Beautiful moments III

Every few months I take some time to look over my journals from the previous few months. I just spent some time doing this, and came across some beautiful moments I wanted to share with you. – a faithful member of The Dale’s worshiping community prayed one Sunday in January “Lord, thank you that your…

Polarity Management

These past several weeks have felt very full! We participated in the “Spring into Parkdale” street festival, hosted a couple of different youth groups, went to a Street Level (www.streetlevel.ca) conference in St. Catharines, and held an open mic night, along with all the usual Dale programming. Erinn was also away for one of those…

Lord have mercy

The idea of mercy has been cropping up all over the place this past week. I’m not totally sure what to make of it all, so once again this blog is acting as a means of processing some of my thoughts. I’m reading a novel by Madeleine L’Engle, called A Live Coal in the Sea.…

Do this in remembrance of me

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about alcohol recently. This post is an attempt to process those thoughts. Much of the inner pain experienced by folks in communities like The Dale leads to the consumption of alcohol (and other substances). And much of the outer conflict that sometimes erupts from these folks stems from,…

A Future Not Our Own

The following reflection is from Oscar Romero, an archbishop from El Salvador who was assassinated on this day, in 1980, for speaking out against the repression of Salvadorans by their government. I read it this morning before heading off to The Dale, and it was exactly what I needed to hear. May it be an…

Despite what you can see

If you read Erinn’s blog (erinnoxford.wordpress.com), you’ll know that this was a bit of a rough week for us at The Dale, and it seems to have been a particularly tough one for other communities and individuals too. Lots of inner pain and tensions bubbling over, turning into outward conflicts. Many factors and influences contributing…

Beautiful moments II

My friend “Matt”, the person doing battle with addictions who I wrote about in the last “Beautiful moments” post, is continuously astounding me with deep, faith-filled one liners. On Tuesday, he told me that he was at another drop-in where some people were giving him a hard time. So he went into the bathroom, looked…

My friend and teacher

I have a friend who I’ll call Jane. She is in her 80’s, and we first started hanging out last year because she needed help with grocery shopping. We would walk together (very slowly) to No Frills, pick up some food, walk back to her rooming house, and share some tea and cookies (or pop…

Beautiful moments

This afternoon a friend came into the Thrift Store for our coffee/chat drop-in, and excitedly showed me a book he’d taken out of the library about the teachings of Jesus. Tonight he came to our Bible Study at Coffee Time. He’s feeling determined to turn a new page, do battle with his addictions, and has…

As the day rises to meet the sun

I often start my day by reading from a book called “Common Prayer: a liturgy for ordinary radicals”. The first line is always the same: “O Lord, let my soul rise up to meet you as the day rises to meet the sun.” Due to the incredible generosity of some friends who invited me to…