Sin shall have no dominion

Greg Paul sees a man’s man’s man’s world…

T

hat’s what James Brown used to holler, and there’s no denying it down here where Doug and I walk out a pleasant April midnight. The air has a soft, faint humidity that forecasts the summer; Allen Gardens [in downtown Toronto, Canada] and the dark cut of George Street leading south are alive with furtive shadows, muttering voices, and the occasional distant bark of laughter that seems to bear more menace than delight.

The proud gospel strut with which Brown started that old soul classic would give way, by the end of the song, to the singer on his knees, bent over and moaning,

He’s lost in the wilderness
He’s lost in the bitterness
He’s lost, lost and…

Yes, it’s a man’s world. The courtyard in front of Seaton House, Toronto’s largest men’s hostel, is enclosed by a tall fence of wrought iron bars. Dozens of men loiter inside the compound and out on the street, ghosting in and out of the pools of sodium light, smoking and sipping from bottles kept hidden in jacket sleeves. The numbers thin out as we stroll south to Dundas, turn west and along by Filmore’s, a huge ancient strip club and residential hotel. Its patrons are not the suit-and-tie crowd that rolls half-pickled out of the clubs on Yonge Street and into cabs. In this short block, we are offered drugs six times, a new record.

It might be a man’s world, but as James used to sing, “it would be nothing without a woman to care.” And here she comes. Out of the dark block behind Filmore’s backside, stumbling, hair gone wild, clothes askew, drunk enough to be even more than usually vulnerable in this particular here and now, she ducks her head with embarrassment when she recognizes us—she had been on the verge of asking us if we wanted a date. Instead, she smiles, a beautiful smile, wide and full of the most perfect white teeth. Explains she feels safer down here, a statement Doug and I will puzzle over later. Safer here, in this dark underbelly of the city, than in Sanctuary’s Yonge/Bloor neighbourhood?

As we knew she would, she asks for money. There is no pretense that it’s for food, or subway fare, or a room for the night. Will we give her something so that she won’t have to sell herself tonight? We have both already given away all we can afford this night, but even so we might have dug a little deeper had we believed it would do more than delay the matter for a half hour or so. She is gracious when we decline, and doesn’t press the issue.

Instead, she tells us she really wants to be baptized. She was present at a recent baptism, she reminds me; it’s true that she has been talking about this for years. When she is clean and sober, she expresses her faith in clear, simple terms. I tell her I would be delighted to baptize her, that she must come see me when she is sober to talk about it.

Before going our separate ways, we give her what little we can: a tender hug, assurances of our affection and concern, a prayer. A little three-person prayer meeting in the shadow of Filmore’s. She darts across the street—mostly to get away from us, I think—but pauses on the opposite sidewalk to call out our names, and to shout that she loves us.

In the days immediately following this encounter, another young woman in our community, pregnant, shows our nurses the bruises dealt out by her boyfriend. Another, whose pleasant personality and high sense of style earned her the nickname “California,” is found strangled and beaten to death in the stairwell of the subway entrance just a stone’s throw from Sanctuary’s front doors.

Doug remarks that it’s enough to make you ashamed to be a man, and we can’t help but remember the first woman’s assertion that she felt safer down there in “Crack Central.”

The period leading up to and including California’s memorial is full of a painful and astonishing beauty: hard-core street people display heroic tenderness and vulnerability, weeping openly, holding each other, generously embracing also members of our staff, middle-class members of the community whose knowledge of street life is entirely vicarious, and even high school students who had only met Cali once or twice.

One day shortly after the memorial, the Sanctuary doorbell rings. There are two people standing there. One is the visitor I had expected, a “normal” middle-class guy with a family and a good job. The other is a man I’ve known almost since I first began walking the streets of this neighborhood daily more than fifteen years ago. Crack addict, alcoholic, street fighter. We’ve had to bar him repeatedly because of violent threats and actions, even taking the unusual (for us) step of barring him indefinitely. Except we’ve always said he could come and worship on Sunday if he wanted to.

I remark on how healthy he looks. He laughs, pats his stomach, tells us proudly that he’s had his own place for a few months now, hasn’t been in jail for two years—until this last little while, jail is the only place I’ve seen him “housed” during the whole time I’ve known him. He admits he slips occasionally, but overall he’s the healthiest and happiest I’ve ever seen him. It’s nothing short of miraculous.

Then he says something amazing: this new life began, he claims, when he was baptized about a year ago. Before that, he says, he had been ashamed to admit what he believed because of his behaviour on the street. It’s different now.

The apostle Paul, writing to the Romans, describes the new life, a life resurrected out of the grave of our brokenness and dysfunction, that is symbolized in the act of baptism. A new life rooted in the resurrection of Jesus himself.

“And sin shall have no dominion over you…”

That’s how Paul wraps it up. I find myself thinking about her beautiful smile, so bright in such a dark place, and her desire to be baptized. To live something new. And yes, I discover in my own heart, there is still reason to hope.

Writer: A former carpenter, Greg Paul has been involved in inner-city ministry for over twenty-five years. He is the founder of Sanctuary Ministries of downtown Toronto, Canada and the current director. Partnering with other organizations, Greg has developed the vision of building a community in which he and his family, as well as other staff and volunteers, live, work and share the experiences of the people they help. Greg is the lead vocalist and keyboardist for Red Rain, the band that planted the seed for Sanctuary in the mid-1980s. Shaw Books published Greg’s first book, “God in the Alley: Being and Seeing Jesus in a Broken World” in the fall of 2004. He’s currently working on a novel.

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