We're All Screwed 5

This was before homelessness reached the level of being a national emergency in my country, particularly here in smug, beautiful rich Vancouver.  The year was 1990.  The Christian community I was part of was less than a year old.  I was feeling called in a slightly different direction from the other three members.  In some ways, they had taken over my job and appeared to be working much better and more effectively with the marginalized and street involved queer people who had been my specialization. 

I walked up the Granville Mall one day.  It was early spring, a bit chilly, and as I walked I noticed in many doorways clusters of cold looking and raggedly dressed gutter punks huddled together, often in small groups.  No one appeared to notice me.  I began slowly to realize that they were my people. 

There was a connection there.  I was older, already thirty-four.  My mother was dying and my life was morphing itself into another big change.  Those punks, I sensed, were me.  And I was those punks.  My life, I knew, might easily have gone in the same direction, had God not figured so strongly in my life and daily experience.

I wanted to touch their lives and for them to touch mine, but I wasn't yet sure how to reach out.  We had already had rather a practice run last year with one young man who took a shine to us.  He was living in a squat with other street punks and they were a kind of anarchist community.  He was engaging and very intelligent.  I sometimes wonder where he is now.  He kind of disappeared, as people often do, especially when they are street friends. 

Our community came into a generous transfer of funds when one of our members donated to us the proceeds when she sold her condo.  We had money to play with, for feeding and helping our people in the work we were doing. 

One day, after several such prayer walks up and down Granville, I invited a small group of punks to have lunch with me when they asked me for spare change.  This became routine and several times a week I was treating up to seven or more young marginalized strangers to a meal in a local café, rather a warmed-over hotspot, called Taf's (still open).

We spent the time talking, and I learned a lot about their lives, how they ended up on the street, their dreams and personal ambitions.  They were essentially good people, just struggling under more than their fair share of challenges.  I imagine they were all drug users and almost all addicts.  This to me didn't matter.  I was there to recognize and touch Christ in these people.

If I entertained any doubts about their friendship towards me, that was erased one day when one of them, a sensitive tough guy all covered with tattoos, gave me shit for walking past them one day without saying hi.  From that moment, we were friends.  One of them I drew an abstract portrait of with coloured felt pens.  His name was Mark.  He soon died, overdosing from drugs.  It wasn't long after that his best friend, Kevin who rebuked me for not saying hi, killed himself with his crossbow.  He never got over his friend's untimely death.

RIP, Mark and Kevin.  Thank you for your friendship.  To me, you both still live.