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Suite Subterranean Blues

Posted on by stephen t berg / 8 Comments

…Johnny’s in the basement mixing up the medicine / I’m on the pavement thinking about the government…

The first time I moved to Edmonton I lived in a basement suite. 1978, if you’re asking. Another life, another time.

Anyway, I had no idea our tenancy in that little sunless domain could have been illegal.

Apparently, 90% of Edmonton’s basement suite owners have no idea either; or if they do, they’ve have decided the rules surrounding their subterranean suites are silly.

But easing up on below-ground suites makes obvious sense and should be one more piece to our housing shortage solution. At least a few of the city’s "working poor," currently living in our shelters, would jump at the chance to rent a basement suite.

So if you’re listening dear City Council…grow mercy.

If you’re interested, here’s what this morning’s Edmonton Journal had to say:

City planners want to ease rules on basement suites…Cheap housing needed quickly

SUSAN RUTTANsruttan@thejournal.canwest.com

If the city wants to aggressively promote secondary suites it should encourage them in new houses, not just older ones, a new report states.

The report from the city’s planning department says roughing-in the wiring and plumbing for a secondary suite in a new house would cost about $3,000. Building a basement suite in an existing house can cost up to $25,000.

However, the narrow lots of some newer neighbourhoods may make the addition of secondary suites – and the parking the tenant will need – a bigger challenge there than in older neighbourhoods with big lots, the report says.

City councillors are holding a public hearing Wednesday at 1:30 p.m. on loosening city rules to promote more secondary suites. Basement suites – most secondary suites are in the basement – are seen as a quick way to provide cheap housing, which is in short supply in Edmonton.

In some cities, such as Calgary, promoting more basement suites has caused controversy. The Wednesday hearing may show what Edmontonians think about the idea, but so far, only a few people have booked time to speak.

Edmonton allows secondary suites only if the house is next to an apartment block or row housing, or is in an industrial or commercial area.

It’s the tight restrictions that council is considering changing. The report recommends the city set up a team to manage inquiries, develop programs and enforce new rules for secondary suites.

Getting approval for a secondary suite under existing rules has been tough, the report states. Of 30 applications made in recent years, only seven were approved. Most are opposed by neighbours.

There are thousands of secondary suites in the city, 90 per cent of them illegal.

The average price of a single family home in Edmonton has risen to $426,000 in May. Average price of a condominium in May was $266,000.

Apartment rents also are rising and the vacancy rate is 1.1 per cent.

Bobwhitehat

Okay, regarding the Bob Dylan references:

A special Grow Mercy prize goes to the first person who can tell me what album the song, "Subterranean Homesick Blues" first appeared on.

Rule: You can ask one friend but you can’t Google. (Except Jeff H. and Gary F., no asking at all.)

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Beauty/Peace

Everyone needs a Poem

Posted on by stephen t berg / 5 Comments

I’ve been adopted by a poem. By a line in a poem. And by a small entry on the flyleaf of the book where my poem lives.

Tuesday last, I’m lying on a grassy bank in Crescent park, Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, rereading Wendy Morton’s Shadowcatcher. I pause at the flyleaf and find my direction, my dedication.

All books have flyleaves. Andrea told me that the flyleaf is one of the greatest of inventions. It hadn’t occurred to me but she’s right. Flyleaves give you a place to pause, to gather yourself for just a moment. They give you time to let your eyes adjust to the light, to sip wine before the meal. Otherwise a book begins too abruptly leaving you no personal space.

But the flyleaf is also the perfect place for a short hand written note, a thought, a personal dedication. I have this in Shadowcatcher. It says, to Stephen, "who waltzes in and out of what matters."

That afternoon, when I read my poem, and dreamt again of waltzing in and out of what matters, the fountain in the crescent watercourse turned bright blue.

You say I’m dreaming. And I say, "Of course, but it also happened just as I say."

Blue fountain

And while the blue was spouting bright a swan swam by, and a couple walked by, arms linked, looking into the baby carriage they were pushing, and some kids were throwing bits of bread on the water."

Everyone needs a poem." For Wendy Morton, who commits random acts of poetry, this is close to a mantra.

I think, as well, everyone needs to see their name applied to the front of a book. A dedication, a declaration that you are here, and it matters.

Everyone needs a poem. Here’s mine:

Conversation above the Lake
"Will you sit here?" you ask me.
This is where you spend your afternoons,
watching the lake, the ospreys,
the double-crested cormorants,
in this room of silence and echo.
On the mantle, a ceramic dancer
bends in silhouette.
Your daughter, the dancer,
laughs in another room.
The voice of her sister,
who dreams of horses,
drifts in the air.
Our words move in time
to their voices,
as we waltz in and out of what matters:
what breaks the heart,
what heals it.

Everyone needs a poem.

And so when I came to the last poem in "Shadowcatcher," I left the grassy bank and waltzed down to a park bench, deciding to read it to the first person who happened by. It was a lady, white hair, seventy-five years old I guess.

swan

I get her attention by asking her if anyone has ever read her a poem. She said, "Not once, never." I ask her if I could read her a poem. She smiles slow, and says, "Sure, yes, why not."

I read her "The Path." It’s a poem of ordinary memories of the land, of home, of old countries, of connections.

As I read I’m aware of my own odd excitement. When I finish I look up; she’s been smiling. I tell her I’ve just committed a random act of poetry. She smiles broadly and says, "Thank you," and continues on down the path.

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Christianity/Peace/Violence

Jesus and Just War

Posted on by stephen t berg / 4 Comments
David Silverman / Getty Images
mideast3

Before reading scripture non-sacrificially, that is, before coming to the place of reading all of scripture through the lens of the gospel, I was a "just war" advocate. In a way, reading the Bible through the Gospels instead of the other way around is the only way to read it against yourself, instead of for yourself, an admonition, I believe, of Karl Barth.

Anyway, before this kind of slow organic existential realization, I reckoned the best a Christian can do in the face of conflicting biblical messages about violence and about God, and in the face of practical realities of human rivalry, is to accept Augustine’s "just war" theory.

The criteria for Just War is:

the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;

all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;

there must be serious prospects of success;

the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated.

Hattem Mousa / AP
mideast2

Now, if there is an attractive aspect of "just war" it’s this: If administrations agreed upon these criteria, almost all of the wars over the centuries could not have been justly waged.

But then, it makes one wonder if there has ever been a "just war" and wonder, even, if there can ever be one…especially considering the last condition. So even as a pacifist, "just war" in this strict sense, seems somewhat attractive.

Of course WWII and the Nazi Holocaust is always used as the lynch-pin to support "just war" and to dismiss pacifism out of hand. However, while entry into WWII might pass the "just war" test, the argument would be on much better footing without the two nuclear strikes upon Japan. But that’s what happens in war; that is the ’spirit’ of war. Restraint becomes impossible. Violence blinds us and war becomes it’s own reason. (This is one of the lessons in Chris Hedges’ book, "War is a Force that gives us Meaning.")

Jamal Saidi / Reuters
mideast1

As well, there’s also the historical scholarship that says that if Germany wasn’t so demoralized by the Treaty of Versailles, Hitler would never have risen to power in the first place. That we help create Stalin’s Hitler’s, Hussein’s, Khomeini’s, and Bin Laden’s, through our exploitive policies and scapegoating violence, not to mention our inability to "wage just war," is evident enough. The Middle East is too clear an example.

I may be wrong but I don’t see Jesus endorsing "just war." I see Jesus as peace-giver. But I also see Jesus as angry at injustice, and as actively putting himself in the way of oppression, but always in a non-violent way. Jesus was a pacifist, but he was never passive.

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Peace/Religion/Violence

Jesus and War

Posted on by stephen t berg / 3 Comments

A pastor, who is also a friend, is speaking this Sunday in his church on "Jesus and war," and asked me for my thoughts.

First of all I commend him for broaching the subject of war on a Sunday morning. Whatever his conviction about war, and I’m sure it is one of balance, or about our country’s involvement in Afghanistan, or the Iraq war, and here I’m gathering it’s one of restraint, it’s heartening to know there are pastors attempting to make sense of things and to point to some horizon regarding the use of violence.

As a Christian: I believe that the use of violence is wrong, therefore that war is wrong. I also believe that there is no such thing as "just war." And even so-called "just wars" are ways of justifying sacrificial and redemptive violence.

Principally, I believe all of this because I believe that there is absolutely no violence in God.

My starting point, as a Christian, is always the Gospels. I believe that the notion of a divine violence, or divinely sanctioned violence, has no place in the inspiration of the Gospels. And to read any violence into God does "violence" to the Gospel text. Even in the apocalyptic chapters, (Mark 13 etc.) the violence is always traced back and placed at the feet of humans, never on God.

This is unlike the Old testament and unlike parts of Revelation. We might read divine violence, redemptive violence, or sacrificial violence into God, but that is only because we are used to the Old Testament imagery–some of which the New Testament uses–and we are used to a wrathful god that resorts to violence to get things back in line.

Now, if it’s true that a Christian’s lens must be the Gospels, that is, that the rest of scripture needs to be interpreted from the heart of the Gospels, the centre of the passion narratives, and not the other way around, then how would this inform our belief about God? about violence? about warfare?

Janus, Two-faced god (Roman mythology)
300px-Janus-Vatican

The alternative, to my mind, is a dispensationalist, schizophrenic, or two-faced god.

The only way I can make sense of the ’spirit’ of something like the "sermon on the mount," is that this is the heart and nature of God. And the God we think we meet in a couple places in Revelation, as in, the "lamb" that goes to war (unless this is a wholly cosmic battle against the principalities that are at the root of our use of sacrificial violence) is a regressive god. And the god we meet in the Old Testament is a god in process of ultimate self-revelation finally found in Christ. (As Christ says, see me, see the Father.)

It’s because of a gospel-lens that I’ve been brought to embrace pacifism. I’m not, however, a "passivist." There is nothing passive about true Pacifism. But this is another issue.

Now, I’m not saying this is a morally superior position. And I’m open to correction. I’m also aware that in translating my pacifism from paper to practise, in the heat of some personal crisis, some violent event, I would almost certainly fail. But this is not the fault of the gospel, or pacifism and non-violence.

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