When I was twenty-three I was traumatized from the shabby treatment I had been subjected to by the Christian community I was suddenly kicked out of. I had a relatively gentle year, trying to find sustainable employment which wasn't always easy. I could no longer afford post-secondary education.
It was a magical year, peopled by the many amazing and fascinating new friends I was making. Something changed when I was twenty-four. I lived in yet another traumatizing situation which involved having to kick out a self-destructive idiot before I got dragged into the gutter with them. I began to work in home care. A year later I joined the Anglican Church.
During this time I cared for seniors, people with multiple disabilities and for the dying. My life became focussed and concentrated around caring for others. Daily mass in the early mornings at the high Anglican church was a help. I often felt lonely and isolated. For the first time in my young life I was being confronted almost daily with the reality of death.
I lost my job at the age of twenty-seven and for a while became very poor. I spent a lot of time with people downtown, people of the street, people of the night. It was a kind of Christian ministry of presence.
A number of the people I was meeting and befriending had AIDS. Soon I was surrounded by death. I was working in home care again, this time in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, Canada's poorest postal code. AIDS, death, alcoholism, drug addictions, mental illness and extreme poverty all marked my work and ministry. There was no clear boundary between my personal and professional lives in those days. It was worse than intense.
Satanists began to organize against me and I often felt in danger. I lived in a surreal, spiritually charged reality and really didn't know how much longer I would be able to cope. When I was thirty-one I renovated a recent farm house in Richmond which I rented and lived in. Then my mother was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.
No comments:
Post a Comment