There had been a minor occurrence, some words with staff, and now he sat across from me in my office. I told him I wanted him to make it, but that if he threatened staff in any way I would have to bar him. I added that everyone at the mission wanted him to make it, that we would do all we could to have that happen. He relaxed, smiled his Morgan Freeman smile, and in his rasping voice laid open his life. Regret upon regret. Ache upon ache. An hour, maybe two, and still there was more.

Phil did make it. He made it in short bursts, then in long stretches, then again, in fits and starts, until last summer when he died.

Phil was one of 22 men and women—the ones we could confirm—who died in our inner-city in the past 12 months. They were our friends and a couple Sunday’s ago they were remembered at a memorial service held at Hope Mission. Family, friends, street friends, street family, came together through grief, recalled softer times. There were stories, there was laughter, weeping—and there were "why’s".

A band played—a worship band partly made up of people who are in the Mission’s addictions program. They played and 150 people from the inner-city sang “Jesus Loves Me” and “Amazing Grace.” And Frank at the back of the room, drummed on his hand drum.

Then a collective eulogy: pictures and names of the deceased appearing and fading on a white screen, while a single guitar played. Not all the names were matched with pictures; some, like Phil, had only a head-silhouette.

It’s too obvious and inadequate to say those who died were all people with stories, with mothers, with childhood friends now lost to them. Stories too easily forgotten. Silhouetted faces we passed by hundreds of times.

What was it that they longed for? What were their joys? Their sighs? What did they leave? What dreams were untried? What was left undreamt?

What they had in common was an intimate knowledge of the street and a tenuous connection with a healthier community. Also in common, too often, was an addiction; but with it, as often, there were genuine attempts at staying clean, turning things around, committing to something higher.

Among these 22, there were failures, catastrophic failures, and there were successes, exemplary successes.

There is no template for this—for how one makes it. A clean sprint can be as Herculean an effort for one as a lifetime of abstinence is for another. An addiction overcome, can reveal the roots of the deeper longings and addictions of the soul, and without an intervention of love, the revelation can bring back the external, the obvious addiction.

And what of us, are we so different? What and where would we be without tenderness, without an early history of love-interventions? If we’re lucky we’ve received, through many kindnesses, the internal tools to be able to externalize, turn over and release our anger, envy, despair, bitterness, rivalry. If we’re not, the term dry drunk comes to mind—we haven’t had a fix for years, but neither have we had a "sober" day.

As it is we are all in process. For us all, beneath our grotty to glamorous exteriors there percolates a kind of glory. As the Chaplain pointed out in reference to the epitaph on Ruth Graham’s gravestone (Billy Graham’s late wife), this is a glory only fully revealed when we’ve reached the "end of construction."

There is, in our common humanity, a hidden glory that points to something beyond ourselves. And this is what rose up at the memorial service. And it brought comfort and restored dignity to friends and family—by restoring dignity to the men and women who died.

In the meantime there was a message left for us. A lady who has eyes for deeper wisdom, who stood to speak about her friend said, "These were beautiful people and for us who are still here, it’s our tears, our tears will give us strength, as we cry not apart but together."

Poem and picture by Wendy Morton:

THE POND AT SOLSTICE

Today, wind, alderfall. The thin December sun. 
I’ve picked a bouquet of calendula, lemon balm,
and the last Abraham Darby rose.

I know that darkness arrives early each day,
with rain or the eclipsed moon. Ice.
In the pond, each leaf, a celebration.

Over the decade, my comfort at these things has increased. I’m becoming practised at rising above my introversion. But even if this wasn’t the case, I’d still enjoy coming. Yes, the setting is salutary, but most of all I enjoy meeting and listening to people from across North America who do what I do, who have come naturally or intentionally to the vocation of relieving certain aspects of human misery—which means raising resources to that end. And our partner here is Russ Reid, an organization (largest of its kind) dedicated to helping missions like ours flourish. In effect they’re partners in offering real hope to homeless and destitute people. Russ Reid, incidentally, was once an Edmontonian and an acquaintance of Herb Jamieson, a Hope Mission patriarch.

Coming here also restores a certain faith in American people for me. Well, it’s my own lack of reasoning and imagination that this occasionally needs restoring. But perhaps I’m not so different. While we Canadians—when stopping to think—know there are millions of grand-hearted people in the States, it sometimes slips away from us because of the caricature we get from the politicized broadcasts of FOX and CNN—not to mention the sudsy culture of Hollywood. But coming here, and hearing from and seeing hundreds of people who have invested themselves in caring for homeless people is always hopeful and redemptive.

Russ Reid is Hope Mission’s (and close to a hundred other mission’s) partner in the business of fundraising. Or as I prefer: the bizarre vocation of convincing people to follow their deepest desire—bringing them the joy of being the cause of someone’s welfare through the simple act of giving.

And as in every vocation, there are some virtuosos here. Some dazzlingly skilled women and men who have come up through the ranks of frontline inner-city work, or have cultivated a certain humility of mind and character, or both. Whose presence enjoins a particular open-handed posture and invites another into the vision of relieving human misery. And this presence—which is nothing other than a gospel presence—is aptly represented in the leadership and all the staff of Russ Reid.

Now I occasionally have caught myself thinking, and I suspect I’m not alone, that the nature of what we do has an elevation to it. A sort of mark that distinguishes. Of course this is a great danger. And if it’s not caught the "industry" of fundraising takes over and "technique" becomes the driving force; and a chasm opens between the thing we hope to happen and those we need to make it happen, and both it and we become an ugly thing.

This is how fundraising can loose its spirituality—the invitation to join in communal caring, if not continually nourished and pruned, can too quickly devolve into mere manipulation. Well, guilt works for awhile; and if it’s creatively-clever-guilting, it works better. But this kind of fundraising is momentary and has no lasting appeal, no vision.

Certainly, all the creative work is necessary, as well as the research, and too, the science. And when this is joined to a narrative compellingly relating the hard inhumanity of homelessness and the real possibilities of restoration, people connect and respond. What is happening here is that a vision for relief of human despair and the bolstering of liberty is being articulated’; and when the vision is articulated well it touches on something greater than either asker or giver, and a community of love forms and money—the great classifier—is relegated to its proper corner, and the important rises up.

This is the kind of ardent air I don’t mind breathing.

We’ve worried the shape of passing clouds, have been glad of many horizons; and on night-time beaches and through lancet windows, our eyes have searched night stars and day moons—and still we dream—even as our dreams have long been answered in each other.

Like Tim said,

As my friend, the late pastor Dr. Jerry Falwell told me personally, ‘Speaker Newt Gingrich is the most qualified man in America to run as president of the United States.’

You see, this is why USA politics is so darn entertaining, and so hard not to watch, even though later you feel a bit bloated, like you’ve had too many Krispy Kreme donuts.

The supine and gutless Democratic Party, which would have feigned outrage if George W. Bush had put this into law, appears willing, once again, to grant Obama a pass. But I won’t. What he has done is unforgivable, unconstitutional and exceedingly dangerous.

Curiously, even the FBI, the CIA, the director of national intelligence, the Pentagon and the attorney general didn’t support it. They believe it may hinder their ability to investigate terrorism, “because it would be harder to win cooperation from suspects held by the military.”

But it passed anyway. And I suspect it passed because the corporations, seeing the unrest in the streets, knowing that things are about to get much worse, worrying that the Occupy movement will expand, do not trust the police to protect them. They want to be able to call in the Army. And now they can.

“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

“A religion true to its nature must also be concerned about man’s social conditions….Any religion that professes to be concerned with the souls of men and is not concerned with the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them, and the social conditions that cripple them is a dry-as-dust religion. Such a religion is the kind the Marxists like to see—an opiate of the people.”

“I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, quality and freedom for their spirit. Many people fear nothing more terribly than to take a position which stands out sharply and clearly from the prevailing opinion. The tendency of most is to adopt a view that is so ambiguous that it will include everything and so popular that it will include everybody.”

“All too many of those who live in affluent America ignore those who exist in poor America. In doing so, the affluent Americans will eventually have to face themselves with the question that Eichmann chose to ignore: How responsible am I for the well-being of my fellows? To ignore evil is to become an accomplice to it.”

“Let us say it boldly, that if the total slum violations of law by the white man over the years were calculated and were compared with the law breaking of a few days of riots, the hardened criminal would be the white man.”

“There is nothing that expressed massive civil disobedience any more than the Boston Tea Party, and yet we give this to our young people and our students as a part of the great tradition of our nation. So I think we are in good company when we break unjust laws, and I think those who are willing to do it and accept the penalty are those who are part of the saving of the nation.”

“The straitjackets of race prejudice and discrimination do not wear only Southern labels. The subtle, psychological technique of the North has approached in its ugliness and victimization of the Negro the outright terror and open brutality of the South.”

“Everybody can be great, because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don’t have to know about Plato or Aristotle to serve. You don’t have to know Einstein’s theory of relativity to serve. You don’t have to know the second theory of thermo-dynamics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”

“Orion’s mission is to inform, inspire, and engage individuals and grassroots organizations in becoming a significant cultural force for healing nature and community.” Orion also understands that “cultural transformation cannot happen without personal transformation.” (Although, I would add that transformation and change is not as linear as this suggests—there is still mystery here.)

Why do I tell you all this? Well, because Orion is an advertising free, beautifully crafted, literary magazine devoted to bringing people and nature closer together—and therefore dedicated to bringing people closer together with people—and so worthy of support. This year, Orion is also celebrating its 30th anniversary. And at the bottom of the list is the happy fact that I had a small piece published in the January/February edition. Pick up a copy at your newsstand, or better, purchase a subscription.