Spiritual Autobiography 12

In 1985 I moved to an apartment downtown. I had been harbouring a young alcoholic, near my age who would become a close friend for many years. He had befriended in me in the bars downtown and we became spiritually and psychically very close. This was a most difficult friendship in many ways. He left the city, then a couple of weeks later I was getting ready to move. I would be living near Robson and Burrard just in time for Expo 86 to get underway a few months later. I felt called by God to live there as a presence of prayer and spiritual warfare. I must have been crazy. Here I was working till two or three in the afternoon with really destroyed persons in the Downtown Eastside, only to come home then do the bars and cafes downtown to look after other losers. I was a case for burnout if ever one existed. I would also go into the trails in Stanley Park to erect small cairns of twelve stones, as a visible symbol of God's presence. It was rumoured that, along with the homosexual activity down there, that there were also satanic practices occurring at night. I believed this, and did actually come across plenty of circumstantial evidence to support this theory. I was very busy. mass first thing in the morning, followed by breakfast with the clergy, then I would start work a block away since I was working for St. James Social Services. Then, after several hours of assisting and cleaning up after some of the most broken people in the Lower Mainland still living independently, dealing with cockroaches, lice, getting sworn at and occasionally threatened and other fun activities, I would head off to one of the cafes downtown where I was known and present and spend time offering support to local people, or I would head off to Stanley Park and elsewhere in the city where I had built them and tend to the cairns, which were often destroyed. I lived in a spiritually and emotionally rarified and very heightened state. I sometimes wondered if I was at risk for psychosis, but somehow I got through it all, at times sheltering homeless and insecurely housed people in my living room. My alcoholic friend returned for several weeks and was being an absolute pain while I was giving palliative care to a man nearing death from cancer. I got through it all somehow. My friend was getting impossible and we both agreed it was time for him to leave. I was exhausted, but somehow soldiered on. God's presence was very near. Then some punk Satanists moved upstairs, made tonnes of noise, and tried to put a death curse on me when I complained. I will not go into detail on this page but there were some very interesting evidences of things going on. I moved to an apartment on a quiet street in the West End, cut back on a lot of my activity and rested, but still continued in ministry, though no longer living at that perpetual, impossible to sustain without eventually burning out or going crazy, heightened and rarified state. My friend joined me and ended up spending the last two months of my year in that apartment with me. We got along very well and we actually missed each other when it was time to move. I had found, through his agency, an old farm house in Richmond on an overgrown acre of land being offered at an affordable rent. I took it. After six weeks of intense renovations and learning all kinds of new skills, the place was ready for occupancy in mid-December, 1987, and soon would open yet another new chapter in my life and walk with God.