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But it makes me ask, why are we privileged people interested in "doing something" about the DTES? If I'm honest with myself, it's not primarily to help all the people living in the DTES. It's actually to help myself. Because I'm uncomfortable with, or embarrassed about, or ashamed of the DTES. I'm ashamed at how money has been wasted. I'm embarrassed it hasn't done much good. I'm uncomfortable with the suffering I see.
He is risen indeed!
Jodi said we shouldn't start on Easter
no right to celebrate life in the DTES
if we haven't tasted the death
so we did
twenty-one of us
made a pinecone cross
I should really be the most ardent proponent of the "social mix" argument. My work, in essence, is social mix. As I'll discuss below, most people in life prefer to form fairly comfortable friendships with people who are similar to them. But my two DTES communities, Jacob's Well and God's House of Many Faces, both promote the importance of mutually transformative friendships between people from very different groups, which is an integral part of the larger-scale work of reconciliation that we pray will happen between people groups. We believe that the Kingdom of God is incredibly diverse, and that we should start practicing this Kingdom life right now on earth.
For a while now, I've wanted to dedicate a post to gentrification, one of the most important and contentious realities in my neighbourhood today. I've written bits and pieces on it here (satirically) and here (when I moved in), but I've never really delved into it. I think the reason I've resisted writing about gentrification is that I don't feel sure of my convictions - I've felt conflicted about my own analysis and response to it. But I think it's time to tackle this topic...
Mental illness is in the news because of the tragic shootings in Connecticut yesterday. Although I've seen nothing confirming that the gunman suffered from a particular mental illness, and I worry about the stigmatization of all mentally ill people as potentially dangerous to society, I welcome the discussion about how best to care for people with mental illnesses. In this post I want to give some advice for pastors and friends seeking to love and support people who struggle with mental illness. This would obviously be better written by someone who is actually struggling with mental illness, but I'll do my best to pass on what I heard from those in my class...
