Vancouver Sun Article by Douglas Todd December 21, 2009

The Fraser Health Authority's decision to terminate 12 spiritual care directors is a sign it is not operating at the highest levels of medical innovation.

To put it more bluntly, the sudden firing of the spiritual care coordinators is a strong indicator that the Fraser Health Authority's leadership is living in the Jurassic Age, when dinosaurs roamed.

Fraser Health's administrators appear painfully ignorant of contemporary scientific research into healing.

They don't seem to realize that, since 2001, more than 5,000 research studies have been published showing a strong correlation between patients' spirituality and their physical and mental well-being.

But Fraser Health does not appear to respect this university research into how spirituality and religion have been shown to, among other things, reduce patients' physical and mental disease rates and the time they spend in hospitals.

Instead, Fraser Health also has been slashing what it questionably calls other "non-core" services, including social workers/counsellors, addiction programs and psychiatry for troubled youths.

There is no doubt strong pressure on rising health care costs.

But those pressures have precious little to do with non-denominational spiritual care coordinators, who used to be known as chaplains.

The high price tag for medical care has mostly to do with the ever-rising expectations of the public and the escalating cost of technology -- equipment and diagnostic testing -- as well as drugs, not to mention the often high earnings of many physicians, medical specialists and administrators.

With Fraser Health running an annual budget of $2.48 billion, it appears short-sighted to chop 12 spiritual care directors trained in supporting people with all kinds of grave illnesses.

The $650,000 the spiritual caregivers collectively earn is less than 1/4,000th of the Fraser Health's $2.48 billion annual budget, which apparently has to be trimmed by $10 million due to provincial government shortfalls.

There has been an outcry about the November firings by an unusual coalition of religious and secular leaders, according to Christoph Reiners, pastor of Peace Lutheran Church in Abbotsford.

The loose coalition includes mainline Protestants, Catholics, evangelicals, Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims, New Democratic Party MLAs and regional mayors. But the coalition has been told by Fraser Health CEO Nigel Murray not to waste their breath.

Nevertheless, Murray and his advisers would do well to catch up on the extensive scientific research outlined in the seminal book, Spirituality in Patient Care, by Dr. Harold Koenig, a Duke University psychiatrist who has arguably done more than anyone to gather academic data on the positive benefits of integrating spirituality into clinical practice.

Spirituality in Patient Care, for instance, cites a major study in the New England Journal of Medicine showing that 90 per cent of medical patients report using religion and spirituality to cope with and make sense of physical illness. Forty per cent said it's the "most important" way they do so.

Additional studies, including at Duke Medical Center, have found that people who receive spiritual or religious support are less prone to disease, and spend fewer days in hospital on average than non-religious people with the same acute or chronic conditions.

Spirituality in Patient Care also points to dozens of studies showing North Americans who feel sustained by their religious convictions and communities are inclined to live longer and suffer less from depression, anxiety, suicidal tendencies and addictions.

Despite this overwhelming data linking a vibrant spirituality with good health, Koenig is realistic enough to recognize spiritual care coordinators are not a panacea for all that ails patients.

Not every patient wants spiritual support, for instance. Sometimes, as Koenig says, religion can get in the way of healing, including patients who take an unhealthy fatalistic view that their disease is "God's will" or "Allah's will" and there's nothing they should try to do about it.

To be fair, Fraser Health is not the only unimaginative medical organization in North America cutting chaplains and others, such as social workers and counsellors, who often provide spiritual and emotional back-up to patients.

These behind-the-times medical organizations are flagrantly disregarding the recommendations of major mainstream North American-wide professional bodies, including those devoted to hospital accreditation, nursing and medical education.

All these major medical bodies, reports Spirituality in Patient Care, have gone on record urging hospitals to improve spiritual care for patients, both through the use of chaplains and by heightening the spiritual literacy of physicians, nurses and social workers.

The recent research linking spirituality with good patient care points to a win-win situation.

At a relatively low cost, the majority of patients who ask for spiritual support could receive the help they need to heal.

As well, Canadian taxpayers could in the long-run save money through reduced incidence of disease and shorter hospital stays.

dtodd@vancouversun.com

Read Douglas Todd's blog at www.vancouversun.com/thesearch

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Article of Interest... Three Clergymen, Three Faiths, One Friendship

Part 2 of article

This is the second part of an article from the Vancouver Sun, talking about the 'war' between spirituality and religion. The author purports that spirituality is a personal thing while religion relates to the corporate nature of spiritual practice.

While it is difficult to find a balance between the personal and the corporate, Todd puts forth that a "good" religion is one that allows for growth and movements within the personal/corporate sphere. Humanity is constantly changing and growing and hence religion as one main structure of the human expression of Self needs to be able to change and grow with people. I wonder at the persons who do identify themselves as "not religious, but spiritual". Often when this statement is made to me, it is a defense mechanism usually meaning "don't shove your beliefs and judgments on me. That is the last thing that I need." I have always thought that those persons who have an aversion to "organized religion" are reacted to either a bad experience, misconceptions, or both. Often people attend worship services, but aren't educated about the practices that follow. It is not like someone says " we will now sing this song, or pray this prayer for reason 'X', " but rather, after someone has attended for a while, it is understood," this is just how we do this". However, along with the need for structure, it should not be so rigid that it staganates growth of the worshipper, but it should also not be so flexible that there is an "anything goes" thinking. This is the difficulty of defining worship and spiritual practices -- they do change as our understanding changes. But one must consider "what am I doing this for? or who? " and "does this practice help me to grow and challenge my understanding of the world?" If the answer is "I don't know" to the first questions, and "no" to the second... then maybe we need to think about why something isn't working for us or others and to discuss this with someone we trust.

SECOND OF TWO PARTS

Which is better: Religion or spirituality? Many people, especially on the West Coast of North America, now firmly believe that it's much better to be "spiritual" rather than "religious."

Before offering my answer to the question, however, it's crucial to explain the common definitions going round today of "religion" and "spirituality," plus a few of the widespread complaints against both.

Some of the many, many people today who stress "I'm spiritual, but not religious" feel strongly about defining religion as an absolutistic and dogmatic belief system locked up in an institution.

Their condemnation has some validity, even though they're not correct in portraying ALL religion as doctrinaire.

There can be no doubt that institutional religion frequently regresses to blind obedience and self-righteousness.

That's the assertion, for instance, of Vancouver's world-famous spiritual writer, Eckhart Tolle, author of The Power of Now. The people who champion "spirituality" generally use the term to refer to the private and free development of a person's private inner life.

Tolle, for instance, is typical of many in the way he describes spirituality as personal "transformation" to an "awakened" state, detached from one's ego and even from "belief" itself .

The main charges against Tolle's popular form of self-spirituality are that it can become privatistic, leading to self-absorption, narcissism, naivety, anti-intellectualism and an anything-goes moral relativism. Critics say those who follow private spirituality are often unwilling to engage wider society and, in failing to do so, support the social status quo.

Just as there is something to the prevailing attack on "religion," there is also some truth to this critique of "spirituality."

But the mutual bombardments do not at all comprise the whole story of "spirituality" and "religion."

There are more comprehensive ways of looking at both, which will expand the debate far beyond a simplistic argument that one is good and the other is bad.

There are many valid definitions of "spirituality," a term that has only become hot in the past decade.

But I think one of the best and broadest definitions of "spirituality" is that it is "the ways humans have sought to find meaning in the world." However, I have to immediately add that I join the renowned American sociologist of religion, Robert Bellah, in suggesting that religion, at its deepest level, is about the same process -- forming human meaning.

In today's religion-wary culture, many won't like this overlapping definition of "spirituality" and "religion." But if you accept it, you would have to conclude that, at least in their ideal form, both can be beneficial.

There is another link between the two terms. Even though "spirituality" is now used to refer exclusively to a human's inner life, many private spiritualities, if they prove persuasive to enough people, eventually develop into more structured communal worldviews.

That is what happened with the experiences and teachings of Moses, Buddha, Socrates, Jesus, Mohammed and Baha'u'llah.

It's also what is happening with some best-selling contemporary spiritual teachers, as their thinking becomes more formalized through study groups and inter-connected communities.

In other words, it appears that the thing Western society is really debating these days is the difference in value between private spirituality and community-based spirituality, which is also sometimes known as institutional religion.

Contrary to what many people like to believe, I am not convinced personal spirituality and communal religion are mutually exclusive. They are complementary.

And both need to be approached in a self-critical way.

Any institutional religion that is habitually dogmatic and that fails to nurture a sense of personal spirituality, of personal choice and transformation, is empty.

And any personal spirituality that remains merely private, that doesn't make an effort to directly connect with others, with the real world, with community life, is trivial.

So where does that leave us with the question: Which is better: Spirituality or religion?

The short answer is they are both important.

However, I will go out on an unpopular limb for the longer answer.

I would suggest that institutional religion - when it is truly self-correcting, non-authoritarian and encouraging of authenticity (which it often, admittedly, is not) -- is more complete than private spirituality.

Let me briefly make my case for the value of religion in institutional form:

• Institutional religion, at its best, can be open, evolving and self- reforming -- even while attempting to define and remain true to core values, beliefs and practices.

• A religious institution can incorporate a multitude of personal spiritual practices, including the self-spirituality and nature spirituality that are popular today.

• Religious institutions, ideally, create a sense of community, which often contribute to the well-being of individuals.

• Religious institutions can offer checks and balances on private belief and practice. They can help isolated individuals avoid going off on unhealthy, wrong-headed or dangerous spiritual tangents.

• As a community, a religion can accomplish things that isolated individuals cannot. Institutions can plan and strategize, creating force fields for positive transition, both within individuals and in the wider society.

Ultimately, I like the way that Washington state scholar Patricia O'Connell Killen talks about the value of religions, which she also calls "wisdom traditions."

Unlike private spiritualities, community-based religions can, at their optimum, help people realize they're not the centre of the universe, Killen says. They can also, through their collected knowledge, historical perspective and shared values, be invaluable in helping people face life's inevitable suffering. In doing so, they can renew personal and public hope.

In the end, I don't believe we need to buy into the current nasty war between (personal) spirituality and (community-based) religion.

After all, that creates a false either/or choice.

What we can do instead is foster more interaction between spirituality and religion, since they are simply different aspects of the same thing: Humans' eternal search for meaning.

Column from Vancouver Sun

Has 'religion' outlived its usefulness?

Despite the arguments that spirituality is somehow better, both seek to bring people together

Douglas Todd

Vancouver Sun

Saturday, August 29, 2009

CREDIT: Steve Bosch, Vancouver Sun, Files Eckhart Tolle is a New Age teacher who blends elements of Buddhism and Hinduism into his philosophy.

'Many people are already aware of the difference between spirituality and religion. They realize that having a belief system -- a set of thoughts that you regard as the absolute truth -- does not make you spiritual no matter what the nature of those beliefs is."

That's the influential opinion of one of the world's most famous living spiritual teachers. Vancouver-based Eckhart Tolle, promoted by Oprah Winfrey, has sold millions of copies of his books, including The Power of Now.

His repeated message is "religion" is bad (oppressive) and "spirituality" is good (liberating).

As Tolle writes in his latest mega-seller, A New Earth: Awakening to Life's Purpose, religious people are convinced "unless you believe exactly as they do, you are wrong in their eyes, and in the not-too-distant past, they would have felt justified in killing you for that. And some still do, even now."

Tolle is promoting what is fast becoming conventional wisdom in the western world: "Religion" is institutional, almost always authoritarian. "Religion" is equated with the Crusades, terrorism and judgmental U.S. televangelists.

"Religion," in the mind of Tolle and those who read his books in more than 30 languages, is rigid and divisive and absolutistic.

This same anti-religion message is being advanced by spiritual authors such as Neale Donald Walsch, author of the best-selling Conversations with God, and a host of other New Age teachers. To them "religion" is "fundamentalism."

In contrast, Tolle prefers the term "spiritual," which he describes as "the transformation of consciousness" -- to a state of "awakening."

In line with Tolle, many people in Canada, perhaps even most, now find it necessary to tell anyone who cares to listen: "I'm not religious, but I'm spiritual."

The conviction that "religion" is essentially evil is now so pervasive in our culture that I am having even observant evangelical Christians, Jews and Muslims also tell me: "I'm not religious, but I'm spiritual."

How did western society get to this point, where religion has become a dirty word?

Much of it has to do with shifting definitions.

What, after all, is "spiritual?"

What is "religious?"

Unless these important words are defined, people can spend a lot of time going round in conversational circles.

Let's start with "religion."

The Oxford Dictionary defines "religion" as "the belief in and worship of a superhuman power, esp. a personal God or gods." Oxford adds that religion is "a particular system of faith and worship." Most interesting is that the Latin root of "religion" is "to bind together."

Even though I quibble with this Oxford definition of religion, I accept it's relatively straightforward compared to the ever-evolving meanings of the amazingly popular and vague word, "spiritual."

American philosopher Ken Wilber is highly aware of the problems that occur when people don't nail down what they mean by "spiritual." He cites several usages.

One common understanding of "spiritual" is that it's a state of consciousness, such as those achieved through meditation, he says. Another definition of "spiritual" refers to embodying an attitude, such as love or wisdom.

A third use of "spiritual" restricts it to higher states of consciousness or maturity. I'll add a fourth definition of "spiritual" -- how a person finds ultimate meaning.

Although it's hard to tell with Tolle, since he's not overly systematic, he seems to basically define "spiritual" in line with Wilber's first definition -- as a state of mind, as the state of being detached from one's ego.

Mark Shibley, of Southern Oregon University, suggests there are two major types of alternative spiritualities (as distinct from organized religions) operating in North America, which often overlap.

The first type most fits Tolle and Walsch. Shibley calls what they promote "self-spirituality."

They focus on the self as sacred. Tolle and Walsch, both of whom live in the Pacific Northwest, or Cascadia, where self-spirituality is commonplace, emphasize private psychological practice over doctrine.

The second major spiritual group adheres to Earth reverence. They stress that nature is divine. They tend to have mystical moments not in churches or temples, but in the wilderness.

Now that we've fleshed out the terms, religious and spiritual, let's get down to the big question.

Which is better?

Spiritual or religious?

If you define "religion" as Tolle and Walsch do -- as rigidly institutional, fundamentalist and self-righteous -- you would have to opt for "spiritual." After all, personal "transformation" seems more authentic than this harsh, top-down religion.

But if you keep in mind the dictionary definition of "religion" -- that it's a "system of faith" that may serve to "bind together" humans with each other, the world and a transcendent reality -- the rivalry between the two becomes not so clear-cut.

Is it not possible to be "spiritual," to practise inner transformation, at the same time one is "religious," that is, working to bond with a higher power and wider community through shared beliefs?

The great sociologist, Robert Bellah, in a recent article in the Buddhist magazine, Tricycle, writes that making a sharp distinction between religion and spirituality creates a false dichotomy. And that's what Tolle does.

The author of ground-breaking books, such as Habits of the Heart, helpfully broadens the definition of religion to, "the many ways humans have sought to find meaning, to make sense of their lives."

I find Bellah's definition better than even the one supplied by the Oxford Dictionary, since it can include religions that posit no God or gods, such as forms of Buddhism.

It's also close to the definition I tend to use most for "spiritual." And, in many ways, the definitions are interchangeable.

Bellah also persuasively maintains that trying to rid the world of religion -- since it's often corrupted -- would be absurd.

It would be like saying, "Let's get rid of the economy," because it often does harmful things.

"Religion meets a human need, and if you get rid of it in one form, it will come back in another," Bellah says.

That, indeed, is what is happening with contemporary "spirituality."

Even though Tolle's promoters always stress that he is "not aligned with any particular religion or tradition," his teachings are dependent on ideas that have emerged over the millennia from Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity and western philosophy.

And try as Tolle and many others might to emphasize that "spirituality" is only an inner, private experience, the hundreds of spiritual groups that are forming around Tolle's work, at his encouragement, are developing their own shared beliefs, thoughts, practices, orthodoxies and sense of community.

Just like a religion.

- - -

Read Douglas Todd's blog at www.vancouversun.com/

thesearch

Next week: What it takes for "religion" and "spirituality" to be healthy.

© The Vancouver Sun 2009

From CBC news.. this past week..

Multi-donor, long-distance kidney swap a first in Canada

Last Updated: Thursday, June 25, 2009 | 6:30 PM ET Comments25Recommend63

CBC News

Domino kidney transplants mean fewer people are left on waiting lists, says Dr. Edward Cole. (CBC)

Four Canadians have new kidneys thanks to the country's first pay-it-forward exchange of organs from Toronto, Edmonton and Vancouver.

Living-donor kidney swaps are based on the idea of group co-operation: a donor whose kidney isn't compatible with a loved one who needs a new kidney agrees to donate to a stranger. In exchange, the partner receives a kidney from someone else.

Simultaneous kidney swaps have been done in Toronto before, but this multi-city swap had to be carefully co-ordinated across three time zones.

"It's been challenging," said Dr. Edward Cole, chair of the National Living Donor Kidney Exchange Program. "This is a real success story of people collaborating across the country, and with important input from Canadian Blood Services."

Timing is key, given ethical fears that once a patient receives a kidney, their partner could rescind an offer to donate. A donor or recipient might also have to back out after falling sick.

To avoid any last-minute problems, all donors were put under general anesthesia and none of the donor operations were started until all surgeons confirmed by telephone that they were ready to begin.

In this case, donors travelled to where the recipients were: two to Toronto General Hospital, one to Edmonton's University of Alberta Hospital, and another to St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver. Each site had more than 50 medical personnel involved.

It's also possible to fly kidneys between cities, since the organs remain viable for 12 hours after donation.

For some patients with severe kidney failure, a donation from a live donor offers better and faster results than transplants from deceased donors, said Cole, who is also the head of the University Health Network's kidney transplant program in Toronto.

Good Samaritan

In kidney swaps, the living donors are medically acceptable but are incompatible with their loved one based on blood type and other traits. The intricate process was featured on an episode of Grey's Anatomy.

There are 4,380 on Canadians on the kidney transplant waiting list, according to the Canadian Organ Replacement Registry. In many cities, people wait seven or eight years for a kidney from the time they start dialysis, said Dr. Edward Cole, chair of the National Living Donor Kidney Exchange Program.

Previously it has not been possible to use donors in this way because there was no national database to co-ordinate the matches.

Three of the donors had offered to give loved ones a kidney before, but weren't the right match. The fourth donor was a Good Samaritan.

"The best untold story is that one of the donors is an anonymous donor," said Dr. Sandra Cockfield, medical director of the renal transplant program at the University of Alberta.

"So this is an individual who came forward to donate not to someone they actually know on the waiting list, but had heard about the long waiting lists and the difficulty of living on dialysis," and came forward to donate to a stranger.

In this surgical marathon, the Good Samaritan or "non-directed donor" came forward and was matched to a recipient, allowing the chain of paired exchanges or domino surgeries to take place. The Good Samaritan was thus able to facilitate four transplants, including the last to someone on the waiting list.

Since many pairs are needed to improve the odds of a match, a national program works much better than a local one, Cole said.

The transplant surgical marathon required months of planning by Canadian Blood Services, which set up the national registry. Paired exchanges have also been performed in the U.S., but no national registry exists there.

"We're offering a new of getting transplants, and then it puts less pressure for all those who are waiting on the wait list," said Dr. Peter Nickerson of Canadian Blood Services in Winnipeg.

Donors and recipients are all recovering well in different wards to maintain their anonymity.

The pilot project involving B.C., Alberta and Ontario is going national.

"The fact that it's a possibility for me now opens up so many more doors, and it's a very exciting prospect," said Didja Nawolsky of Calgary, who is on the waiting list for a kidney. While she waits, Nawolsky gets 10 hours of dialysis daily.

Doctors involved are already scouting their next cross-Canada, multi-kidney swap.

Putting a Face to Tragedy

Because the links often disappear from the net, I am copying and putting the local paper's article here.

Mike's journey ends in fatal misfortune

By MATT KIELTYKA, 24 HOURS

A disabled homeless man is found murdered at an elementary school.

For most people, that's all they'll ever learn about Michael Nestoruk.

The 41-year-old's life before his grisly death Thursday has been an enigma to police, but a snapshot of the man taken two years ago reveals much more.

In February 2007, Nestoruk contacted 24 hours months after a photo of him - sleeping at Victory Square with his beat-down wheelchair by his side - was used on the cover.

Seeing himself as the poster boy for homelessness turned out to be a shock to Nestoruk's system, and a huge motivator as he battled to reclaim a normal life.

"I was pissed off because there I was exposed to everyone," the fiery father of two was quoted in "Back from abyss," a feature that ran in 24 hours on Feb. 27, 2007. "It's the only picture of me on the street and I thought 'what are my kids going to think when they see this?'"

He was estranged from his wife and his two children.

With the help of two B.C. Paraplegic Association outreach workers, Nestoruk dragged himself out of a drug-addicted lifestyle one step at a time.

He received a new wheelchair, a prosthetic leg and became an inspiration to others as he kicked a destructive drug habit and joined the province's wheelchair tennis team.

Faith IQ??

Today's edition of the local newspaper had an interesting article about faith. It essentially summarizes James Fowler's book Stages of Faith.





The article is called
Stages of faith: What's your spiritual quotient?
Many thinkers are making the case that humans are capable of evolving spiritually, of progressing to higher rungs

By Douglas Todd, Vancouver Sun
March 7, 2009

We all have IQs. Or Intelligence Quotients. IQ measure human's ability to reason with language, numbers and spatial relations. We also have EQs. Or Emotional Quotients.

Made famous by psychologist Daniel Goleman, they describe humans' skill handling emotions. We also have what could be called MQs, or Moral Quotients. Researcher Lawrence Kohlberg has been among those measuring humans' capacity for empathy and ethical reasoning.

We also, I would suggest, have SQs, or Spiritual Quotients.

Psychologists have done incredible work in the past century measuring the developmental stages of humans as they transform from mother-hugging infants into rebellious teenagers and, with a bit of luck, responsible adults. Some complain that religiosity, or belief in God, should not be similarly categorized. In this politically correct era, they don't want to hear about (gasp) spiritual hierarchies -- in which one spiritual stage is considered higher than another. But why not?

Just as Swiss social scientist Jean Piaget mapped out the four stages in which children learn to take in reality, and psychologist Erik Erikson outlined eight healthy stages we can go through from birth to death, many thinkers are making a good case that humans also spiritually evolve.

People are capable of progressing up a spiritual ladder. It doesn't mean they become smug on the higher spiritual rungs. Au contraire. But they can learn to function at a more complex, subtle and profound spiritual level.

Some of the scholars, psychologists and mystics who have been mapping the stages of spiritual growth include Clare Graves, Robert Kegan, Sri Aurobindo, Don Beck and especially Ken Wilber in his book, Integral Spirituality. In Vancouver, educator Chris Dierkes is among those specializing on the subject.

One of the spiritual development experts I find most intriguing is psychologist James Fowler of Emory University, author of the classic book, Stages of Faith. Fowler believes every baby starts out "undifferentiated." Babies don't make a distinction between a mother's warm, safe breast and God.

Fowler doesn't even call this primal beginning a stage. As a result, he says the first stage of spiritual development, which lasts from ages two to seven, is the one of unconscious religious fantasy.

After this comes the "mythic" stage. It's when people begin holding to literal and absolute truths. They might, for instance, believe the Genesis account of a six-day creation is fact. After this comes the third stage -- of "conventional" faith or spirituality.

It occurs when people move beyond their family of origin and seriously engage schools, peers and the media. They accept the judgment of significant others, like teachers and clergy. This conformist stage is when people develop loyalty to an ideology, group or lifestyle -- whether religious, military, artistic, economic or political. It is also when many religious groups often choose, unwisely, to hold "confirmation" classes, requiring teenagers to commit to a religious doctrine.

Many people, however, move on from this conformist approach -- to stage four, which is where Fowler says spirituality becomes more of an individual struggle. Stage four, to Fowler, marks a more reflective time, where self-actualization becomes the prime concern, and people try to take personal responsibility for their beliefs. In stage four a person starts listening to often-disturbing inner voices that challenge orthodoxy. They begin looking seriously at other religions and belief systems, realizing some of their convictions may be relative. This stage can happen in young adulthood or in one's 30s or 40s.

It often rises up just after religious "confirmation" classes, leading many teens to completely reject the religion of their youth. It is a "demythologizing" stage, Fowler says. It includes some atheists.

"It's dangers are inherent in its strengths; stage four comes with an excessive confidence in . . . critical thought and a kind of second narcissism."

The fifth stage of spiritual development leads to integration. In this stage, which is unusual before mid-life, Fowler says we recognize our own weaknesses and can see truth in paradox. The religion scholar Paul Ricouer would see stage five as one of "second naivete," Fowler says.

It's a helpful phrase. "Second naivete" occurs when people no longer take literally the stories of any spiritual or cultural tradition, either western or eastern. Instead, they deeply explore in themselves the "symbolic power" of stories about Moses, Jesus, Krishna, Buddha and others. They treat the stories "as if" they were true, mining them for transcendent meaning.

Finally, there is the highest stage of spiritual growth -- six: The universal. Fowler says it is "exceedingly rare" to achieve stage six, which some might call enlightenment. People in this stage "have become incarnators and actualizers of the spirit of an inclusive and fulfilled human community."

"Universalizers are often experienced as subversive of the structures (including religious) by which we sustain our individual and corporate survival and significance. Many persons in this stage die at the hands of those whom they hope to change," Fowler says.

No doubt thinking of people such as Jesus, Gandhi, Thich Nhat Hanh, Buddha, Aung San Suu Kyi and other courageous luminaries, Fowler says universalizers don't necessarily have to believe in God. But they do "have a special grace that makes them seem more lucid, more simple and yet somehow more fully human than the rest of us." They are not necessarily perfect. But people who have reached this enlightened sixth stage of spiritual development think globally, while still cherishing the particular.

That includes their specific communities, which at their best can be "vessels of the universal." Life, for those at stage six, is "both loved and held to loosely," Fowler says. "Such persons are ready for fellowship with persons at any of the other stages and from any other faith tradition."

To me, Fowler and his ilk make a convincing and eloquent case: Not all spiritualities are created equal.

Headline #3 of the Day

Dad denied bereavement leave after baby's death

Gerry Bellett, Vancovuer Sun, Thursday July 3

ertz Canada Ltd. has failed to persuade the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal to dismiss a complaint by an employee who claims he was denied bereavement leave from his job at Vancouver International Airport to deal with the death of his prematurely born daughter.

The car rental company is also being sued by the employee, Ali Mahdi, for religious discrimination by deducting pay for the time he spends praying each day to practise his Muslim faith.

Hertz applied to have both complaints dismissed by the tribunal, but member Tonie Beharrell said the company didn't provide grounds to show why either complaint shouldn't be considered.

According to Mahdi, his wife gave birth to a baby girl at 21 weeks of gestation in March, 2007, but the baby died the same day.

When he asked for bereavement leave, he was told he was ineligible because the child was stillborn and would have had to live longer than 24 hours for him to receive a leave.

Beharrell said there was a dispute between the parties over whether the child was stillborn or had survived birth only to die later.

The company had argued that a stillborn child "is not a child for the purposes of bereavement leave," so Mahdi was not granted leave.

As for the claims of religious discrimination, Mahdi is required to pray five times a day at times that vary during the year and which sometimes require him to pray while at work.

While the parties disagreed about how much time Mahdi spends at prayer while at work, they agreed that the punch-clock indicates he takes four minutes a day.

Accordingly, the company has been deducting 20 minutes pay per week from Mahdi's wages.

The company claims it has accommodated his need to pray and that it would constitute undue hardship to have to pay him for time not spent working.

Mahdi argued that other employees absent from work for similar periods were not docked pay.

Beharrell ruled that the dispute would go before the tribunal to be settled.

I pointed this article out to a colleague. He and I agreed that grief is grief regardless of whether this was a still born or whether the baby lived a few hours before death. The end result is a loss for both the mother and father. Grief isn't always about physical death, but in this case it was also the death of a dream and the hopes and plans that these parents had. My colleague and I talked about the seeming injustice presented in the article in that the company refused to acknowledge this man's grief. Despite the fact that the child did not live long enough to form a bond with the parents, there was still a relationship that was lost. This is to be acknowledged.

This article also screams injustice at punishing a man for practicing his faith on "company time". All employees are entitled to breaks, paid or not.

More Headlines..

Academic freedom and assisted suicide

This instructor wants to witness assisted suicide for his research. A fight is brewing over his right to do that.

Douglas Todd, Vancouver Sun, Thursday, July 3, 2008

Canada's university professors are preparing to defend the right of a Metro Vancouver researcher to witness illegal assisted suicides in the name of increasing understanding of the right-to-die movement.

The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) has formed a high-level committee to investigate claims that Kwantlen Polytechnic University sociologist Russel Ogden was unjustly denied the chance to research new techniques for assisted suicide.

"In the face of it, it looks as if there has been a violation of academic freedom," James Turk, executive director of the CAUT, said Wednesday in an interview from Ottawa.

The CAUT has formed what Turk call a "blue-ribbon committee" to look into why the Kwantlen administration is effectively blocking Ogden from researching assisted suicides, even after the university-college's ethics committee approved his research three years ago.

For more than 14 years, Ogden has engaged in controversial and ground-breaking research into scores of underground assisted suicides (often known as "Nu Tech deathing") by people dealing with AIDS, cancer and other terminal illnesses.

Ogden has frequently run into opposition from university administrators who fear their institutions could wind up in trouble for allowing him to possibly skirt the edges of the law.

In 2003, Ogden was awarded $143,000 in damages after it was determined that Britain's Exeter University had illicitly backed out of an agreement to protect the identities of scores of people Ogden found had taken part in illegal assisted suicides.

More recently, Ogden has discovered that more than 19 British Columbians have committed suicide through an increasingly widespread technique known as "helium in a bag."

Helium is seen as a swift, highly lethal and painless way to die without involving physicians or drugs. Helium is also nearly undetectable in toxicological probes.

The latest confrontation over Ogden's pioneering research techniques has arisen at the same time that assisted suicide has become big news in Washington state. Former Democratic governor Booth Gardner, who struggles with Parkinson's disease, is campaigning for a November ballot initiative on doctor-assisted euthanasia, which will go ahead if state supporters gather 225,000 signatures by today.

However, the CAUT worries that Ogden is being blocked from continuing legitimate research into the right-to-die movement by Kwantlen officials.

Despite receiving earlier ethics board approval, Ogden has since been told by Kwantlen's administration he cannot "engage in any illegal activity, including attending at an assisted death," says a CAUT letter written by Turk, which was addressed to eight academics and administrators. A copy was obtained by The Vancouver Sun.

Neither Ogden nor Kwantlen officials were available for comment Wednesday.

The CAUT's Turk maintains that, although assisted suicide is illegal in Canada (unlike in the state of Oregon, as well as the countries of Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands), it is neither illegal to commit suicide nor against the law to witness an assisted death in this country.

"Witnessing an illegal act, such as a husband murdering his wife, is not illegal behaviour on your part," Turk said.

Therefore, Turk said, it would not be illegal for Ogden to witness an assisted suicide, since he would be neither discouraging nor encouraging it.

It's important, Turk said, for academic researchers to be given the freedom to try to "understand politically unpopular behaviour." Even while a Canwest poll last year showed three-quarters of Canadians approve of assisted suicide, compared to 48 per cent of Americans, Turk said researchers like Ogden are being held back by university administrators "who might think the [federal] government is going to get mad at them."

The high-level CAUT committee that will review Ogden's case and issue its findings in a few months includes Kevin Haggerty, a sociologist at the University of Alberta; John McLaren, professor emeritus of law at the University of Victoria; and Lorraine Weir, an English professor at the University of B.C.

dtodd@png.canwest.com

© The Vancouver Sun 2008

The subject of euthanasia or assisted suicide is rift with controversy. The two sides would basically be Side one: All life is sacred. No one has the right to take the life of another regardless of the situation. All life is worthwhile, no one but G_d can determine its end. (This is usually backed by theological argument such as 10 commandments such as "thou shalt not kill" and others.)

Side 2 looks at the "right to choose" and is related to the experience of suffering, and the definition of "quality of life". Watching someone who is ill, who has constant pain and is able to do little more than lie in bed, may be alive by the aid of machines -- the definition of "quality of life" is subjective to the individual's experience. I had seen both sides as part of my work in health care chaplaincy. I have seen the family called to the bedside and told that this would be it, only to see the miracle of the patient to rally and continue living months or years more. I have also seen patients who are able to do little more than lie in bed, dependent on painkillers and oxygen or a machine to survive. Working in renal, I have even had discussions with patients who decide to cease treatment for their kidney failure. Often they have told me that it is the pain, the decline in their health, and the cessation of their perceived quality of life. After making this decision, and going to 'comfort care only" (meaning pain control but no 'heroic measures such as CPR or tube feed') I have met with patients who continue to survive for days or weeks. Some have asked 'why can't I die? When will this end?' I once told a man that I didn't know. (Often patients 'declare themselves', meaning they stop being aware of the world and their systems start to shut down. The body doesn't need or take in food or drink, their responses cease, and they begin the process of detaching from the world as they start the journey towards death.) I told the man that perhaps he wasn't done yet, that there might be something he was still to accomplish. I asked him to consider if he had unfinished business, if he still had a lesson to learn, or perhaps that he was to teach us something. This was not something he had considered...

The choice to live or die... not an easy one to make.

In the same paper, I found an article decrying the choice to award an Order of Canada to Dr. Morgentaler. Dr. Henry Morgentaler is best known for performing abortions illegally.

"Morgentaler is known for almost single-handedly pushing abortion rights on to the national agenda when he opened an illegal abortion clinic in Montreal in 1969. At one point, he was jailed for 10 months when a lower court acquittal was overturned on appeal.

The issue culminated in a landmark ruling in January 1988, in which the Supreme Court struck down anti-abortion provisions of the Criminal Code on the grounds they violate a woman's constitutional right to "security of person." "Cassandra Drudi, Canwest News Service; With files from The Journal, National Post and Montreal Gazette Published: Wednesday, July 02

One side of the debate argues that giving him the order of Canada has been a long time in coming. He has fought for the rights of many women who had little or choice regarding unwanted pregnancies. The other side of the debate claims that he has chosen to act against morality, to "kill" or take a human life by aborting pregnancies.

It is easy to take sides when hearing a story. But it is difficult to know what we would want when it is our situation. I wonder how many people surprise themselves by chosing something that they swore they would never do. I remember when I used think more "black and white/right and wrong", in a box. People who smoked were bad, people who drank were bad, people who got divorced were wrong. In practicing theological reflection in my everyday work, I have changed some of my theology in the 17 years since I first started my theological training. I now think that divorce is not a "sin", but hope that it is the last resort. I would rather see 2 happy people apart, then 2 (or more as children and other family members are affected) unhappy people together. I would rather people learn to relate to one another and try to have dialogue rather than discriminate due to a difference of opinion about how to live, or what to think. I would rather see people who are able to respect the beliefs and customs of others, and in turn have their traditions respected and maybe enhanced due to the openness towards those things that are new, or "different" (i.e. weird, or not like us). I would rather see love, real love (not sexual but agape

In my work, it is my task as a chaplain to "come along side", to walk with the person in their journey as a support for them in their times of health and/or other difficulties. To remind them by my presence that God is present in the midst of their struggles and seeming chaos and that S/He does care. To do this, I provide a listening ear with no judgment about their choices. this is not always easy. I might personally think one thing, but do not express this to the person, as I do not know the life experiences and perspective that leads to this choice or stage of their living. The goal is to help them make choices that will honor the person that they are, to enhance their life experience, to meet the "person" that they are -- that God knows them to be. I really don't know until it is my situation and my story.

Good news item

http://vancouver.24hrs.ca/News/2008/06/17/5899661-sun.html

This is a feel good story. Some would say a miracle. Gives you faith in humanity again.

Giving binners a good name By LUCY GOTELL, 24 HOURS
As an out-of-work actress, Vanessa Burns doesn't have a lot of extra cash. But she's willing to spare some for the man who did her a good deed when she was at her lowest - if she can find him.
After going out with some friends last weekend, Vanessa - who left her home in Toronto three months ago to find work here in Vancouver - woke up Sunday to find her wallet missing.
"I was devastated. I was really upset because I really missed my husband at home and my family," said Burns. "When that happened, it just really made me homesick."
Distraught, Vanessa called her credit-card company and was told someone had charged a cab fare to her Visa.
A few hours later, though, Vanessa heard from an old roommate who said she'd received a phone call from a woman who had Vanessa's wallet.
"What happened was, when [the woman] was taking out her garbage yesterday morning, there was a homeless man who had found my wallet by the garbage and just said, 'Here, I found this, can you take it?'" Vanessa said.
Vanessa picked up her wallet later that day, and was shocked to find that, apart from her credit cards, all of her belongings were still inside.
"My health card, my SIN card, my bus pass ... this guy could have sold these things I'm sure, but he didn't," said Vanessa. "It's amazing to me that the person who initially used my credit card is probably the guy who has a decent apartment, a decent job and just wanted to have somebody else pay for his cab fare. But the guy who has nothing ... is the one who returned it."
Before Vanessa returns to Toronto she would like to meet the man who acted so selflessly.
"I feel like I'm very lucky and I just want to say thank you. Even if it's just buying him a decent meal I would love to do that."

Paraskevidekatriaphobia

paraskevidekatriaphobia Quite the word eh?
From a 2007 article in the Vancouver Sun,

No, it's not a fear of long words -- it means being afraid of Friday the 13th

Nicholas Read
Vancouver Sun
Friday, April 13, 2007

It's a word we in the media like to trot out today: paraskevidekatriaphobia [pronounced pair-uh-skee-vee-dek-uh-tree-uh-FOH-bee-uh] -- the excessive, and sometimes morbid fear of Friday the 13th.
We like it, first, because it's such an impressive-sounding word -- it takes some doing to make all those syllables trip elegantly off the tongue -- and second, because irrational though the fear of a calendar date might sound, it is a bona fide phobia nonetheless, just like ablutophobia, the fear of washing or bathing, lachanophobia, the fear of vegetables, and soceraphobia, the fear of one's parents-in-law.
However, because "irrational" is a word that implies judgment, it's not a word used by professionals who treat phobias. (Especially, they add, given that some phobias can make sense. Think, for example, how valuable a fear of snakes and scorpions was in hunter/gatherer times when one misplaced step could mean death.) What matters to them is whether the phobia, rational or not, impedes the sufferer's ability to live normally.
"If someone is afraid of snakes, and he lives in Ireland where there are no snakes, it's not very serious," says Dr. Mark Watling, a psychiatrist and author, with psychologist Martin Antony, of the book, Overcoming Medical Phobias: How to Conquer Fear of Blood, Needles, Doctors and Dentists. But if you're a diabetic with a debilitating fear of needles, you're in trouble. You're not alone.
Watling, who practises out of the Anxiety Treatment and Research Centre in Hamilton, estimates as many as 13 per cent of people have, to some extent, a fear of things medical.
Sometimes that fear will be so pronounced it will result in panic attacks, and for people with a serious medical condition, that, literally, could be a matter of life and death.
"Certainly there are people who are so afraid of needles that they will put off getting blood work that needs to be done," Watling said in an interview. "But it's when they reach a point like that in their lives that they come to our clinic."
Why such phobias develop is a matter of debate. Genetics is sometimes thought to be partly responsible -- think of those atavistic fears of snakes and spiders -- though it's not clear how much of a fear is inherited and how much is learned. More likely most phobias are born of accidentally associating something otherwise benign with something unpleasant.
Maybe, says Watling, a person's first immunization was terribly painful. Or maybe a person's parents are afraid of needles, so the fear will be exaggerated in the child. It's really hard to say, he adds. No one can draw a definitive conclusion.
Certainly Julianne Lee, a kindergarten teacher in south Surrey, has no explanation for her fear of rats and mice; she just knows she's terrified of them.
"It started when I was 12," she says. "I went blackberry picking in Steveston in Richmond and I stepped on a piece of wood and out came this rodent. I think it was a rat or a mouse. And as soon as I saw it, I remember not being able to breathe, and screaming and screaming like the world was closing in."
And she still feels that way to this day.
If one of her three children ever were to bring home a rat or mouse, she doesn't know what she'd do.
"If they ever touched a mouse or a rat, I think I would be hysterical," she says.
If she were invited to dinner at the home of someone who kept a mouse as a pet, she wouldn't go. She'd never stay in a youth hostel because in her mind they're breeding grounds for mice, and she won't ever set foot in Stanley Park's petting zoo. Never.
"I'd rather be in a room with 10 snakes than one mouse," is how she puts it.
Curiously, when Jerilyn Ross, now a clinical social worker in Washington, D.C. and the CEO of the Anxiety Disorders Association of America, developed her fear of heights, it was on one of the most magical nights of her life.
She was in her 20s, in Salzburg during the Mozart Festival, and she was dancing "with a Prince Charming" on a verandah overlooking the city, which that night was bathed in a kind of fairytale glow.
"I remember dancing and thinking 'what an extraordinary night'," she recalls 30 years later. "And then all of a sudden out of the blue I had this sensation that something would happen to me -- that I was going to be pulled over the edge or pushed over or something."
Perhaps, she now says with the cool clarity of someone who's studied phobias, it was the extreme emotional intensity of the experience -- the twinkling lights, the glorious music, the handsome partner -- that triggered what would become an affliction lasting years. She can't honestly say.
What she can say is that for almost four years, before she finally sought help for it, it affected every aspect of her life. It prevented her from seeking a better job -- she was afraid the interviews might take place in a skyscraper (a good bet since she lived in New York) -- and accepting all kinds of invitations for the same reason.
"My fear was that I was going to lose control -- to run to a window and do something crazy. Since then I've learned it was a misfiring of my body's fight-or-flight response."
What saved her -- indeed what saves most people affected by a phobia, regardless of its genesis -- is something called exposure therapy, a kind of psychological immunization that, like using allergens to treat allergies, uses the very thing the person is afraid of to help him or her get over it. In other words, to face one's fear head-on, but in a gradual, controlled and above all, safe environment.
For Ross, that meant going with her therapist to the sixth floor of a building one week, to the seventh the next, and to the eighth the week after that. Each time she would be afraid, she recalls, but each time -- with time -- she would learn to manage and control that fear and move on it from it.
It took months of practice, but she finally beat the phobia altogether. Recently, she and her husband bought a condo in Florida with floor-to-ceiling windows on the 16th floor.
What's important, says Steve Taylor, a psychologist practising out of the University of B.C.'s psychiatry department, is that the therapy be done slowly, methodically and preferably under the care of someone who really knows what he's doing.
"You can try it to do it on your own," he says, "but it's best to do it gradually. Too often people with phobias will try and push themselves too hard."
No matter the source of the phobia -- rats, cats, dinner conversation (deipnophobia), music (melophobia), or the colour purple (porphyrophobia) -- the idea is to expose the sufferer to it steadily and gradually to the point that eventually the phobia is all but wiped out or at least endurable.
For example, while he was still practising in Australia, Taylor once had a patient so afraid of spiders that simply seeing a picture of a dot with eight radiating strokes around it caused her panic. But at the end of a course of exposure therapy, she was a different woman -- "going out and catching them in a jar and then having them run across the floor in front of her," Taylor recalls.
For cases of certain kinds of social phobias -- that is, the fear of being in situations where one is under the scrutiny of others -- dating, job interviews and suchlike -- sometimes the same kinds of drugs used to treat depression will be used to treat the phobia, he says.
"Nobody knows for sure why they work," he adds, "but serotonin is thought to play a role in regulating emotions, and it's thought that somehow this neurotransmitter is de-regulated in people who develop a social phobia."
Sometimes, says Watling, something called "flooding" is tried as well. "This is exposing you to your worst-case scenario right off the bat," he explains.
In other words, this would involve, say, placing someone with a fear of cats in a crowded cat shelter. Needless to say, it's a drastic measure that is never prescribed lightly.
"It can be effective sometimes," Watling says, "but it's not effective if you scare the person out of ever having treatment again."
That's why for most people, he, Taylor and Ross concur, a gradual introduction to whatever it is that's prompting the fear is the best way.
In fact, for about 95 per cent of people who seek relief from their phobias, that kind of easy-as-you-go approach will do the trick."The exposures are designed to induce a manageable amount of anxiety -- nothing is supposed to be a surprise," Watling said.

God needs an image makeover... article

This is an interesting article I found in a newspaper.

The many names (and images) of god

Douglas Todd

Vancouver Sun

Saturday, May 31, 2008

God needs an image makeover -- and there's no better place to start than with God's name.

Whenever someone mentions "God" in Canada, conversations crash to a halt. Everyone gets nervous. And it's not just from Canadian politeness.

It's because most people mistakenly think they know what the other is talking about when they say "God." Typically, they assume the "God" in question is a stern, patriarchal monarch in the sky.

Most Canadians, whether they consider themselves religious or not, seem stuck with the limited picture of God they had when they were early teenagers dropping out of church, synagogue, mosque or temple.

However, the concept of "God" is endlessly complex and nuanced and divinity deserves a more thoughtful name, or names.

"God" is an exaggerrated version of words such as "love," "truth," "spirituality" and "post-modern;" that is, "God" is a rich and contentious word, laden with multiple meanings.

We need to use fresher names for God. Just as people change their names to highlight different aspects of themselves -- such as when hard-driving "Priscilla" becomes more masculine "Kerry" or aboriginal "Jim George" becomes "Thundercloud" -- different names for "God" highlight different divine identities.

Through history there have been hundreds of names for "God."

Some half-decent contemporary names are "the divine," "spirit," "the holy," "the one," "the transcendent" and "the sacred" (all of which can be capitalized, depending on preference.)

The process of rebranding "God" brings to mind how Muslims long ago developed 99 "beautiful" names for "God" (or "Allah" (in Arabic) to capture the full glory and wonder of the transcendent.

I'd guess many Canadians stereotype Muslims as thinking about God mainly as a tough, vengeful dictator. But some of the 99 names for God include "The Compassionate," "The Pardoner," "The Majestic," "The Bountiful," "The Watchful," "The Wise," "The Giver of Life," "The Hidden," "The Unifier" and "The Light."

Jews have found a good way to deal with the unfortunate misunderstandings that can come from the name, "God:" Many choose simply not to use the word. Instead, they'll write "G-d."

This is a useful and humble approach, which reminds me of how U.S. geochemist Rustom Roy called for the complete eradication of the word God. He suggested integrating science and religion and replacing the word God with ****, which to him denotes the "cloud of essence."

At the same time, Jews also developed dozens of names for God in the Hebrew Bible (which Christians know as the Old Testament), including "Adonai," "Elohim," "El Shaddai" and, intriguingly, "I am what I am becoming."

In medieval times some Jews cleverly called God "The Seven," combining seven titles for the deity in one.

Although the Catholic and Protestant churches have for centuries tended to stress "Lord," "Almighty" and "Father" as names for God, Jesus and his followers adopted many others.

Influenced by Jewish and Greek tradition, their names for God included "Creator," "the Mountain," "Abba (daddy)," "the Word," "Logos," "Yahweh," "Sophia" and "the Light." Many Christians have recently been referring to God as "Redeemer" and "Sustainer."

As for Hindus, many name the supreme cosmic spirit as "Brahman." Others highlight personal manifestations of God in "Vishnu" or "Krishna."

Sikhs may speak of God as "Akal Purakh," meaning timeless primal being. In Chinese folk religion, God is often referred to as "Zhu" (Lord in Heaven) or "Shen" (spirit). Taoists talk about the ultimate as "the Tao" or "The Way."

Even Buddhists have something to say about divinity. Although most Theravadan Buddhists do not believe in a Creator, many Pure Land Buddhists give "Amithaba" eternal powers similar to those ascribed to God.

In the book, Philosophers Speak of God, edited by Charles Hartshorne and William Reese, philosophers reveal some of their many names for divinity -- including "elan vital (life force)," "the call forward," "divine intelligence," "the lure" and the "ordering principle."

All of which goes to show the name "God" is never to be taken for granted.

Next time someone drops the name into a conversation, pro or con, ask them which "God" they're talking about.

And don't let them off the hook by allowing them to argue "no one should try to define God because the transcendent is beyond full comprehension."

While it's true defining "God" will always be elusive and unprovable, it's a cop-out to not take a stab at it -- perhaps especially when someone is trying to reject belief in "God."

Asking people what they mean when they say "God" will put them on the spot and make them think, which is usually a good thing.

What's in a name? When it comes to "God," quite a lot.

To reach Douglas Todd, go to this blog at www.vancouversun.com/blogs

A shared meal helps bridge two solitudes
A United Church minister from South Africa brings a 'truth and reconciliation' model to the city's poorest neighbourhood in hope it will nurture healing between 'haves' and 'have nots'

Lori Culbert
Vancouver Sun
Friday, April 18, 2008
CREDIT: Ian Lindsay, Vancouver Sun
Frank Delorme, an employee at First United Church on East Hastings, says the number of needy relying on the church has doubled in the past two years, 'with no end in sight.'
CREDIT: Ian Lindsay, Vancouver Sun
Rev. Ric Matthews sees parallels between apartheid and the polarization of mainstream society and the poor.
DOWNTOWN EASTSIDE - First United Church on East Hastings has long been a sanctuary for the needy: By day, about 100 homeless people nap in the pews, and at night even more sex-trade workers come in seeking dinner.
It's a place of refuge, but one that no longer fulfils the most traditional role of a church: Sunday sermons.
The congregation had a long history of being inclusive and enlightened, but it was increasingly feeling alienated by the growing number of addicted and mentally ill people seeking help from the church. The congregation dwindled to such a small number that it was disbanded last June after more than 100 years of worship.
When the last minister left, First United searched for a replacement to carry on its mission work. The unconventional role was filled in August by Rev. Ric Matthews, a South African who sees parallels between apartheid in his home country and the polarization of the former congregation and the more troubled residents of the Downtown Eastside.
"There's an invisible wall here between the poor and the mainstream," said Matthews, who worked in inner-city churches in Johannesburg, where he witnessed extreme poverty and violence.
A soft-spoken, thoughtful man, Matthews was also involved in justice and reconciliation work in South Africa. He believes a model of inclusion -- bringing people of different backgrounds together, instead of allowing separation to increase -- will heal Vancouver's poorest neighbourhood.
To that end, the church is now holding "celebration of life" dinners every Wednesday, meant to attract a mix of residents and other clients of all backgrounds and religious affiliations.
The goal is to reduce alienation by not distinguishing between those who need charity and those who donate to charities, but to make them one group. His Wednesday dinners appear to be working so far, attracting 50 to 100 people an evening.
His idea takes its roots from South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission which, much like native healing circles, had the power to bring opponents together and, ideally, embrace each other's stories, despite their differences, he said.
Matthews, who moved to Vancouver 10 years ago to work with industries to repair injustices in the workplace, says the Downtown Eastside is at the cusp of change because of increased attention on the poor living conditions in the neighbourhood.
"There's too much pressure [from] the Olympics, too much publicity. There's a sense that something needs to be done," he said.
Future decisions could make the area healthier and more inclusive, or more entrenched and alienated. Recent efforts by the province to increase social housing are well-intentioned, he said, but could further "erode" the area by continuing to divide the have-nots from the haves.
Instead, Matthews argues for housing models akin to a "commune": a mix of market and subsidized housing, possibly including a shelter and a detox facility. There would be separate, secure entrances for the different types of residents, but in the core of the building could be a daycare and a meeting room where once a week residents meet for dinner.
"I have no doubt people will look at it and say I'm nuts," he said. "But I think we have the opportunity here to do the same stuff [as the truth commission]. Is it a wild, ridiculous vision? Maybe. But it's worth a go."
For now, his church -- the last stop for many of Vancouver's most marginalized drug addicts and mentally ill, who have been banned from other places due to irrational behaviour -- is brightening itself up with paint, encouraging clients to clean up after themselves and trying to be more inclusive to all.
Frank Delorme, a church employee and a man who embodies change, says he sees the mood and tone shifting in the church -- especially at the new Wednesday night dinners.
"When the people come in, they want to be here rather than being forced to come in just because there is food," said Delorme, 47, a former drug addict with a troubled past who is now sober and single-handedly raising four children.
The church is closed overnight, but between 8:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. about 100 homeless men, vulnerable women and the working poor sleep in the pews and on the floor surrounding the pulpit. Between 200 and 300 people a day come inside to pick up food, clothing and toiletries, and welfare cheques.
WISH (Women's Information Safe House) runs a drop-in centre for sex-trade workers at night in another area of the church and serves them dinner, but is also not open around the clock.
The number of needy relying on the church has doubled over the past two years, Delorme said, with no end in sight. "I don't know why we have so many hurt people. The plans our city and government has over the next 10 years, I don't know where we will be," he said.
"I've been down here 20 years, and I still see an 'us' and 'them' mentality."
It's a sign, the longtime resident of social housing argues, of the need for drastic change.
Whether the change reflects the vision of First United's new missionary remains to be seen.
lculbert@png.canwest.com
© The Vancouver Sun 2008