I don't know how I have managed to do it. I have coped with a system hostile to poor people and have come out okay, if still poor. I have generally worked all my life, with some periods spent on unemployment benefits and welfare. Finding sustainable, remunerative employment was always a challenge for me, I think especially for my lack of training and credentials. I have always been treated by employers like disposable goods. It hasn't been easy.
I think my spirituality has done more than anything else to protect my integrity. Those of you who have read a lot of this blog will understand that I became a Christian when I was fourteen, This was a profound change in my life and ever since that auspicious date I have lived more or less with a strong certainty of God's nearness and presence.
Without this perpetual infusion of my spiritual life I'm not sure how well I'd have born up. I was already a survivor of childhood sexual, physical and emotional abuse and neglect as well as my parents' bitter divorce. In my Christian community I had new friends and mentors and learned much better from some of them what my own parents never could have taught me. I was already politically aware from regularly reading underground journalism and asking questions and learning from the many people I was meeting. I learned from my friend, Big Bird, about vegetarian nutrition and how to live well on a tight budget. From everyone I was inspired to be kind, loving, compassionate to others and hospitable. My situation with my family worsened and I was bounced from my father who hated me to my mother's drunken and violent partner who didn't love me much either. I was on my own and fresh out of high school, struggling to survive. They were making my life miserable and they couldn't break me because I refused to be broken. From a succession of friends I learned other things, especially about books, psychology, literature, philosophy, and I began to read, learn and explore. While living with fundamentalist Christians for six months they made my life miserable but couldn't break me. I stayed with friends, freewheeling bohemian Jesus freaks and learned especially to value freedom, gentleness and inclusiveness. Then I got caught up with a fundamentalist cult whose harshness traumatized me. But they couldn't break me. I remained connected with a radical Mennonite house church and a radical lesbian feminist and other friends who taught me and mentored me and helped me find healing. I ran into problems with a church of fundamentalist evangelicals and walked out on their intolerant hatred, unbroken. I spent several years caring for the old, sick and dying while reaching out to the rejected on the streets and in the queer community. I ran into difficulties with the Anglican church and with a coven of Satanists out to destroy me. But they couldn't break me. I was desperately poor, eating weeds out of the back yard and walking nine miles downtown from Richmond to minister to the unwanted because I didn't have money for the bus. People were literally dying around me and my own partners in God's work turned on me and betrayed me. My mother died and I went to Europe where I was extorted, robbed and nearly killed. I returned to a bad situation in Vancouver and struggled to cope with very difficult friends who almost all ended up turning against me and betraying me. They couldn't destroy me, they could not break me. My life imploded and I became homeless and my own father turned against me and almost drove me to suicide. He could not break me. I was up against a welfare system designed to disempower and humiliate and dehumanize everyone on social assistance. I stood up against them. They couldn't break me.
My life has improved exponentially. God has sustained me and blessed and healed me throughout. I have also had to learn to be disciplined and use with wisdom and care all the resources at my fingertips. I have come to realize that being kind to others is in many ways the key to my own survival. I have learned that we are all interconnected, we are all members of one organism and not one can survive or do well without the others.
Yes, the powers in our government and economic and social systems are indeed making our lives a misery, at times a horror. But they cannot break us, not so long as we remain open to one another in a spirit of love and care, not as long as we go on learning and imparting to others our knowledge, not so long as we don't lose our sense of humour, as long as we keep on growing.
We are small, yes. But we are not as weak as we think. Together we will rise. Together we will prevail.
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