, but this time, for the first time, they brought about 20 other bands with them.  I particularly enjoyed John Butler Trio, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes, Devotchka, and the Roots.

The Gorge was breathtaking.  You walk up a road and over a hill to see a huge bowl-shaped stretch of grass covered in picnic blankets and people, with another huge crowd of people standing on the ground below them in front of an enormous stage, and behind everything, there's this beautiful backdrop of rocky plateaus, water, and sky.  This photo I stole off the internet doesn't do it justice.

Every day we woke up in our tents to the sounds of frat boys playing beer pong and hippies dancing and smoking.  We relaxed in the mornings, went to the amphitheatre after lunch to watch bands play all afternoon under the hot hot sun, and then stayed for a Dave Matthews Band concert every evening, with about 20, 000 people in attendance.  They performed three nights, three hours each, which means we experienced over nine hours of live Dave Matthews music, ten if you include the incredible acoustic hour of just Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds we watched one afternoon.  Ten hours is a lot for one band.  You'd think they would either run out of music or that we'd get tired of them.  But when we left the Gorge that final night, there were still songs we wished they had done.

Dave Matthews Band is possibly the best live band I've ever seen.  Here's what makes them great:

- No two live shows are the same, because the band members all do so much improvising.  Some of their songs had intros, musical interludes, or outros that were several minutes long, each featuring one or two instrumentalists who would play around with melodies, harmonies and rhythms on top of the chord structure of the song.  Dave loves to step back and let his band members take the spotlight.  Sometimes the band members will play off each other, making eye contact, smiling, showing respect for each other's skills, and pushing one another to play more difficult licks.

- Their songs and their style are unique.  The band mixes acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bass, drums, violin, trumpet and saxophone, which makes them hard to classify in terms of genre.  They have unusual chord progressions, time signatures, and melodies in their songs.  The lyrics are rarely straightforward or obvious - they take some unpacking, and I like that.

- Their songs take you somewhere.  They have the ability to capture a mood and sustain it, and then take you into another mood in the bridge, and bring you back again, if necessary.  On the second night, they played my favorite song (possibly of all time), “Bartender”, which is a classic example of this, a song about redemption, with God playing the role of a bartender. It starts off with a simple, straightforward, powerful riff, builds in passion and intensity on the chorus, then hits a climax with this pleading, chanting, wordless bit that Dave does with his voice, and the band takes over, slowly winding down to a peaceful, grace-filled ending on the tin whistle. 

- The individual band members are very strange, eccentric, "un-hip" people.  It’s hilarious watching Boyd, this ripped black man playing or plucking a tiny violin, flinging his dreadlocks and contorting his mouth when he plays.  Tim can shred with the best of them on the electric guitar, but he's such a small man that he looks like a kid playing with his dad's instruments.  Dave moves his eyebrows strangely and dances spasmodically when he plays his guitar. But they don’t seem to care- they’re confident in their weirdness, lost in the music, uninhibited. And this makes them very hip, perhaps hipper than hip.

- The glow sticks.  This is apparently a "thing" at Dave Matthews concerts, and I know some people don't like it, and it could get old, but I thought it was magical.  People brought tons and tons of  glow sticks to the concert, and they'd throw them up all in the air at an appropriately epic moment in a song, creating a firework effect.  Sometimes when the band started a song that everyone was excited about, you'd see glow stick fireworks exploding all over the place.  Then people would gather the ones that fell near them and throw them all over again.  On the last night, everyone started connecting the glow sticks into a long snake, which wound itself slowly all around the amphitheatre.

In conclusion, they are a lot of fun to watch.  Kat, thanks for turning 30, and thanks for choosing such a great participatory gift for yourself!

Identity, Pride, Justice and the Church

Two events happened last weekend, and as I have been reflecting on them, I've had thoughts.  And when I have thoughts, as you know, I tend to write them here.

Event 1: Vancouver Pride Week.  This is a time when Vancouver celebrates gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered (GLBT) people.  Some of the events are over-sexualized, but in its best moments, Pride Week shows a marginalized group reclaiming pride in a deep and often denigrated part of their identity. 

Event 2: the Wiconi Family Camp and Pow Wow just south of Salem, Oregon.  This is where I went last weekend with 16 people from my church.  Richard Twiss (whom I quoted in my recent post about Aboriginal day) and his colleagues at Wiconi are all about removing barriers and building bridges to help First Nations people find abundance and life in God.  They affirm, respect and embrace First Nations culture as God-given.  They have been running this yearly family camp and pow wow for six years.

It was a great time of bonding for us as a church family, and also brought a lot of "firsts" for me:  first time drumming around a group drum at a pow wow; first time trying out my fancy dance moves in some intertribal pow wow songs; first time doing a sweat in a sweat lodge.  I also got to meet a lot of First Nations people and hear their stories.  Richard introduced the weekend by telling us that we're all two-legged stories, and that we should try to be good readers.  There were common veins running through the "stories" I "read": Native people finding God; being told by Christian leaders that in order to be true Christians they had to leave their culture behind; and experiencing shame and disorientation.  One woman from LA came to the camp for the first time, with her daughter.  She had recently been told by people in her church that her daughter should stop learning First Nations dances.  After a time of wrestling and confusion, on a whim, she googled "Christian pow wow" and found the Wiconi website.  She arrived at family camp after 24 hours of driving (lots of construction and traffic), still confused and unsure of what to think about her culture and her faith, and how to raise her little girl.

As I listened to more and more stories like hers, I couldn't help thinking of Pride week in Vancouver, and the very similar experiences of GLBT people in the church.  Both Native and GLBT Christians know the depth of pain in having fellow Christians suggest or imply that they should be ashamed of a fundamental part of who they are.

I know that some people will take issue with me comparing someone's race to someone's sexual orientation, in terms of how "essential" they are to identity, or how "changeable" they are.  One's race is obviously very essential to one's identity, and impossible to alter.  But I believe one's sexuality, though perhaps not equal to one's race in these respects, is at least comparable.  While sexuality is complex, depending on many genetic and developmental factors, I feel I can safely say that we don't usually choose our sexual orientation, and we can't usually change it.  Our sexuality is about more than just who we want to have sex with; sexuality interacts deeply with many parts of who we are, like our creativity, our friendships, our ways of expressing ourselves and relating to the world.  And from the evidence I've seen, efforts to change a same-sex orientation into a heterosexual one have rarely been successful, though those who are highly motivated can learn to live celibately or in mixed-orientation marriages.  For the many who have been forced (or who forced themselves) through these programs, the only thing that has changed is an ever-deepening sense of shame, similar to the shame felt by Native children in residential schools as well-meaning Christians tried in vain to change them into white children.  

At one point in my weekend, a Hopi woman at the camp cried out to God: "God, the people in Your church tell us that You created us in Your image, yet they can't love us for who we are."  Hearing her pain made me more convinced than ever that it is unjust and cruel for the church to make any group of people feel like they're disqualified from having been made in the image of God, or from experiencing the love and welcome of God.  It is cruel to suggest to these people that the only way to qualify as image-bearers or people worthy of God's love is to deny, hide, or alter a deep, undeniable and unchangeable part of their personhood.  Even the much more subtle "Don't ask, Don't tell" attitude in the church around sexuality is cruel, because it is another way of forcing people into hiding.  Jesus modelled a different way.  Jesus seemed almost magnetically drawn to the people the religious leaders threw out, those who carried the most shame, and he loved them until the shame slid right off of them and they remembered who they were again.

I know it's not easy.  There are theological issues we will have to work through.  There are the challenges of culture: figuring out what is syncretistic and idolatrous, and what is good and useful for worship.  There are the challenges of sexuality: figuring out what is impure and selfish, and what is beautiful and self-giving.  In the introduction to Richard Twiss' book, John Dawson, a white friend of Richard's, wrote this: "Far be it from me to comment on the complex cultures I see all around me.  It is up to indigenous believers themselves to separate the precious from the worthless in their cultures.  They know the Bible well and they know their cultures well."  I witnessed this thoughtful, prayerful discernment happening around me at the Wiconi gathering.  I'd like to see us say the same thing to GLBT Christians - to admit that same-sex-attracted Christians are the most qualified people to discern what in their sexuality is sinful, and what God delights in.  This is difficult work, and they will need the church's love, support and trust as they discern together.  They may choose to ask the rest of the church for help, but the work needs to begin and end with them, and so far, this has not often been the case.

At the Wiconi camp, I saw many signs of hope.  I saw First Nations people who had discovered God's delight in their cultural expressions, who were released to worship Him out of the fullness of their identity.  I saw strong people who had moved through suffering to a place of forgiving and blessing the very Christians who had hurt them.  I saw elders surround the woman from LA and her daughter at the pow wow, welcoming them into their family, honouring them with a special drum song, sending the little girl dancing joyfully ahead of them, in full regalia.  I saw the re-integration of these people's essential identity, their belovedness as children of God, with all the other God-given aspects of their personhood.  It brought tears to my eyes to see people move through depths of pain to depths of joy.

I believe that the way we treat First Nations and GLBT people are among the biggest justice issues in the Canadian church today.  As Christians, we must own our shameful involvement in residential schools, the suppression and near-obliteration of culture, and promotion of anti-gay sentiments, and we must begin to seek God's forgiveness and the forgiveness of these people.  Until we learn to radically welcome and support one another as Jesus did, vulnerable people will continue to live under burdens of shame and hate, and the church will be deeply impoverished for lack of their gifts and unique expressions of worship.  My prayer is that God will bring us back into the fullness of our identity as His beautifully diverse Bride.

Give away money ... save yourself!

One of the most common questions people ask me at our Jacob's Well workshops is whether I give money to panhandlers or beggars.  My thoughts have shifted on this topic over the last year, so I decided to try re-settle them into words and sentences.

Even though most Vancouverites who beg live in my neighbourhood, they don't beg as often here as they do in the downtown core, where all the money is, so I don't get asked for money nearly as much as people who work downtown.  (To be honest, I struggle more with whether to lend money to my low-income friends here on the DTES, whether the borrower-lender dynamic will strengthen or distort the friendship.)  Still, I probably get asked for money by strangers at least once a week. 

For most of my life, I thought it was best not to give money to panhandlers.  You can probably guess some of my reasons.  Giving away money to one person would not help solve any of the deep-seated root causes of poverty.   I didn't want to risk enabling or contributing to peoples' substance abuse and addictions.  I had also heard that many of them made more money begging than I did in my work at a non-profit organization.

In the last year, though, I have done some reading that has caused me to reconsider this, including this blog post by Emily Hunter McGowin (whom I don't know personally, but whose blog I somehow found), and a section in a book called Bent Hope by Tim Huff, who works with street youth in Toronto.  

Emily and Tim both know that money is a tricky thing.  Let's take a five-dollar bill.  In a physical sense, it's worth 500 cents, no matter what.  But in a spiritual sense, its value is changeable - it all depends on the circumstances and the state of our heart.  Jesus hints at this when he talks about the widow giving away her last two pennies (though I think he's really pointing out injustice and corruption in the church, but that's for another blog entry).  When given as an expression of deep generosity and surrender, like the widow's, the five-dollar bill can become priceless.  Dropped begrudgingly, guilt-laden, into a beggar's cup, it's worthless.  Clutched and loved, it's dangerous, the root of all kinds of evil; just when you think you're controlling it, you find it's controlling you. 


Let me use another example of the weird, changeable value of money.  Jacob's Well, where I work, is a non-profit community, depending entirely on the donations of churches and individuals to pay rent and staff salaries.  Essentially, we are beggars!  And yet as a community, Jacob's Well tithes every month, giving away 10% of what we get.  We recently gave some money to a non-profit that supports at-risk youth in Winnipeg, to encourage them.  One of the people on their staff was so blown away by this that she donated a similar amount online to Jacob's Well.  This is completely illogical!  Dollars and cents were sent eastward to them, and those same dollars and cents were wired back west to us.  A waste of time and energy, a zero sum, you might think.  But in Kingdom accounting, we both gained incredible amounts of encouragement through these mutual gifts, and we lost something important, too - we lost some of the hold money has on us.

Jesus says crazy things about money.  They're too straightforward, too easy to rationalize and spiritualize:

"Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you." - Matt 5:42 

"But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back." - Luke 6:35

Why does Jesus ask us to give in such broad, undiscriminating ways?  Certainly for the sake of the person who is in need.  But could there be another equally important reason?


Maybe, Emily suggests, it's for your own good.  For your own spiritual formation and protection.  Maybe it's because, as Emily puts it, you're a "greedy, covetous, materialistic, rich pig of a sinner who needs to be transformed."


Yes, we're supposed to be wise with the resources we're given to steward.  But I agree with Emily: I believe Christ calls us to be even wiser about the potential soul-numbing, blinding effect those resources have on us, especially in our current cultural situation.  Money itself is not evil - it is merely a tool.  But in the Western world, and yes, in the Western church, this tool is a pickaxe, and it's stuck deep in us, because we love it too much.  We love the comfort of money; we love the privilege of deciding how much of it to hoard, how much of it to spend, how little of it to give.  As a resource and a blessing, it's meant to flow freely and generously and joyfully through our fingers into the hands of those who actually need it, but it sticks and stays, covered in honey of our rationalizations.  We abuse and misuse the privilege of wealth, and I think Jesus knew we would.

I like to think money doesn't tempt me, doesn't exert control over me, but I know that it does.  So I've started taking Jesus a bit more literally, and giving it to complete strangers who ask me for it, without being able to define what they're allowed or not allowed to do with it.  (After all, my employer, who gave it to me, made no such demands.)  Sure, it might be used to buy drugs... but I cannot pretend that I have not also misused money to numb pain.  It also might be used to buy food.  It also might be given away to someone else, accruing even more spiritual value.  Jesus does not ask me to discover or legislate what it is used for; He asks only that I let go of it.

As I open my wallet to give to the stranger, my hands whisper to my heart this truth: This paper note, this metal coin - it doesn't belong to me, and it never did, and it never will.  I was only holding on to it for a while.  It doesn't own me.  It doesn't provide for me - my Creator does, and will continue to do so, as long as I follow his instructions about what to do with it.

So that's where I'm at... I'm giving to panhandlers because it feels like freedom, it feels like joy, and every time I do so, it pulls the pick-axe a millimeter further out of my heart, and washes a bit more honey off my hands. 





Post-script: If people are still concerned about strangers unwisely using money, here's some great counsel from Tim :  "Set aside a jar on your kitchen windowsill, or at the corner of your desk, and every time you have gently said "no" to a person panhandling, take the coin you decided not to give and put it in that jar.  And when the jar is filled donate it to a mission or outreach or program that you know will use the money well for those who are homeless.  Be released from the strife caused by the battling little voices in your head telling you it is a bad idea.  But do something that will at least dam the flooding hypocrisy of speaking this great concern and doing nothing."  (128)

Happy Aboriginal Day!

Today is National Aboriginal Day in Canada (as well as being the longest day of the year).  I have been on a steep learning curve in so many ways in the last few years, in terms of Aboriginal culture, history, and identity, and it's so good to be able to celebrate them today.

One of my god-daughters, Summer Breeze

I've been doing a lot of reading and thinking about First Nations people and the Church, and the history of the pain Christians have inflicted physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, even culturally by suppressing and even extinguishing many of their customs, dances, and languages in the name of Christ.  I am praying for justice, which will involve the laying down of our wealth, privilege, and lives, and reconciliation (actually, for a new "conciliation", as Jodi pointed out to me, since we messed things up so royally from the moment of first contact that we cannot look back to a time when things were conciliatory.)  I am praying especially for First Nations cultural expressions of worship to be recognized and honored in the Church, rather than avoided and shamed, and that through this, the Church will actually be a preserver of culture, rather than a destroyer of culture.

I leave you with a couple quotes from an excellent book I just read by Richard Twiss, "One Church Many Tribes":

Doesn't it seem reasonable to think that, after nearly five centuries of steady evangelism, at least two or three Native Americans would have emerged as significant leaders in the contemporary Church in America?...   "The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I don't need you!' And the head cannot say to the feet, 'I don't need you!'" (1 Cor. 12:21).  It may be difficult to hear or to accept, but I believe that because of clashing cultural worldviews, the Anglo expression of Christ and His Kingdom has said to the Native expression of Christ and His kingdom,  "I have no need of you.  I don't need your customs, your arts, your society, your language, concepts or perspectives."  If you look at a thing and cannot identify any value in it, you will have no perceived sense of need for it.  And if you have no need for it, then you get along without it. (58)

The Native community is to this day primarily viewed by Evangelicals as a needy but largely forgotten mission field, a group in need of receiving ministry.  The flow of ministry between the Anglo and Native churches is almost always in a top-down direction, a one-way flow of goods, services, ministry and resources from the Anglo church to the  "lower  " Native church.  I would love to see some of our Anglo church leaders, when asked to help a Native church, say,  "Yes, but on one condition: only if you will in turn send your pastors and leaders to come and equip us with the grace and gifting God has given you as Native people."  When that day comes, it will verify that we are seen by our Anglo brethren as equal collaborers in the mission of the Church.  (58)

In America today, the entire Church is suffering spiritually because of the suffering of the Native expression of the Body of Christ.  We cannot escape our connectedness in Christ, and we must comprehend the Lord's requirement upon us to be more aware of the overall condition of the Body, not just those more prominent parts. (61)

It is from observing the quality of our relationships with one another that non-Christians will arrive at the conclusion that there is reality in Jesus Christ.  How awesome it will be when skeptical non-Christian Natives are moved by envy at the sight of Native and Anglo folks loving, preferring, honoring, enjoying and serving one another!  I have witnessed relationships serving as the basis for reconciliation, as well as relationships arising from reconciliation.  Regardless of which comes first, our relationships are the bridges that will endure and over which great, loving armies of ministry can flow both ways - to and from God's First Nations people. (172)

Confessions

It's been a strange few weeks since Easter. Jacob's Well flooded (no, the irony is not lost on us), and the space is unusable for at least a month. My laptop has been broken for a few weeks, which is quite disorienting considering how often I usually use it. I participated in our denominational general assembly and the Regent pastor's conference, so I've been with a whole bunch of pastors and other church-y people, where I have felt both a sense of belonging and a sense of distance and disconnect. Friends are going through difficult times, and it's hard to know how to help, and to be present in the midst of their pain. And what has brought more grief than I would have expected was the death of our pet hedgehog last Sunday, after only a month of having him in our house.

It is still the Easter season, and I am looking for signs of life and hope, a good discipline especially when times are hard. There is life. There is green outside, and inside too, as Kat has been growing all sorts of plants for our garden. I can find things to be thankful for.

But in this generally raw and challenging time, when I feel weak and tired, confession is what flows most easily. I've been trying to write down some confessions, since the same old sins crop up over and over. I thought I'd share one I've been working on and adding to for a while now. Some of the ideas are shamelessly plagiarized from Dorothy Day and Shane Claiborne.


Lord,

For the times when I am overly impressed with myself,
imagining the biographies that will be written about me,
forgive me.

For the times when I am less gracious with myself than you are,
sinking into the ugly pit of self pity,
forgive me.

(For generally thinking too much about myself,
forgive me!)

For the days when you call me to be generous with my time and instead I am stingy,
hiding my laziness behind excuses like "taking care of myself,"
forgive me.

For the days when you call me to rest and be alone and instead I work,
hiding my compulsive "need to be needed" behind excuses like "this can't wait,"
forgive me.

When I let my impatience with the Church in the West harden into bitterness
instead of driving me to prayer and confession,
forgive me.

When I overexaggerate my own poverty,
and when I underestimate the challenges faced by wealthy Christians,
forgive me.

When I overestimate my spiritual strength,
and when I fail to let You shine through my weaknesses and vulnerabilities,
forgive me.

When I say beautiful things about kindness and grace to those on the margins,
but fail to show kindness and grace in my own home,
forgive me.

When I mentally compete with other pastors, non-profits, or communities,
focusing on where we differ rather than on how we fit together in the Body,
forgive me.

When I fail to mourn with those mourn,
but instead find secret reassurance that I'm not the only one with problems,
forgive me.

And above all,
when I lose hope in your kingdom,
when I lack faith in your power to do miraculous things,
(or when I try to dictate what those things should be
and exactly when and how they should happen,)
forgive me.

Teach me to wait in active hope for Your kingdom to transform the world.
Teach me to wait in active hope for Your kingdom to transform me.