Stitched Together

Sometimes I forget how significant the individual donations we receive can be. I am in charge of Mustard Seed Edmonton’s warehouse where we receive and sort all of our donations. My volunteers and I go through a whole lot of stuff - we sort dozens of bags and boxes every day. Many of our donors will drop by in the middle of their lunch break or errand run, and are often busy people who are on the go. And, so we usually greet each other with a smile and quick hello, and then I take their donations inside. On rare occasion I will have an interaction with a donor that so clearly reminds me that every little bit counts and that God is able to keep track of it all.

A few weeks back, the Wolbeck family came by with a donation. Brian, Deb, Greg and Emily piled out of their minivan with smiles on their faces. At the same time, another individual donor pulled up who seemed to be in a rush. The Wolbecks were quick to help take in the other donor’s items when I asked for their help. We all cheerfully worked together to empty the busy woman’s vehicle and then she was on her way.

Then I had a chance to take a look at the Wolbecks’ donation. Their minivan was packed full of beautiful, new, homemade quilts. It was a tiny miracle. What many of our donors don’t realize is that much of the community that The Mustard Seed serves needs new blankets all year round. It might be warm and sunny during the day, but it still gets chilly at night for people who sleep outside. Throughout this summer, and particularly when the Wolbecks arrived, our blanket shelves were completely barren. It was such a thrill for me to invite this family inside to show them the difference they would be making. And, they were invigorated too. They jumped to help bring in the dozens of quilts and put them directly into our Personal Assistance Centre.

As we worked together to fill the shelves, I felt like I wanted to bless the Wolbecks somehow in return for what they had given. So, I expressed this to them and asked if I could pray for them. As we bowed our heads it became so clear that God was present in that moment. Deb expressed it this way in an email to me afterwards, 

 “The Holy Spirit was just heavy in that place so we know great things will happen. May He bless every one of the hearts and hands of people that work there and may all who enter those doors feel what we felt.”

We were all moved to tears. Sometimes you just know that God is near and involved. I know for certain that God is able to see the needs of every individual that The Mustard Seed serves. And, I also believe that he is capable of drawing resources from far and wide to take care of those in need. I hadn’t even heard of the town of Heisler before I met the Wolbecks. But, God knew them and where they are from. He also knew that they would be willing to put all the effort into making those quilts and driving 160km to deliver them.

I am so thankful to be a part of a movement that doesn’t just reach out to the poor, but nurtures their community. I am also thankful that God sees fit to include people from all over Alberta in this same community as donors and volunteers. Christ is actively at work in Edmonton’s inner city stitching people together and I love it.

- Nathan

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Tiger by the Tail

Daylight required him to retreat from the open fields and well travelled paths to a shaded spot beneath an ancient tree. The tiger did not seem to notice, his chosen resting place was not deep in a jungle, or rather it was deep in a jungle of a very different kind. The tiger lay down in the city park, too tired and disoriented to consider leaving. "I will rest, and move on when darkness falls again." He missed the certainty of his forest home. He longed for the deep blanket of green he knew as a younger man. His home was far away, and if he had it to do over again, he often told others in the park, he never would have left. But he had believed that it would be better, here. Easy hunting, plentiful food and shelter who could resist?

The coolness of shade allowed some welcome relief from a night of moving in and out of shadow, hunting, searching, seeking and hiding. In the daylight, he could sleep, clean his wounds, allow the dryness of the air to dry his soiled feet and cracked skin. His coat, being thick and multilayered protected him from heat and cold. Its multicolored lines took on the rippling shadows of midday with a welcoming camoflage. In the relative safety of daylight, he at last could rest.

They saw him earlier in the day. His heaving breath and flailing limbs bore witness to the tiger's condition. They had water, they had eyes to see and ears to hear. They had what he needed even if the tiger knew nothing of it.  They approached cautiously, none of them had ever spoken to a tiger.

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It Can Happen to You

One of the elements of my previous role at The Mustard Seed was giving agency tours to basically anyone who called and requested one. I’m sure my tours weren’t the greatest. I think they weren’t extraordinary partly because I was am out of shape and could barely speak about our 4th floor programs after climbing the stairs, and partly because I had a hard time getting my tourees to really feel the impact of The Mustard Seed. But there were four tours that I clearly remember from those days. They’re all too long to put in one blog post, so I've settled on one story to tell.

A couple in their late-thirties wanted to come for a tour. I don’t fully remember their story, but I do know that they wanted to come in on a Saturday around 10 am. They were perfectly pleasant and very personable, which (take note) generally makes it much easier on the tour guide. In my attempt to have them truly grasp the issues, I tried to turn things around with the 'ol switcheroo and have my new friends mentally place themselves in the shoes of those who find themselves at our doors. Something that people don’t really think about is what they would do if it ever happened to them. Well, of course it never would, because those experiencing homelessness are a different, unfortunate brand of human being and share no similarities with regular people like you and I, right? Wrong. Clearly. 

We eventually reached the doors of our former “Step Up Housing,” which was a dorm-like housing program that housed 22 men and four women. Usually all who called Step Up "home" were required to be out of the building during certain hours, with the theory that those in the program couldn’t simply sit around all day. Exceptions were made for weather, those working nights, working shift work, or those who were sick – and, I’m sure, other valid reasons. Since it was a Saturday, people were milling about in the building, but the room was nearly empty. I was at the end of my “it can happen to anyone, and I truly mean anyone. Really,” spiel, which I think was falling on not-quite-deaf-but-pretty-close ears when I explained what Step Up was, and we went in to tour around. I was in the middle of describing the program when the dad looks at the one man in the room, a guest of ours, and nearly falls over. “Doug?!,” he asks. “GREG?!” Doug responds as the two men look wide-eyed at each other. The wife and I look at each other, completely befuddled, and back slowly out of the room to give the two men some room to speak.Greg joins us in the hallway after a few minutes, looking like he’d seen a ghost.

 “I saw Doug two years ago. I worked with him. He was fine.”

And with that, Greg and Doug had proved my point, far more powerfully than I ever could have. It truly can happen to all of us. And it can happen to those we love. The rest of the tour was pretty quiet and, when they left, I truly felt I'd done my job. But, in actuality, someone much more important had done it for me.

- Sarah
Follow Sarah on Twitter @ispeakcanadian 
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This Community Does Not Tolerate Sexual Exploitation

Part of my job here at The Mustard Seed in Edmonton is in education. No, I am not a teacher... At least not officially. Though, I do teach people about our community, about practising social justice and solidarity, about the realities of poverty that exist in our city.

Yesterday the teaching topic of the day was sexual exploitation. To help me in this conversation I welcomed CEASE (Centre to End All Sexual Exploitation) to share with us the history of sex trafficking in our community, as well as their personal experiences with street prostitution. There were two women, one of whom was vital to the development of CEASE as an organization, the other a victim and survivor of sexual exploitation.

They shared with us stories of sex trade workers being herded into specific communities by law enforcement officials in the mid-80s to hide this issue from the up and coming college campuses in downtown Edmonton. They talked about the street count done by police officers in 1992 where they counted 250 children and 750 women on street corners working at all hours of the day. They also taught us about the 'John School' program offered through CEASE to men charged for purchasing sex (a program which boasts a success rate upwards of 80%).

But the part of the story that will stick with me is when Juanita shared about her experience being pimped out from the age of 10. An Edmonton-native, Juanita was born into a family of addiction, abuse, and intergenerational patterns of destruction. She was moved in and out of many foster and group homes from the minute she was born. She shared memories of repetitive sexual assault in her early childhood, and of eating out of garbage cans for days on end when her mother would leave her without explanation.

I don't think I will ever forget the horrific details of Juanita's 22 years of street work, and to be honest, I don't think I want to. Though it was difficult to hear in some instances, Juanita's story is a story of hope, of grace, and of the redemptive nature of our Creator. It also reminds me that there are none who choose a life of prostitution, addiction, poverty, homelessness. For most, there are no choices at all, only the decision to keep walking and journeying the road they've been set on.

For more information on the fight against sexual exploitation and sex trafficking visit ceasenow.org or defenddignity.ca.

-Kat
Follow me on Twitter @katherineboldt

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I am an addict

Hello.  My name is Josh and I am an addict.

Man it feels good to say that.  Give it a try and see how you feel. After all, we are all addicts... right?

In modern day terms, ‘addiction’ is used to describe what the biblical text calls ‘sin’ and what Christians in the Middle Ages called ‘passions’ or ‘attachments’.  Alcoholics and drug users exhibit the visible form of addiction, but the reality is - we are all addicted.  We are habituated to our way of thinking and doing and how we process our reality. Essentially, we are addicted to our ego.

As a society we are addicted because we agree to be compulsive and obsessed - Alberta’s addiction to oil, America’s addiction to war, government’s addiction to empire, the church’s addiction to absolutes, the poor person’s addiction to victimhood, the rich person’s addiction to entitlement.  As my friend Nic says, “[we all have] a deeper reality which needs to be addressed and named… brokenness.”

I am not an alcoholic but I am an addict.  I am addicted to myself, my own pattern of thinking, my own reason and logic and, in a way, my insecurities and fears. I am addicted to self-indulgence, control and willpower. I am addicted to the self-image I manufacture.  As Thomas Merton would put it, I am addicted to my ‘false-self”.   There must be a way to break free of these self-made chains, but as one of my heroes, Albert Einstein, said, “No problem can be solved by the same consciousness that caused the problem in the first place.”  I need a transformed consciousness.

In Alcoholics Anonymous, Step One of the Twelve Steps is: “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.”

In this statement is more than meets the eye. Is the admission of addiction and, therefore, powerlessness, the first step to overcoming it? Our society often looks at the visibly addicted with judgement and condemnation, as if people who struggle this way are lesser than those who don't.  Jesus and other wisdom teachers say something different.  It seems that people who fail to do the ‘right’ thing are often those who break through into a new enlightened consciousness of compassion and contentment.  It seems that until your own resources fail you and you're truly powerless, only then can you begin the journey of discovering your ‘true-self.'

The path towards true transformation, healing and salvation is through powerlessness; dying to the false-self, letting go and unlearning, and reveling “in this cosmic economy of Grace.” (Richard Rohr)

What are you powerless towards?

- Josh