When Dippy and Dopey became interested in us we threw a huge garden party and called it a Salad-bration especially for the local parishioners. It was well and beautifully attended and only one nose got put out of joint, belonging to a tall ungainly woman known to be hugely spiritual (hugely a few other things, too!) but with an incredibly thin skin. When I saw a number of guests lining up for thirds I teased them and called them piggies. She stormed off to her husband's car where she steamed and sulked until her equally offended hubby drove them both home. It was otherwise a success with a wonderful melding of hugely diverse persons including some of our friends from downtown.
Dippy and Dopey, especially Dopey, began to bankroll our operation. We were being bought. We were about to be evicted when Dopey gave us a cheque for all but thirty-six dollars of what we owed. When asked why not the whole amount Dopey lamely replied that this was what the Lord was telling her. Dopey was one of these absurd emotionally led charismatics who insisted that God always spoke to her though the evidence often suggested someone else was doing the speaking. Dippy quickly forked over the remaining money. Our rent was paid, we were not homeless, and now we were owned by two, needy and desperate aging women.
They began meeting with us almost daily for prayer and worship. They began accompanying us downtown where they were eagerly welcomed and loved. especially in the cocktail lounge of a gay owned and operated hotel in the Downtown Eastside near the gate to Chinatown. Flippy resented their presence. He had a weird possessive and proprietary sense concerning me. I wanted them there to help keep Flippy's excesses in line and to also balance our nascent Christian community.
Dippy left her fat Ukrainian perogy (her boyfriend) and moved in with Dopey whom she consistently drove insane. Then Dopey got the brilliant idea of selling her condo and renting an old house with Dippy in East Vancouver. The equity from the condo sale was invested into our community, now called the Community of the Transfiguration. After an intense and near fruitless search they found a house in January 1990 in the Mount Pleasant area. We were all richer and our financial issues were, for a while anyway, resolved. Dippy and Dopey named their old bungalow with basement Shiloh House and invited everyone they met to visit, dine, breakfast, live there. It was so painful seeing these two naïfs getting exploited and taken advantage of, lied to and stolen from day after day by the people they were trying to help. I was living in a place beyond burnout. I was recently recovering from a particularly savage beating inflicted by Flippy, my mother was getting progressively sicker and it was now clear that she would soon be dying. I was traumatized, knew it, and no one seemed to give a shit. They had expected me to mentor and lead them, then disregarded every single recommendation and suggestion I had to offer out of my years of experience of street ministry, then resented me for being unavailable. There was no winning with those people. The help I was needing was nowhere to be found.
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