Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

Tolstoy and the Mennonites -- by Brad Jersak

As part of the centenary of Lev Tolstoy’s death, I was been asked to reflect on Tolstoy and the Mennonites. Levi Miller wrote a fine article on the Tolstoy-Mennonite connection twelve years ago,[1] reviewing those Mennonite leaders in Russia and America who interacted with Tolstoy’s work. My article will rather compare and contrast the roots and reasons of Mennonite and Tolstoyan communalism and nonviolence.

Mennonite and Tolstoyan Communalism

1. New Testament foundations: We necessarily begin by considering the New Testament teachings that inspired both movements. Both the early Anabaptists and the Tolstoyans looked to the New Testament for their communalism and nonviolence, but as we shall see, for quite different reasons.

Halfway House Lessons on Love and Hate -- by Joe Beach

Nearby our church, there’s a halfway house for men who are nearing the end of their incarceration. One of the core families in our church lives in between the church and the halfway house. The father in that family is an interesting character. He looks like some cowhand from an old cowboy movie: a rough, tough, fifty year old man, dirt all over and skinny as a nail. He wears an old hat with a hole in it, smiles with crooked teeth, has one eye that works, and loves to talk to anyone who walks by the place. Underneath that rough exterior is a very intelligent, thoughtful follower of Christ who loves to get in people’s faces, (lovingly, of course) and ask them questions about their life. Around the church, we call it the “GP interrogation” (although we say his full name). If you survive the GP interrogation, you can usually handle anything after that.

Well, a few weeks ago, one of the men from the halfway house was returning after work. The men are allowed to attend work and, sometimes, church, with very strict guidelines and rules. The man from our church (GP) met him on the street and began his loving interrogation. After spending some time to get to know the man and his story, GP asked him if he’d met Jesus while in prison. The man responded, “no, not really. I’d already met Jesus in Sunday School as a kid.”

On Going to Church -- by Joseph Beach

You’re probably familiar with statements such as, “we don’t GO to church. We ARE the church.” There are similar ones that go something like this: “Church is not what we do when we gather on Sunday mornings for an hour or so. Church is not a place or a building. It’s what we are OUT THERE.” Well, I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately and, although there’s some truth and some wisdom in these statements (which I’ve spoken myself), I’m no longer so sure about them on the whole.

This kind of thinking has developed enough steam over the last few decades that I think you could fairly call it a “movement.” I’d suggest that its full name is the “anti-church-as-an-institution-or-building” movement. It’s also quite opposed to all forms of regular, traditional (and, especially) LOCAL churches. I attended a pastors’ convention in June in which a youth pastor preached one of the workshops. According to his senior pastor, this particular young pastor was being greatly influenced by his buddies in the International House of Prayer (IHOP) movement (which may or may not be influencing him in this area). Anyway, the main thrust of his message was that “we need to get free from the local church” and “we’ve got to get away from local church kind of thinking and get out there and be the kingdom.” Naturally, I couldn’t help but notice that he was saying this in a local church that paid him a nice salary, etc., but I digress.

God's Great Secret -- Excerpt from Canterbury

From Rowan William's Enthronement Speech (Feb. 2003)

Once we recognise God's great secret, that we are all made to be God's sons and daughters, we can't avoid the call to see one another differently. No-one can be written off; no group, no nation, no minority can just be a scapegoat to resolve our fears and uncertainties. We can't assume that any human face we see has no divine secret to disclose: those who are culturally or religiously strange to us; those who so often don't count in the world's terms (the old, the unborn, the disabled). And this is what unsettles our loyalties, conservative or liberal, right wing or left, national and international. We have to learn to be human alongside all sorts of others, the ones whose company we don't greatly like, the ones we didn't choose, because Jesus is drawing us together into his place, into his company.

So an authentic church has a difficult job. On the one hand, it must be constantly learning from the Bible and its shared life of prayer how to live with Jesus and his Father; its life makes no sense unless we believe that the secret Jesus reveals to those hungry for life is the very bedrock of truth. The Church can't believe and say whatever it likes, for the very sound reason that it is a community of people who have been changed because and only because of Jesus Christ. I am a Christian because of the change made to me by Jesus Christ, because of the gift of the Holy Spirit, which gives me the right to call God 'Abba Father; what other reason is there?

The Prophetic Culture of the Kingdom (conclusion and appendixes) by Eric H. Janzen

Conclusion

As I neared the end of writing this book I had coffee with a close friend of mine.  He told me a story about a young man that he had become friends with.  This young man left the Church because his experience of it had been of a surface faith.  He saw people calling themselves Christians, but living their lives as they pleased and caring little for those around them.  Sadly, this led to not only his rejection of Church, but Jesus as well.  He continues to be a spiritual man seeking God and attempting to live a spiritual life, but due to his experience of Church he wants nothing to do with Christians and thus nothing to do with Jesus.  How many of us know people like this?  Too many have encountered Christians not living out the culture of the kingdom and have as a result not encountered Christ.  This story is why I care about the things I have written.  That my friend’s friend was at the gate and walked away because of those within breaks my heart.  It should break your heart as well. 

The Prophetic Culture of the Kingdom (pt. 6) by Eric H. Janzen

Chapter Six

Identity Storm

I have suggested that the Church is in the midst of an ongoing identity crisis.  It is a crisis that has arisen out of our disconnection with the culture and paradigm of the kingdom.  We must face some significant questions as we consider our identity crisis, but I believe that a biblical faith and a relationship with Jesus offers some compelling answers to these questions.  I offer what insight I have in the three sections that follow taken from my journal.

The Prophetic Culture of the Kingdom (pt. 5) by Eric H. Janzen

Chapter Five

A Call to Citizenship

At the outset of this book I said that the basic question the Church needs to answer today is what it means to be in the world but not of the world.  In understanding that the community of Christ has a distinct culture in the kingdom of heaven I believe we have found an answer.

Jesus calls us out of darkness and into his light.  He rescues us from the bondage of sin and our imprisonment in the kingdom of darkness.  Consider that we were all once citizens in this dark kingdom, but now that citizenship has been negated.  When we choose to follow Jesus we shed our old home and walk freely out of that spiritual darkness to our new home in the kingdom of heaven.  We are now a part of the community of Christ, citizens of his realm.  When we choose this narrow path we are answering a call to leave one culture for another, opting for the spiritual culture of Christ’s kingdom and accepting the divine paradigm of God.

Reconciled to What? by Brad Jersak

Reconciled to What? Personal and Public Reconciliation in Canadian Aboriginal Context
by Brad Jersak with thanks to the Honourable Iona Campagnola

Recently, I was honoured to attend a gathering hosted by the Lytton First Nation, entitled ‘Bright New Day’ Workshop. The facilitators of the event were John McCandless and Chief Robert Joseph. Approximately sixty registrants attended, half of whom came from a variety of Aboriginal communities and organizations, while the other half represented a wide range of governments and businesses that have a stake in building relationships with the First Nations communities. It seemed symbolic that the modern facilities selected for the event were unfinished but that could enjoy meeting in one large circle within a tent with a grass field as the floor. Significant too was the fact that we were situated on the grounds of what had once been St. George's Residential School, with all the loaded history that its memory carries. To have a conference on reconciliation among such people in such a place was a profound experience that I will not forget. Before I go on, I want to thank the Lytton First Nation for welcoming me to the traditional territories of the N’Laka’Pamux Peoples. You treated me with great hospitality and respect.

Losing Breath -- Al Sergel

“For there can be no particularism of hope; hope loses all sense and all force if it does not imply the statement of an ‘all of us’ or an ‘all together’.”

-Gabriel Marcel

The heresy of individualism: thinking oneself a completely self-sufficient unit and asserting this imaginary “unity” against all others.  The affirmation of the self as simply “not the other”.  But when you seek to affirm your unity by denying that you have anything to do with anyone else, by negating everyone else in the universe until you come down you: what is there left to affirm?  Even if there were something to affirm, you would have no breath left with which to affirm.

-Thomas Merton

Double or nothing! -- Anouncement by Brad Jersak

For those who haven't heard yet, we made quite an important and wonderful announcement at Fresh Wind on Sunday, Sept. 15. For those who only have a moment, if you just skim down to the bold letters below, you'll get the basic idea. Let me begin by sharing a visitation that I experienced the night before the announcement that finally gave me some perspective on it.

I came before the Lord in prayer and engaged with something he had been speaking to me through the writings of Hans Urs Von Baltasar. I sensed him say, 'Gaze on me and I will gaze on you. I will see you and see through you and into every part of you. I will open up every door and every drawer of your soul and I will evaluate you. I will judge you thoroughly, even where you would not dare judge yourself. I will see and know what you cannot even see and know. And I will render my verdict of mercy, my sentence of kindness, and my gaze will be adoration.'

Be One and Love -- by Eric H. Janzen

What follows came as I reflected on the idea that Christians are a sign in the world pointing to Jesus Christ and the kingdom of heaven.  In his book “The Presence of the Kingdom” Jaques Ellul presents this idea and states that it is the Christian's primary role in life to be this sign.  I found this to be a compelling and powerful idea.

We are to be this sign on the road for humanity as they wander spiritual paths seeking truth and meaning.  A common belief is that all ways lead to God.  However, Christ's followers are the signs along the One Way pointing to the One Truth and Life, Jesus.  This message is vital for at least two reasons.  First, it simply is not true that all ways lead to God.  This is the reality of the spiritual landscape.  It does us no good to pretend that it is otherwise and it may not be a popular move to state it so plainly, but there it is none the less.  Those seeking God along the wrong road deserve to know that they are going the wrong way and it falls to Christ's community to sound the alarm.  Other roads may lead to genuine spiritual powers, but they are not the One God, and thus they are pretenders to a throne that is not theirs to sit upon.

Theology, Culture and M.E. by Brian Schmidt

Theology, Culture & M.E. Brian Schmidt, BGS, M.Ed. [& M.E.]

The following is an excerpt from my All Saints’ Day, 2007 reflections on living with M.E. after having the illness for 17 years, and a month after a dear person who had M.E. took her life after living with it for 28 years—mostly on her own, without much help, and not believed most of the time.

M.E. is a poorly understood chronic illness affecting thousands of people worldwide. It’s closely related to Fibromyalgia [FM], a disease that also involves neurocognitive symptoms, pain and chronic fatigue.

Thinking on Community by Eric Janzen

There is a Hebrew word that most Christians are aware of: Shalom.  It is generally understood to mean “peace”, but this word contains a deeper and broader meaning.  Shalom more accurately means an absolutely unbroken and whole, as well as peaceful, state of existence and reality.  In such a state there is no separation or enmity between anyone and anything in existence.  All relationships are whole and unbroken, perfectly interconnected.  In such an idyllic state the relationships between God and humans, humans and humans, humans and nature, and nature and God are whole and unbroken.  Where and when did such a state of reality exist?  It was the blueprint with which God created the earth and everything in it. If Shalom is the foundation for community that we are trying to discover then we must first consider the source of Shalom and in doing so we shall see that it is of immense value, for it is a very part of the nature of God.

Watchmen versus Watchdogs by Brad Jersak

Many of the newsletters and articles that I’ve written throughout 2007 have been a repetitive reminder to the church that these days call for an upgrade in our discernment. I’m convinced that we must vigorously test the spirits (1 John 4:1-4) to see whether their messages originate in God. We do this both to guard ourselves from swallowing that which is toxic AND to avoid dismissing that which is essential. Sifting for truth enables us to watch for and watch out: we want all that God has for us—we want only what God has for us. 

That being said, one of my intercessors alerted me to the distinction between two types of discerning watchers. In prayer, she was shown the vast difference between those whom God has appointed as “watchmen” and those who’ve appointed themselves as “watchdogs.”

Cynic or Prophet? What’s the difference? by Brad Jersak

Cynical Prophets and Prophetic Cynics

In recent years, I’ve had the joy of pastoring many fine prophets, some highly gifted, some deeply wounded, and some with a potent combination of gifts and grief. I’ve know the sorrow of watching broken prophets decline into cynicism and the joy of walking cynics forward into their true calling as prophets. In some ways, cynics and prophets are exactly opposite; in other ways, there are virtually identical. Maybe they are the flesh and spirit manifestation of the same gift.

Grief by Fi Calder

Grief.

A few months ago I was fortunate enough to hear Mike Stewart from St. Matts, give a talk on suffering. He asked us ‘have you got room in your theology for suffering?’ So here was the challenge; suffering and sadness is a part of life, but do we have a Christianity which can embrace it. It really got me thinking and remembering my nursing days. I was a nurse for 14 years. The last 8 years of that was spent working as a registered nurse in a hospice. We cared for people with terminal cancer and just a few with AIDS. About half of them died with us, and half of them went home. It was a part of the British National Health service and was therefore by no means a Christian setting. The patients and their families taught me most of what I will share with you now on the subject of grief. 

Grief is a very important part of life. We all experience it. It’s a God given gift, designed by Him so that we not only survive life’s trials and sufferings, but we also grow through them.

Uncle Eddie--A Tribute by Laurel Braun

My earliest memories of Eddie are from when I was a little girl. My family attended Central Heights MB Church, and from where we sat, each and every Sunday – In the first row of the balcony on the far right side – I had an ideal vantage from which to view the faithful crew of Twin Firs, always located on the main floor, near the front, on the far left side. Week after week, the faces became familiar, as did their individual quirks and personalities. To me, Eddie was the Downs Syndrome guy that would occasionally utter what I thought were untimely and loud vocalizations. I remember, “That’s right!”, and many a hearty, “Amen”. I noticed his tendency to stand up and conduct either the choir or the congregation during times of song.  My thoughts about Eddie and his motley crew of companions, as well as my observations about how caregivers, the church leadership and congregation related to this population of “special” individuals, made an impression on me.

WhatEVER! Healing the Wounded Cynic by John VanVloten

“A cynic is a person who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing” (Oscar Wilde) 

“I have seen all of the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.” (Ecc. 1:14)

 The cynic is a wounded idealist. In order to summon a true bitterness toward the world, it is first necessary to greatly believe that the universe is fair and that you will be loved unconditionally. This idealism is especially evident when you spend time with adolescents. They are starry-eyed and truly believe in happy endings. When I was a history teacher, they always insisted on being told which side was in the wrong and which was in the right. There had to be a good guy and a bad guy. You see, the idealist looks at the world through rose-colored glasses: people are good, the poor are noble and the Sixties are still with us. “Come on people now, smile on your brother, everybody try to get together, try to love everybody right now.” And look! Here comes the New Jerusalem floating out of the heavens!

Flatlanders Inn - Winnipeg Centre Vineyard

Flatlanders Inn is a transitional housing community for people at risk of homelessness. We hope to attract and invite the wanderer, the seeker, the stranger, the foreigner and those who need a positive environment, into a life giving intentional community. We will seek to create an atmosphere that provides a safe and supportive living space for shelter, laughter, healing, capacity building and spiritual growth.

"Honour" by Michelle Wiebe-Santschi

A while ago, I started getting frustrated with some of the things that I was hearing people saying about people with disabilities.  I didn’t like hearing people in my community referred to as “residents” or “the disabled”.  These are my friends.  These are my brothers and sisters.  I just wanted everyone to be equal, for each one of us to be given a fair chance, to be treated as worthy human beings.  I don’t like there being “us” versus “them.  …I vented to those around me and to the Lord.  He answered my questions with one word.  The word that God kept bringing to mind was “honour”…both as a verb and as a noun. So I started to think about what this word meant.  What does it mean to honour someone?  What does it mean to give someone honour? And what does it mean to take away somebody’s honour?

Diverging or Converging: Nuancing the Emerging Church by Brad Jersak

In response and as a follow-up to Ron Dart's article on the Emerging Church, I would like to add the perspective of someone who rubs shoulders with, and is occasionally labelled as, "emerging church." First, thanks to Ron for your excellent article on the "emerging church" movement. I'd like to respond by nuancing some of their ecclesial trajectory and the challenges they face.

As a champion of the historic church, you tend naturally to assess the emerging church as it evolves relative to the stability of the great streams of Christian faith (Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Anglican). You correctly note that much of the emerging church movement continues to be a further fragmentation in the long history of schism wrought by the sixteenth century reformers. The splintering ad nauseum is absolutely a sign and symptom of rotten concrete in the foundations (termites in the hull, no doubt). And so, to an observer such as yourself who deems the great ships of faith to be more reliable in the face of history's spiritual storms, the tiny independent churches that continue to multiply must appear very fragile and hardly sea-worthy.

The Practicability of Christ’s Commands by Brad Jersak

Clarence Bauman, The Sermon on the Mount: The Modern Quest for its Meaning (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1985).

Reflective Review by Brad Jersak

Introduction

In recent months I have been saturating myself in the Red Letters of my Bible. The words, the teachings, the sermons of Jesus have confronted me afresh with the hard truth that to a great degree, I do not actually believe what Christ believed or live according to the Way he prescribed. As I zoom in and focus on the Sermon on the Mount (and esp. the Beatitudes)—not merely as a code of conduct, but as a description of the Christian life—I find that the pursuit of such a life is in fact frowned upon as either impractical or even legalistic by many of our evangelical theologians and pastors.

"A Path Between" by Gareth Brandt

A Path Between: Spiritual formation begins with yourself and ends in community.

Joy equals Jesus first, Others second, Yourself last. I learned this formula as a child and it sounded good. Other language used to talk and sing about the spiritual life confirmed this theology: Deny yourself. Crucify the flesh. Kill the “old self.” Forget about yourself and concentrate on Him.
Some of these lines come out of the Bible, but I’m not sure the emphasis was always particularly biblical. It led to self-flagellation as an expression of piety and self-hatred masquerading as humility. It often paralyzed my spiritual growth rather than nurturing it.

Maybe it was just the unique problem of my particular “kleine gemeinde” background, but I think that other Mennonites and evangelicals in general have wrestled with this dilemma as well.
On the other hand, our society tells us to do the opposite: Look out for number one. Look after yourself first. I’m king of the world. I did it my way. The free market economy and the media bombard us with these messages on a daily basis. We live in a society that trumpets the rights of the individual. Western psychologists have told us that the highest good is self-actualization. Is this the only alternative, or can we find a path between self-deprecation and narcissism?

Spiritual formation begins with the self and ends in community for the glory of God. Why should spiritual formation begin by focusing on the self? To be “spiritually formed” we are formed into the likeness of Christ (Rom. 8:29; Col. 3:10); that is our goal in the individual Christian life, but how does it begin?

The greatest commandment is to love God (Deut. 6:5; Matt. 22:36-37). The human quest is to know God, to find ultimate meaning in life, a higher purpose for being. Genesis 1:27 says that we are created in the image of God thus it follows that we get to know a small part of what God is like when we get to know our selves. Each one of us reflects one small dimension of the personality of God. Since we are created in the image of God, to know God and to love God is to love our selves, to accept our selves the way God has made us to be.

The second commandment is to “love your neighbour as yourself” (Matt. 22:39). We cannot love our neighbour as ourselves unless we love our selves first!

To get to know our selves and accept ourselves, we must also begin to discover who we are, who God has created us to be. This is a journey of self-discovery that takes some time. We are all different, it is not how different we are or exactly how God has made us that matters most; it is what we do with what God has given us.

The best way to discover who God has made us to be is the process of reflection. Reflection can involve experimentation with various roles, prayer, journaling and times of silence and solitude as well as listening to mentors, family and friends. This reflection on the self may be heightened during our younger years but it is a process that continues throughout life.

God has created us unique individuals with unique personalities, but we are never finished products. There’s a saying, “God loves us so much he accepts us just the way we are but God loves us too much to leave us that way.” God has called us to change, not to change into someone we are not, but to become more and more who we really are, who God created and called us to be.

The Greek word translated “transform” in Romans 12:2 also gives us the word metamorphosis. Metamorphosis is an apt illustration for spiritual formation. The caterpillar seems not to even resemble its former self when it spreads its wings as a butterfly, yet it is the same creature. It has become completely itself. So it is for us, when we are transformed by the Spirit of Christ, we truly become our selves, who we were created to be.

I believe that there are too many people in our churches who have never come to terms with who they are and therefore are unaware that they are unhealthily preoccupied with themselves in their relationships with God and others.

Because they have not learned to love themselves as image-bearers of God they are unable to genuinely love their neighbour. By facing our own selves along with our shadows and blemishes, by being honest with God and ourselves about who we are, we create opportunities for authentic relationships of depth and health.

This is sometimes a very difficult thing to do, but until we do, we will (often unconsciously) continue to be too preoccupied with ourselves. In other words, to get the focus off of our selves and onto others, we must begin by intentionally focusing on our selves.

The focus on the self is not for the sake of the self; it is for the sake of God. Bernard of Clairvaux, a monk and spiritual leader of the 12th century, has helpfully delineated four degrees of love: Love self for the sake of self, love God for the sake of self, love God for the sake of God and—the highest—love self for the sake of God.

As we grow in our love for God we grow in love and acceptance of our selves the way God has created us in love. This is not prideful or narcissistic; it is true humility, seeing our selves as God sees us in Christ.

To focus on our self does not mean we do so in isolation. We need each other. It is impossible to develop an individual identity alone. We need others to find out who we are: To compare ourselves, to hear from others, to interact, to learn from each other, to be challenged by those who are different from us.

The purposes of God are not realized primarily through individual spiritual growth; they are realized through the in-breaking of God’s reign into our communities and our world. Our personal formation is for the sake of God and others, which brings us back to where we started! True joy comes from beginning with your self in the context of community for the sake of God and others.

As Parker Palmer has said, “Self care is never a selfish act--it is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer to others. Anytime we can listen to the true self and give it the care it requires, we do so not only for ourselves, but for the many others whose lives we touch.”
Spiritual formation begins by focusing on our self but it ends in joyful communion with God, others and creation. The goal of spiritual formation is not self fulfillment but harmonious relationship; its end is the embrace of the Other: God, our enemy, our family, our neighbor and all of creation.

Gareth Brandt is professor of theology and spirituality at Columbia Bible College and lives with his wife Cyndy and their 4 children in Abbotsford, B.C.

Stories from the Street by Brita Miko

Brita Miko worked as a Women's Community Worker in the East End of Vancouver. These are a few of her reflections and impressions of people she met and those who befriended her in that community. Names have been changed for privacy reasons.

For an article that futher investigates the world of Vancouver's missing women, see http://www.missingpeople.net/the_hidden_world_of_hookers-june_8,_2002.htm

* * * *

Joe was born three blocks from where he now works. Both his parents are heroin addicts. Now at seventeen he is a male prostitute. He's been a heroin addict for a year, and sells his body for money to feed his addiction. He told me he doesn't want to be like this forever. He tried quitting once and he was able to last eight days. The drugs were out of his body, but not his mind. He couldn't get the thoughts of it out of his head, so he shot up again. Sometimes he comes down to Granville Street for a free meal before he heads off to shoot up.

Shaun's a street kid. He's lived on the street for three years. It's better than home.

Brenda is a beautiful girl about my age I think. She has two children. She worked at an agency as a prostitute for years underage, and a week ago started on the street. She hates it and wants off. She knows it's dangerous. I talked to her about God and she said she went to church until she was about twelve. She said she used to often pray to God and he never answered her prayers.

My first night out on the street I met a girl named Chris. She had no shoes. We gave her shoes and her boyfriend Bill, juice and watched him puke it all up, cup after cup. Ran into her again and she said they were trying to clean up so that they could get their daughter back. She said she was working so that they could get money to fly away to Saskatchewan. I told her about an airline that had cheap flights. Saw her again a few nights ago. She had been hit and left on the ground. By the time I saw her she was fast asleep and covered in tremendous amounts of sweat. Bill said, "Yeah, I'm the asshole." He told me she had not slept for six days... working for him. He told me he loved her and had called her mom to come get her out of here. She is dying. She is twenty-three and HIV positive. He can not stand to watch her die anymore. I told him that if her mom does not come and she wants out that she can call me. I know the way out. I told him God loves him, more than he loves Chris and God doesn't want to watch him die anymore. He nodded. I prayed over Chris.

I saw Deanna a few weeks ago. She had two black eyes. I told her I was sorry about her eyes and asked if he did it often. She said no, it was just some guy that didn't like her very much.

Jean is nineteen and has been working the street for six years. She wants out but says it is really hard because whenever she is out and gets low on money she thinks, how can I get more money? An hour later, she's two hundred dollars richer. It's so hard to get out, don't ever start, she told me.

There was a resident that never spoke much in Bible study, but when he did I always appreciated his words, for they were sincere and true. He was humble and quiet, and to me he shone like a star. When talking about how we are as people he once said his bikes always looked shiny, but needed an oil-change. I laughed and recorded his words.

Another time he said, "I kept putting prayer and meditation on the shelf, until I went through years of just not making it."

Two days before he was to graduate from the program he had to leave. He had failed a urine test. On the weekend he had gotten too high on cocaine and took heroin to bring himself back down. I pray God would be close to him wherever he is.

On the corner of Oppenheimer Park a couple weeks ago I was out with Streetlight. A prostitute saw the blue jacket and came running across the street to me and began to cry, "I'm so scared. I'm so scared." I held her as she cried and though most of her words were incoherent I understood snatches. "I don't want the devil to get hold of all of me... Thank you Jesus for sending this girl to me... I'm so scared." I prayed with her, and I told her that I knew the way out. "I can help you," I said. "I know somewhere safe we can go." She wasn't clean and she was terrified. And then another woman was there yelling at her and five or six people that had been on the hill behind me, came close. She began to run away asking for me to come with her. "I can't!" I yelled and then everyone was swearing at everyone and there was so much tension and rage. She ran crying away and I was left watching the aftermath, praying for the Spirit to come down on that comer and bring peace. And He did. I never saw that woman again.

Adrian is one of our many Granville Street regulars. Saw him yesterday and he said he had been reading the Bible that I had given him (that was so many weeks ago I had completely forgotten giving him one). He said that he sold his soul to the devil when he was in his mother's womb but he put in a clause that at twenty-five he could end the curse if he wanted to. He said that before he was born he told God that he did not want to be a human but a killer whale. He said he had millions of dollars in a bank account that he could not access until he was twenty-five. He said he hated himself. He said he wanted to save the world by going to hell. I told him Christ already did that. He said he loved Mother Earth more than God, and then he littered. He asked if I thought he was crazy. I said no, but that he had been told many lies... and he had believed them. He said he knew some of it was lies. I told him I would pray that confusion wouldn't bind him and he might know clearly what was truth and what was lies. He told me that he was praying for me too.

I met Elaine last night as I was waiting for the bus. She has AIDS and is dying. She started hooking when she was thirteen--that was seventeen years ago. She is going back to B.C.C.W. next week and is looking forward to it. But, she says I should come and play softball with them; bring some people from my church. It's lonely in there, never seeing people from the outside. People that smile, and are real, and have hope. I said I would love to come. She said just to play softball, volleyball or sing choruses, whatever… the women love visitors. She said lots of women from East Hastings are in and out there. I wonder what it would be like to be thirteen and turning tricks--or thirty and having AIDS. I asked her if she wanted out ever, and she said all the time. She said that she would be getting out soon though, by dying. She said, I know, it's the easy way out. I told her I knew another way. She knows there's God and there's heaven. She doesn't understand Jesus. She believes God can forgive us without Jesus. Just by His mercy. She needs to understand that the wages of sin is death, BUT the gift of God is eternal life. She needed to work, I needed to go home. She left and I sat there waiting for my bus. A man named Jeff began talking to me; he was a lonely bachelor looking for a date. I began praying that my bus would come soon. Jeff told me I better get--on the next bus and get out of here, because if he had his way I'd be going with him in his car. East Hastings is dangerous. I prayed the Granville bus would come soon and it did. I was wanting out so much and I had only been sitting there for three quarters of an hour. I can't imagine how much Elaine wants out but can't. It's no more dangerous for me there than it is for her. It's just Jeff had mercy on me because I was young and naive and protected by God. He might not have the same pity for Elaine. People think they get what they deserve. She doesn't think she deserves better, and he doesn't think she deserves better. That's the miracle about God. He gave us what we did not deserve. It's hard to accept because we're used to thinking all we deserve is nightmares and hell and death. And we do. And that's what Jesus got, was my nightmares, hell and death. And I got abundant life. It's not what I deserved. It was grace.

I had heard a lot about Arlene before I met her... that she was in an abusive relationship; that he was very sweet, that she did want out. And when I met her, I understood it to be true. She kept a big smile on her face for the passing cars as she answered our questions, rarely looking at us. We asked how she was doing. Smile, nod, "okay." We asked if she wanted to leave. Smile, nod. I told her that we didn't have a woman's worker at the mission right now, but until we did we would do whatever he could to get her off the street. Smile, nod. I told her she was beautiful, and she was. Smile, nod. She hugged us all and thanked us, smiled at the passing johns. Andrea told her that if she was ever awake at 9:00 Sunday morning to come down to her church, we'd love for her to come. Smile, nod... but now she was close to tears. She said she needed to be working, and so we left her. She called after us that God would bless us or be with us. And I looked back to thank her and saw her one last time, smiling for the johns.

When I met Lesha she had just found out she was HIV positive. She was in the hospital, her shrunken body was covered in scabs and scars, and she was trying to make sense of dying. She was trying to make sense also of living--when her life had gone from suffering at the hand of a gross and abusive father to years of suffering on the streets of Vancouver. She was trying to make sense of why, when she wanted to know God so badly, she could never feel His presence. Where had he gone? Then she began to get frustrated with herself, saying that she didn't know what suffering really was. She had seen a special on Mother Teresa and she was ashamed because she had never suffered as much as Mother Teresa's children in Calcutta had or as much as Jesus had, and she began speaking of the agony of Christ. She said she hated it when she became self-pitying and she began apologizing to God for not being more thankful and thanking Him for all she had. She was so grateful and thankful for her life--her pain-filled and ending life. "Thank you, God. Thank you, God. Thank you, Jesus."

I've long believed Jesus is in disguise in the homeless, the hungry, the sick, but this is the first time I felt like Isaiah, "Woe to me. I am ruined. For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty."

I received a letter from a girl who used to be down here. She had gone from prostitution (at maybe 15) to an abusive boyfriend, to an exploitive lesbian before she finally returned home, at age nineteen. She wrote from home, "I feel a very small feeling of happiness for the first time in awhile. God cares for me."

There is a common thread here among the prostitutes. They wash up on these shores after years of tragedy, poverty and abuse. Drugs are everywhere and getting high or stoned on them gives momentary freedom from their broken world. Their existence soon becomes a never ending hustle for a few bucks for more drugs to forget. They will pay for this freedom with their bodies, their dignity, their self-respect, their minds, their hearts and their lives.

I met a fellow named Larry who became a Christian in these woods. God had given me a message about the woman caught in adultery--il1egal sex, on death row, waiting to get stoned. I explained how getting stoned in those days was different from "getting stoned" nowadays and how these streets here are death row, too. I've never been around so much death in my life as I am here (suicides, murders, drug overdoses).

Afterwards Larry said to me, "People are still getting stoned to death." I had never thought of it that way before, but he is right. In the downtown eastside there are 300+ deaths a year from people getting stoned to death by overdosing.

Two thousand years later Jesus is still working with women caught in adultery--illegal sex, on death row, waiting to get stoned. Their hope remains in Jesus who is no more condemning now than he was then; Jesus who knows the cost of their sin and then takes that cost upon himself. He already paid for their freedom with his body, his dignity, his self-respect, his mind, his heart and his life. It’s real easy to throw the first stone. Oh God help me to offer them your freedom and not to cast the first stone.

Adam and Eve and Lust by Derek Weiss

This is part of a letter I wrote to a younger friend who asked me for a Biblical definition of lust. I thought it was suitable for publication here because, while there is no end to books written by and for Christian men about lust, very few approach the topic from the perspective of social justice for women. Be aware that it is written by a man for a man, though I am sure women could benefit from reading it and contextualizing it for themselves too. -- In the first chapter of Genesis, we read that God created man, who was surrounded by material things. God had taken time – more time than he needed, five whole days! – to create a world in which Adam could live. And God wanted Adam to “subdue,” or care-for-for-his-own-benefit, these things. (Genesis 1:28) God gives Adam all the vegetation, and tells him to harvest and eat it. (Genesis 1:29-30) God wanted Adam to relate to the material world, to work with it, and to benefit from it. For our purposes, it is important to note that when the story is fleshed out in the second chapter of Genesis, there is a point when God had given Adam the Garden of Eden to tend (2:15), but had not yet created Eve (which happens in 2:21-22). Let’s call this phase in Adam’s life “pre-Eve Adam.” At this point, Adam would have rightly thought that every existing thing existed for himself and for God. As long as he gave glory and time to God, Adam could be essentially selfish. With the exception of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, which God had forbidden him to use, he could make use of all of the natural resources of the world. If he wanted to cut down some trees to make a house, he could. If he wanted to milk a cow for milk, he could. He did not have to ask the trees or the cows what they thought: he did not have to relate to them as persons. The only being he had to relate to as a person was God. Now, given the environmental quagmire we humans have put ourselves in, it is important to realize that he was suppose to be a gardener and not an exploiter. He was not given a mandate to destroy the earth, but to develop it for his own benefit and God’s glory. I like how Eugene Peterson paraphrases Genesis 1:28: “God blessed them: ‘Prosper! Reproduce! Fill Earth! Take charge! Be responsible for fish in the sea and birds in the air, for every living thing that moves on the face of Earth.’” We are to be responsible for the earth. I think God will hold us responsible if we choose to destroy it. But that is an aside. Let’s continue with the story. God sees that Adam is alone, and decides that this is not good. (2:18) The Biblical writer goes out of his way to mention in the next couple of verses that the animals were not suitable helpers: Adam needed more. You had asked me to write some thoughts on lust, so here is where these thoughts begin to take flesh. Lust is essentially the denial of God’s first pondered thoughts in this narrative. Lust says, “It is good for man to be alone.” Lust is, at bottom, a choice to be alone, even when in the company of another. Lust is the denial of relationship. But I am getting ahead of myself. God creates woman out of the rib of man. He does not create her out of the ground, as he has created the animals (2:19), but out of Adam himself. Adam realizes this: He exclaims, “Flesh of my flesh!” We can relate to woman differently than we relate to plants and animals because she is a part of us. She is essentially connected to us. She is not an “it” or a “thing.” She is not a plant or animal for us to use. Lust is a denial of God’s gift of woman as companion. Lust treats woman as if she is another plant or animal created for us to subdue. When we lust, we retreat to Adam’s pre-Eve state. We may think when we are looking at or touching a woman lustfully that we are appreciating her. But lust is not a matter of appreciation, but of confusion. We are confusing “woman” (literally “From-Man,” and thus “From-Us”) with “plant and animal.” We are denying the goodness – and fleeing from the risk and hard work – of genuine community. Much has been written on the evils of “consumer culture,” but I think one of its worst manifestations is in how selfish and inward-looking it can make us. Consumer culture would have the consumer, as an individual, serve only him or herself. In so doing, it purveys the lie that I can live as pre-Eve Adam, forgetting the existence of other people except in how they can serve me. But when Eve is created – and she is created in the hearts and minds of young men in playgrounds and classrooms and school dances daily - Adam is drawn outside of himself into community and relationship. Lust is the denial of true relationship and the affirmation of complete solitude. A tragically common example of this denial is the person who fantasizes excessively about sexual partners who live to please and worship the fantasizer alone, while never actually going out and having real relationships. This person needs others, but chooses to cut themselves off from real relationship. This person needs God and others to help them out of their terrible solitude. God was not content to leave Adam alone. He lovingly seeks to provide Adam a “helper.” (2:18,20) The word “helper” there is intriguing. It has been used in the past to justify exploitation of women. But the word is also used in Hebrew Scripture to refer to the way that God “helps” Israel: God is Israel’s “helper.” Implicit in the English word “helper” is a sense of lowliness and servitude, but this is not the case in the Hebrew. Eve was Adam’s helper, and, in many ways, his savior. Adam alone is not good. When Eve was created, Adam was drawn outside of himself, into relationship. When you lust, you choose to treat someone like an object to be used, instead of a person to interact with. An extreme example of this is pornography: you will probably never meet the woman on the page or screen splayed out before you. She is simply an object to you. If you actually knew her as a person – her friendship, warm love, her story and life – or if she were your kin – perhaps your sister, daughter, or wife – you would think very differently about her image. In fact, you probably couldn’t think about it lustfully, because relationship – that great destroyer of lust – would prevent it. But as things are, she is merely an object for you to subdue to your own desires. Martin Buber called this the “I/It” relationship, contrasted with the “I/Thou” relationship of two people who relate to one another well, as Adam and Eve were intended to. A similar thing can happen when you are touching a woman. You forget the relationship – you may forget the person altogether – and desire only to get what you want. Or, you remember the relationship: you touch HER, the one who is a part of you, drawn from you, the one God has given you, made in His own image, who re-minds you of Him – the one you know. You connect with your mouths, and exchange the breath of life that God gave each of you. You share intimately because you know intimately – and are known.

Pied Piper Prophets by Brad Jersak

In Hamlin town, long long ago,
Nobody was happy, no, no, no
Their pretty little town was full of rats!
In everything they ate big holes
And drank their soup from the big soup bowls
And even made their nests in people’s hats

Along came a fellow slim and tall,
And said to the man at the city hall,
My dear, I think I have a cure.
I’ll rid your town of every rat
But you have to pay me well for that,
And the mayor jumped up and down and cried, why sure…

--Pied Piper of Hamlin

Detroit: City of Prayer by Mike Russell

Detroit is a deep well of American history; it is an old city, older than Chicago by fifty years, the oldest American city not found on the eastern seaboard. When the daylight shines, the colors of a ravaged avenue percolate in a visitor's mind. The way entire structures are abandoned, a whole block of storefront retail space devoured by the wake of nothingness is stunning. It goes like this along Woodward Avenue: building of dubious origin housing a beauty supply store. Fast food restaurant, a White Castle, Rally’s Burger, Churches Chicken, a gas station, an abandoned building fenced off, and then a mammoth stone House of God. A broken and burned out brick block. A Federal Office. Another stone tabernacle. A wrecked retail plaza with a shrimp shack restaurant tucked into it like a lone living rat. A house of worship. Another gas station. A cathedral to Christ the King. A video peep show theatre. A Soul food store selling banana pudding, peach cobbler, and pig's feet. Then again- Christianity's insistence. Detroit is an African-American city; the last United States census claimed the city's population to be seventy-six percent African-American. This stands starkly in comparison to Chicago, or New York City, each with about thirty percent African-American population, even cities like Memphis, and Birmingham, Alabama, fall short of Detroit's level of racial concentration. Therefore, Detroit’s reputation as a racially divided city is not mere stereotype; it is a heavily populated city of almost a million, predominantly black, surrounded by millions more of predominantly white suburbanites.

Woodward Avenue runs out of downtown Detroit past two major highways, I-75 and I-96 that are buried beneath the earth; it is quite possible to enter and leave Detroit without ever riding along a surface street. Their is a device called the Detroit People Mover that circles the city's core and helps transport people to their place of interest- the Renaissance Center, the Detroit Opera House, the Fox Theatre, Joe Louis Arena and Cobo Hall, Commerica Park, Ford Field and Greektown. The monorail device is a circuit above the city; it circles the streets and altogether eliminates the need for interaction between classes in the downtown core. In Detroit, the streets, the cracked sidewalks where city buses and bulletproof cars careen about, is a dangerous place for many persons at any time of the day or night. The streets truly are the dominion of the poor and disenfranchised because the wealthier person fears simple interaction. In winter, it amazed me my first winter there, the snow is not even cleared from major downtown streets making it almost impossible for older people or disabled persons from using them. Every winter, I witnessed people in wheelchairs get hit by passing cars as they tried to navigate the curbs.

As a newcomer to the city, I could not help think of Nietzsche- Detroit proves something, but what? Does all this pristine religiosity among poverty and disorder prove God's dead, or alive? Had Nietzsche ever been to Detroit? No. He never left European soil, but another philosopher did visit. Alexis de Tocqueville came to America to study penal institutions, for he was a lawyer in post revolutionary France and sought to understand a new democratic mode of criminal justice. Of course, anyone who has read Democracy in America knows that Tocqueville was interested in more than jails. One of Tocqueville's modern French biographers, Andre Jardin, extracted from Tocqueville's diary that while in Michigan the polite Frenchman almost drowned. A canoe guide had the physical appearance of a native person, en francais 'le savage', but to Tocqueville's amazement he spoke excellent French, like a good Parisian. This man was a Metis, the offspring of a French fur trader and a native woman. Tocqueville fell from the canoe and almost drowned from amazement. The New World was aptly named- newness and its manifestation won the Frenchman over to liberty American style. What Nietzsche would have thought is another a question?

On Sunday morning along Woodward Avenue the women come forth in elegant dresses, it becomes their street for the stone shrines blossom brightly. Up and down the church steps young ladies with long legs and old ladies with slow struts parade to the chimes and car honking of family and friends. Automobiles clog the curb, dropping off and picking up loved ones from their house of worship. Why do so many African-Americans love Jesus Christ? A Jewish Caucasian who never lived, visited, or spoke of Africa? The pimps, the prostitutes, the disgruntled groups of corn rolled men vanish- asleep or fearful. They hide in modesty as the church bells strike the faithful back and forth. Sunday is church day; even the businesses along Woodward seem to sponsor the festivities with special deals on large hot meals.

On the bus in Detroit, I once heard a man talking to two teenage girls. The man was extolling his born-again status, he was saved and had nothing to fear, he said his church was so-and-so on Grand River. The young ladies did not disrespect the intrusion into their private discussion. From the back of the bus, I saw their polite smirk, and I heard- "oh yes, I saved too, like I got no church now an’ all, but I'm saved, we's both saved, we's know that, uh-huh." In the city of Detroit, religion is indestructible. Christianity is primary; there are a few black Muslims, they are easy to pick out for they dress in black suits and white robe dresses with headscarves for women. God is highly respectable in Detroit. This is the most startling revelation a life-long Canadian can make in visiting. Like Tocqueville, I almost drowned in the omnipresent religious waters. Even the criminals, those accused of rape, robbery, murder, and drug trafficking understand their misdeeds in spiritual terms, religious terminology is everywhere. Good and Evil. Satan and God. To dispute these dichotomies, to laugh at the saying, to giggle at the volume of prayers that go up to heaven each and every hour from the small patch of soil named Detroit, is to engender deep distrust and indignant righteous hatred. Religion is laughed at in so many places in Canada, it is routinely called out to blame for child molestation, the oppression of women, mocked as cover for greediness; in total, religion, chiefly Christianity, is contemptible because it is viewed as corrupt and obsolete. Nietzsche was absolutely correct, in as far as he went; he said in The Gay Science firstly and then later, more musically in Thus Spake Zarathustra, that the European mind had murdered God. The bourgeoisie in it's acceptance of a type of reason, adopting Darwin's science as complete, and coming to value the accumulation of wherewithal as the prime objective of political existence, had killed God, made him obsolete. Ah-ha, I came to think in Detroit, He might be only hiding. While living in Detroit, it didn’t seem totally insane to believe He was exiled in the rubble of the Madison-Lenox Hotel. Where the ragged broken glass windows broadcast decay, God lives on candied yams, fried catfish, green beans, and macaroni and cheese smuggled to him by women with long, conked black hair.

Mike Russell was born, raised and educated in Toronto. As a Librarian he has worked and lived in the sister cities of Windsor/Detroit. His fiction has previously appeared in incunabula, the University of Western Ontario's Graduate Journal of Arts & Literature. He is solely responsible for the content and opinion. ©MikeRussell 2005