Let’s restore dignity to the DTES

I woke up this morning to a text message that said: “I almost died in my sleep last night. Too bad I didn’t.” The small bit of hope and self worth that was left among the marginalized is fading fast.

I love the Downtown Eastside (DTES), and have called it home for years now. It is an honour to live here, and I am committed to standing in solidarity with some of the most beautiful people that I have ever met.

But in the past seven years of living here,   I have never before experienced this kind of oppression. The exorbitant amount of money that is being spent in this culture baffles the mind. Unfair practices are stealing the dignity of some of Canada’s poorest people.

Why some believe that one human being deserves more than another is a question that I might ask for the rest of my life. Why some believe that it is justifiable for our nation to act so unjustly to the most vulnerable members of society is another.

However, this is not intended to be a righteous rant – but rather the contrary. It is my hope that all of you will join with me in speaking up for what is right.  

The problem is not that no one cares for the marginalized; it is that few of them are truly known. We cannot really love someone without knowing that person first.

Yes, people are cold and hungry; but there is a greater need that lingers, and haunts this community. We need to belong – we need family.

Sometimes, good intentions have become very damaging. Our messages, without right actions (authentic relationships), have been broadcast over and over again.

Dignity has been ripped away – stolen – without us ever even using words. We can have all the Olympic parties we want, plan great event after great event, and incorporate Christian outreach into these celebrations. But without relationship – without taking the time to know someone – it is all an empty attempt at ‘being the hands and feet of Jesus’ in a broken world.  

Our God considers the person addicted to drugs, and in deep despair, the apple of his eye. God values the beautiful girl who works in the survival sex trade. He regards her as precious, and worthy of his time.

If we continue to give just blankets and sandwiches, and do not ever offer true authentic relationships, then a full expression of God’s love is never actually revealed; we have participated in, and helped create, injustice.

Blankets and sandwiches are fine, if they come out of a relationship; otherwise the cycle of worthlessness is reinforced. Every person is worthy of respect; our hope is to restore dignity by letting people know they are worth way more than a sandwich.

Storytelling, art and dance come out of the heart; these are brilliant ways to connect and relate to the despair and loneliness that have become so prevalent.  

As you speak up for the marginalized, lost, rejected and lonely, remember someone else’s needs are seldom different than your own. Let’s care for our neighbours with the “I will never leave you or forsake you” kind of love.

This kind of love pierces the infrastructure of our being. This kind of love transforms a city, saves lives and causes a heroin addict to give up using the needle. This kind of love is everlasting – and it is what you, I, and our children need every day.

Thank you for caring and putting your arms around this community.

Rev. Trista Parry, The River,
Vancouver

Global warming is nothing new

I’m writing in response to ‘Is Canada the climate fossil of the decade?’ (January) Benjamin Lee’s editorial is sincere, but naïve.

As Christians, we do have a responsibility to steward the earth that was put under Adam’s dominion.

But climate change is a natural cyclic occurrence. The earth has had warming and cooling cycles in the past.

The last complete one started about 800 AD, and the temperatures went up higher than they are now.

Then, by about 1400 AD, the average temperature had gone down again, and kept getting colder – into what was called the ‘Little Ice Age,’ that lasted a few hundred years.  

All that climate change happened without an increase or decrease of cars, trucks and industrialization; those elements of the equation weren’t there back then, of course.

The truth is we have little control over the climate; we can only adjust to it.

Getting rid of half our cars and trucks in Canada to meet the Kyoto Accord is going to do little, if anything, to stop the flooding in Bangladesh.  We’ll just ruin our economy, and the flooding will continue.

It is not our Christian moral responsibility to follow people like Al Gore; nor is it good stewardship to throw our hard-earned money at things we can’t change.

Sea levels go up and sea levels go down. The only way one can stop the tide from coming in is to help build a dike.  

Steven Nickel,
Abbotsford

Continue article >>

Abortion not a political football

Michael Ignatieff thinks it would be a good idea for Canada to push the Liberal abortion agenda on Third World nations, and is quite willing to spend your tax dollars to make sure Canada’s culture of death continues.        

When Prime Minister Harper announced his desire to make the fight against infant mortality and maternal deaths a key issue at the upcoming G8 meetings in Canada, he was talking about things like clean water, vaccines, nutrition and health care worker training. This a long way from promoting abortion – and most Canadians can easily make the distinction between true Canadian values and Ignatieff’s agenda.

 So desperate are  the Liberals for some issue to garner them votes that they are quite willing to reopen one of the most divisive debates ever seen in Canada.    

Millions of Canadians have never, and will never, equate taking the lives of the unborn with health. Maternal mortality rates were cut in half in El Salvador and Poland, after both countries recriminalized abortion.    

Ignatieff is on record as having said “the right to abortion is too ‘sacred’ to become a political football.” To this, we reply: it is life that is sacred – and in a humane society, the rights of the unborn must be protected.  

Gerald Hall,
Parksville

Reader regrets scriptural mistake

 Ah yes, the apology: surely one of life’s toughest rigours, and certainly its most humbling.

David Gale does so very graciously and eloquently (‘More thoughts on Catholicism,’ Readers Forum, February). And now it is my turn to make my mea culpa.

Laid open for all the world to see,                      I  misstated the relevant scripture in my argument of the month earlier (‘In defence of Catholic theology,’ January).  

But then, some Catholics are wont to do so, never being too proficient in the parry of chapter and verse.

The reason the Book of James was on my mind is because of its seeming attack on another bugaboo of Protestant/Catholic disagreement: antinomianism.

This is the concept that believers are not obliged to adhere to laws, and will receive salvation by predestination.

In her letter, Colleen Giesbrecht kindly points out that James 2:17 and 2:26 would seem to concur with the Catholic stance on that issue.

I think it was Luther’s precepts of ‘sole fidei, sole gratia, and sole scriptura’ that Catholics abjure (and I admit I’m not sure of the Anglican stance on the matter).  

The actual passage to which I first meant to refer was in fact, 2 Maccabees 12:46 :“It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from their sins.”

Granted, this is a long way removed from my first contention, and good King James very conveniently decided not to include Maccabees in his version – although it was decided by the Desert Fathers, some thousand years previous, to be divinely inspired.  

Now it is generally believed that James I was by far the most learned man (or woman) to sit upon the throne of Great Britain.  

James’ version of the Bible is easily one of England’s greatest pieces of literature, despite its bias.  

 If nothing particularly edifying has come out of our controversy, we may at least be gratified in knowing that a goodly number of us have cracked open (after blowing the dust from) that Book, and gone in search of some form of truth or wisdom – values that are sadly lacking in today’s harried world.

Larry Bennett,
Burnaby

Olympic cover pic a poor choice

I thought the rather lifeless picture on the February front page – which seemed to be there just so the page would have a picture of ‘something Olympics’ – was rather a poor choice.

I think a picture depicting the plight of the Haitians would have been more appropriate.

I want to be part of a group of people who are Christians, who would drop all their planning for a once-in-a-lifetime Olympic party, to take care of ‘widows and orphans.’

I hope I am not being too blunt; and I  don’t mean to be judgmental. I just found it very awkward, as I go through my own complacency. This is every bit as much a comment on myself, as it was towards you.

Richard Tran,
Vancouver

March 2010