day today

Really mysterious day.

Went to a shelter run by the United Church of Canada on the East Side of Vancouver--lot of drugs, homelessness, etc. Had a chat with a "streetworker"--very sweet girl--who knew just about everybody's name in the neighborhood. Something I don't in mine. People smiled and said hello even though I was clearly an outsider.

Then inside I met a man who was in Budapest in the Prague Spring of 56 (50 year memorial this year complete with riots part ii). He managed to help two of his friends who were involved in the uprising evade Soviet execution. Other of his peers were not so fortunate.

After that I had a few hours to kill downtown so I went to the movies. Saw Stranger than Fiction with Will Ferrell and Emma Thompson. Very un-Ferrell movie (like to WF what Punch Drunk Love was to Adam Sandler). I wasn't expecting much, didn't know much about the film.

But I was totally blown away. It really cleared space in my mind and heart. It was surprisingly beautiful. I absolutely recommend it. It was less a plot as a sort of Experience, in the Jimi Hendrix way of meaning it. A clearing.

Then I went to a memorial service this evening at my church for a young gay man who died of AIDS who had worked at the homeless outreach church. His father got up to speak--his father who had previously disowned him when his son came out the closet but whose impending death brought a reunion--and began to cry. There wasn't a dry eye in the place. I never met the man but he clearly touched people's lives.

A woman I don't know sitting next to me broke down and cried on my shoulder as I held here. It brought home how much wonder and goodness there is already among us that is never lifted up, honored, and celebrated. Warts and all.

Two men from his spiritual men's group did a dance with incense (and a lot of it). Very erotic and very profound. Time slowed down during the movement.

I hadn't been to a funeral in years. Universal human riutal to give voice to grief, to console one another in common, to make sense of the tragic death of a young kind man.