Over the decade, my comfort at these things has increased. I’m becoming practised at rising above my introversion. But even if this wasn’t the case, I’d still enjoy coming. Yes, the setting is salutary, but most of all I enjoy meeting and listening to people from across North America who do what I do, who have come naturally or intentionally to the vocation of relieving certain aspects of human misery—which means raising resources to that end. And our partner here is Russ Reid, an organization (largest of its kind) dedicated to helping missions like ours flourish. In effect they’re partners in offering real hope to homeless and destitute people. Russ Reid, incidentally, was once an Edmontonian and an acquaintance of Herb Jamieson, a Hope Mission patriarch.

Coming here also restores a certain faith in American people for me. Well, it’s my own lack of reasoning and imagination that this occasionally needs restoring. But perhaps I’m not so different. While we Canadians—when stopping to think—know there are millions of grand-hearted people in the States, it sometimes slips away from us because of the caricature we get from the politicized broadcasts of FOX and CNN—not to mention the sudsy culture of Hollywood. But coming here, and hearing from and seeing hundreds of people who have invested themselves in caring for homeless people is always hopeful and redemptive.

Russ Reid is Hope Mission’s (and close to a hundred other mission’s) partner in the business of fundraising. Or as I prefer: the bizarre vocation of convincing people to follow their deepest desire—bringing them the joy of being the cause of someone’s welfare through the simple act of giving.

And as in every vocation, there are some virtuosos here. Some dazzlingly skilled women and men who have come up through the ranks of frontline inner-city work, or have cultivated a certain humility of mind and character, or both. Whose presence enjoins a particular open-handed posture and invites another into the vision of relieving human misery. And this presence—which is nothing other than a gospel presence—is aptly represented in the leadership and all the staff of Russ Reid.

Now I occasionally have caught myself thinking, and I suspect I’m not alone, that the nature of what we do has an elevation to it. A sort of mark that distinguishes. Of course this is a great danger. And if it’s not caught the "industry" of fundraising takes over and "technique" becomes the driving force; and a chasm opens between the thing we hope to happen and those we need to make it happen, and both it and we become an ugly thing.

This is how fundraising can loose its spirituality—the invitation to join in communal caring, if not continually nourished and pruned, can too quickly devolve into mere manipulation. Well, guilt works for awhile; and if it’s creatively-clever-guilting, it works better. But this kind of fundraising is momentary and has no lasting appeal, no vision.

Certainly, all the creative work is necessary, as well as the research, and too, the science. And when this is joined to a narrative compellingly relating the hard inhumanity of homelessness and the real possibilities of restoration, people connect and respond. What is happening here is that a vision for relief of human despair and the bolstering of liberty is being articulated’; and when the vision is articulated well it touches on something greater than either asker or giver, and a community of love forms and money—the great classifier—is relegated to its proper corner, and the important rises up.

This is the kind of ardent air I don’t mind breathing.

Time, love, quarks, discrete math, other minds, healing touch, the efficacy of hugs;
that words, as Elie Wiesel says, in moments of grace can attain the quality of deeds;
that our deepest desire is to be each others joy;
that an inner void must not be leaped over but into;
that both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche were necessary;
that you can love the earth and not love God, but you can’t love God without loving the earth;
that God with a cherry-bomb equals a big bang;
that mycelium will always remain mysterious;

 
that there is life on Gliese 581 C, and Harvey Pekar and Peter Popoff live there;
that the mind is not separate from the body, except perhaps for Benny Hinn, augurs and certain certified psychics;
that a sock prefers the single life;
that if scientists were mere sceptics we still wouldn’t know about the Copernican system of planetary movement;
that extraordinary claims do not immediately need extraordinary evidence;
that beauty is its own proof;
that if everything was verifiable life would cease to be;
that doubt is necessary and healthy but that the spirit of scepticism is a sickness;
that most things we hold as true are by way of other authorities;
that it was exalted certainty that sent the boxcars to Birkenau and not iffy disconsolate minds;
that to live without faith is impossible and to attempt it is a castration of life;
that there are more than a few fish swimming around with coins in their mouths;
that desire is triangular, and its nature is mimicry;
that a cultural obsession with sex is not a sign of social depravity but an indication of deep loneliness;
that if and when we humans become fully real we will no longer impose ourselves upon creation but see ourselves as one aspect;
that Gary Larson and Al Purdy are pure tellurians—and each in their own way;
that science is humble in theory but not so much in practise and that this is what it has in common with religion;
that faith needs a frame, and reason needs a trellis;
that we are not born with an existential void but develop it over time;
that the non-existence of God can be proven by symbolic logic;
that a formally valid argument can nevertheless be false; 
that the argument of infinite regression is absurd;
that the earth rests on the back of a turtle…and that there are turtles all the way down;
that positive universal claims and negative existential claims are not testable in all possible worlds;
that all ravens are black, except for one or two, maybe; 
that presuppositions are held viscerally and emotionally and half-consciously;
that God is a verb and not a noun and that existence is not a property;
that the word piffle can be appropriately applied to a plethora of propositions;
that when the Mayan Calendar is up, we’ll just switch to the Dan Brown Calendar;
that our deepest and dearest beliefs are not logically verifiable;
that miracle is still the best term to describe life’s origin;
that hope and mercy are stronger than hate and violence;
that Holderlin was shining in his wooden tower when he said, “But where danger is, grows the saving power also.”
That at the end, heralding a true beginning,
comes not the apocalypse but apocatastasis;
that instead of escalation toward extremes,
the possibility of universal hope, reconciliation and restoration.

That was the season of lice and scabies and gallon jugs of Benzo-benzoate. And it was the season of a large landlord standing on my feet outside a pub on Government St. telling me I had a week to get him the rent or he’d "do something worse." He was a junkie and unpredictable.

Winter had moved in and it was rainy and I was broke, as we all were, and so it was back, once again, to Port Alberni for a few (Mac and Blo) lumber-mill pay cheques.

The months and years of no-fixed-address had been piling up and all around I sensed things were winding down, preparing to break up. Like there was a ledge somewhere down river and you could hear the water whitening as it fell over rock shelves but you couldn’t tell how far down, or on which bend you should start to back paddle.

It was a year or so after we were kicked off Hornby Island—banned for a year for building a raft out of driftwood, setting it on fire and swimming it out into bay then swimming back and watching the beauty of the thing burn into the horizon. A flaming eye in the night, fixed back on us, pinning us to the beach.

Well, we had taken too much for granted. Like we were the only ones living on the Island. The first or last tribe. And I had fallen for it all. The beach, the salt, the oysters cracking open in a fire and eaten off the shell, the arbutus trees—their skin as sensual as the legs of Tina Turner—the turn of the tide like a seeking heart, the small store with the screen door a short hike away, the communal come-and-go.

That time was too spiritual to last anyway. It was too basic. Too Huck-Finn-human. I mean we built a driftwood hut, called it a house, and why not, it had two rooms and a big open door you hardly had to duck under to get in.

For a while there was a nudist family—a couple with two daughters—that camped on the beach just the other side of a rivulet that ran throughout the summer; and Joe, who wasn’t paired up, was always going over to the rill playing with the running water, then finally making excuses to go over and visit. One evening he just stripped naked and went and joined them by their fire—sat there on a log grinning. From where we were, we could see his teeth shinning in the orange-yellow light.

The morning after the raft-fire, police came and tore down our house and escorted us off the island. Ferries from Hornby to Denman Island and on to Buckley Bay, they saw us all the way to the main island.

Nobody said it but it seemed to mark the end of a beginning. Still we hiked, walked and rode, and landed on Salt Spring, flirted with other gulf islands; always finding ourselves in Victoria and then in Port Alberni when things got too bare-bone.

But the frays came, edges showed and life slowly became serious. People left, moved, found paths that lead far away. There was a time on Hornby that I thought it possible to live out a life entirely untethered—but for that sustaining bay. Silly. And yet here, writing this in the innocence of pre-dawn, I think; and why not?

It’s early November and the windows are showing streaks of cold.

Through the smudged glass is the night’s outline of a spruce tree, and beyond, a blackout of tangled bush.

In two hours the dawn will arrive to remove a cuticle moon and some scattered stars.

I sit bundled in layers of clothes, in front of an electric heater, on an old couch, and pray that I never take this beauty for granted; pray that the beauty I see will find a home within, toward which I will rise and repeatedly respond.

For my gratitude is the ragged kind, my words, forgetful. But this—until there’s a newer day—is still what I bring to offer the penetrating silence.

And as the closing season creeps in and I increasingly feel like an Arctic aven; I pray that while I breath I would yet bloom—under the snow if need be.

About poets, Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote, “They measure the circumference and sound the depths of human nature with a comprehensive and all-penetrating spirit, and they are themselves perhaps the most sincerely astonished at its manifestations; for it is less their spirit than the spirit of the age.”

Shelley could have been speaking of Edin Viso and his new book, Balkan Tattoo.

Edin still calls himself a proud Yugoslav, even though Yugoslavia died 20 years ago—hacked apart by ethnic and nationalistic violence. Balkan Tattoo, a book of poems and poetic narrative, comes from the pain of living through this devolution, of seeing human ties and simple civility dissolve. And still, it’s a book of hope, of recovery, of faith, of intense personal perception, of finding a home in exile. In these poems, Edin has penetrated the zeitgeist of not merely the Balkans, but of our intimate connections to place, time, and each other. He has taken soundings of the human spirit, and so has touched on the universal longing in us all: to be, for each other.

Balkan Tattoo is beautiful, dark, surprising and delightful… Words of love / Come rare and sudden / As love itself. / Yield up those words. / Let their difficult gift / Pass your lips. / Yield tip at least the shadow / Of what I most want to hear. / The rest I can build myself.

Edin is making plans for his first book signing and will post details. In the mean time anyone wanting to purchase Balkan Tattoo, contact Edin: edviso@live.ca, or reach him on Facebook.

(Cover art for this book is by Edwin Tuts.)

What appears to have raised Dr. Newcombe’s eyebrows the extra inch however is the fact that ‘progressive’ evangelical Jim Wallis, a thorn in the fleshy-cheek to less ‘progressive’ evangelicals, is saying that Jesus is already there. Of course if that’s true it’s all too embarrassing to the more pious E’s who have built a safe spiritual Jesus on the ethical absolutes of the Almighty. You see how it looks bad for this Jesus to be at the protest; too many occasions for misunderstanding, even scandal, maybe jail time.

This doesn’t seem to bother Jim Wallis, who’s already been arrested 22 times, and is married to a Vicar—I suspect some evangelicals think the later should lead to the former—but of course the arrests  have all been for civil disobedience. Wallis has tempered his activism as he’s aged; these days he’s even rubbing tailored elbows and offering spiritual advice (progressive evangelical advice one supposes) to Mr. Obama. Hard to say if this has helped anything.

In any case, you see how these two evangelicals may simply end up glaring at one another across the valley of Raphaim; Jim’s Jesus isn’t Jerry’s Jesus. Jim’s Jesus, is, well, an able-bodied misfit and first century hippie with a work ethic that kind of sucks, at least one that tapered off, making him a poor role model for hard working fishermen; then again he was irresponsible from the age of 12, had questionable family values, was a nard wastrel, wine maker, anointer of people with oil from undisclosed herbs, curser of fruitless fig trees and religious systems (must have seen a link), who was apparently okay getting arrested to make a point, noncompliant while in custody, and to the end—forgiving of thieves and most everyone else…I mean hardly a ‘Truth In Action’ kind of guy—even though he claimed all he did was do the truth—just someone who might like to hide out among the rabble at the "Occupation." I suspect Dr. Newcombe’s Jesus might be easier to spot down at the park.

Thing is, as both Jim and Jerry know, Jesus is the merciful type…forgiving even of fraudulent CEO’s and their tax lawyers. Perhaps you’ll recall Zacchaeus’ bump with Jesus, so smitten that he gave half of his possessions to the poor and paid back everyone he cheated—four times the amount. Imagine now, with me, Goldman’s CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, up a tree in Zuccotti Park, scanning the crowd…and that’s why I’m going with Jim’s Jesus.

By my estimation, anywhere from 1200 to 1400 people turned out to ‘Occupy Edmonton’. It was an inspired, even surprising turnout, that suggests a broad concern and discontent.

There was a raft of signs—from a farmer carrying a sign chastising Harper for his plans to jettison the Wheat Board, to various environmental warnings, to anti-war messages, but the single dominant message—as touted, a message from the awakening 99 percent to the ultra-affluent 1 percent—was the call to end corporate greed and corporate influence on government, and to rein in unrestrained capitalism. 

Of course we Canadians have faired better than Americans—millions of whom have been foreclosed on, millions who have lost their jobs and still have little prospect of returning to the work force. Their lives and livelihoods have been raided by corporate fraud and elitist indifference.

In Canada the disparities between rich and poor not as pronounced as in America: Our 1% earn 11% of total income while in the U.S., their 1% earn 20 percent. (In terms of overall wealth the top 10% in Canada own 53%, while in the U.S. it’s 70%) 

However, perhaps what should concern us more in Canada is the gap that’s quickly widening between the very rich and the rest. Even conservatives are beginning to worry about this.

While we can be thankful that we have been spared from the kind of recession that has hit the U.S.—primarily because of regulations that are still in place between investment banking and commercial banking—we are not immune to the hegemony of corporations. There’s a ready army of lobbyists pushing for corporate friendly legislation, and with a corporate friendly government, we would do well, if we are awakening, to stay awake.

But concerning the “root crisis,” we are of course complicit. The charge of acquisitive self-interest can be levelled at most of us, not only corporations. Corporations salivate and bloat because of our buying habits, our lifestyles, mimetically derived from the rich-and-famous, our prurient wants we deem needs. All this has hardened us and helped create artificial classes and divisions between us, while leaving us no independent access to the basics of life, further fracturing local communities and giving us the illusion of independence.

Like corporations we’re messed up, myopic and mercenary, but we also have it in us to be empathetic and compassionate and to desire an egalitarian society. And it’s this that separates us from big corporations.

Our governments have granted corporations the rights and privileges of an individual; but a corporation is not a person, it is a principality—it is a power structure. It is not inherently good or evil. It does not create anything on its own. Whatever tangible goods it produces is the result of an entrepreneurial vision and a company of workers. The owner/entrepreneur has the right to keep a substantial portion of profit. But with that right comes great responsibility—social, environmental, and certainly, a responsibility to its workforce.

No doubt, there are humane and socially conscious corporations run by diligent and caring people. The problem, to my mind, is that it requires a herculean vigilance to keep a halter on a corporation when it reaches a critical size. The larger the system/corporation becomes, the more it operates according to its nature.

The hard reality is that the corporation, as an entity, exists solely for its own growth. It grows by keeping income private while socializing financial loss and costs. The corporation is an externalizing machine. It externalizes any and every cost a neglectful or complicit government, or unwary public, lets it get away with. For at the hollow heart of the big corporation lies the principle of self-preservation and expansion by way of the duel. Only winning commercial wars satisfies shareholders. (Sun-Tzu’s the Art of Warfare & Karl Von Clausewitz’s, On War, remain popular and recommended reads for CEO’s)

The corporation has no mechanism for social care. In the documentary “The Corporation,” management guru Peter Drucker says: “If you find an executive who wants to take on social responsibilities, fire him. Fast.” And if an owner should decide to be responsible to the workers, to pay them fairly, to protect their jobs, to refuse to outsource labour, and to be stewards of the environment, the shareholders can, and should, according to people like Drucker, sue the corporation.

Corporations do not care about relating, they do not have a lexicon for social-welfare. In the documentary, Psychologist Dr. Robert Hare lists psychopathic traits and ties them to the behaviour of corporations:

• callous unconcern for the feelings for others;
• incapacity to maintain enduring relationships;
• reckless disregard for the safety of others;
• deceitfulness: repeated lying and conning others for profit;
• incapacity to experience guilt;
• failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviour

If its true that mega-corporations are psychopathic, then the only treatment is proper boundaries and in some cases the use of restraint. And this is what the Occupation is calling for. It is simply asking to reintroduce relational responsibility into the economy.

Perhaps it was a taste of the fever that is gripping Occupation Wall Street, or simply the harmonic of hope that a peaceful protest for creative change sets off, but while I stood listening to the speeches and marching on the downtown streets I felt my own cynicism about the possibility of change soften.

Did this enter anyone’s mind at the beginning of the year that our northern Alberta city, and cities across Canada, would be part of a near global protest in support of, and spawned by, a New York sit-in? 

Is it too much to hope that this could be a spring board for a congealing movement that is as self-reflective as it is probing and provocative? Whether that’s possible at this point may be beside the point. There is already—despite main media’s talk-circuit smirks, derisive dismissals, and confused portrayals—something of an awakening.

And the spiritual movement that the term awakening alludes to is not unwarranted. Because how we connect and relate to one another, both personally and economically, is a matter of deep spiritual import.

In the monastic world, Lauds is the term for the first of seven daily offices of prayer. Lauds is praise and honour of the Divine. I also take Lauds to mean honouring the unknown, through mindfulness of the past and present. Lauds, then, is attentiveness to the way things are, suspicion of logical necessity, and hospitality for the way things could be.

It’s in this spirit of Lauds that I dedicate this last Radiothon post:

I honour all our supporters; all who refuse the lie that people on the street are uniformly without ambition—that they want to be there, that they can, merely by trying, overcome the contingencies that placed them in our out-of-bounds.

I honour the hope of Hope Mission, but specifically the hope of those the Mission serves. I honour their resistance to the supposed logical necessity of their state; I honour the heroic effort to consider another way; the momentary entertainment of what could be; all the beginnings and all the follow-through’s.

Having come through another Radiothon—a special one—we honour the ‘radio people’ from 630 CHED and CISN FM who generated waves of appealing story. We honour the interviewees from the Mission who gave over pieces of their lives to listeners, like personal letters; and we honour the great circle of supporters and generous friends in and around Edmonton.

We also laud the workers and volunteers at Hope Mission who endured the elegiac air then rose to the electric hum of phone calls, quick conversation, compressed time, shared laughter.

And finally, today I honour the gentleman who pushed his many-bottled-cart past my window. I honour the engineering ingenuity of balancing the capacity of two shopping carts of bagged bottles upon one.

I honour all the latent engineers, administrators, artists, craftsmen, designers, counsellors, philologists, hiding and emerging in all the humans Hope Mission serves. 

May we all grow together to revere one another, and so, laud the speech of day, the knowledge of night, the handiwork of earth and the declarations of sky, through our common Creator.