grace and joy.

Merry Christmas, everyone! And the title has nothing to do with Christmas Greetings, really. I met Grace last week. She's about my age with a huge smile, a vivacious laugh and a vibrant personality. She was wearing jeans and a t-shirt. Joy is her daughter-- a three-year old who loves running around touching people's hair and giving compliments. Joy also loves music, and can plink out an 'artistic' rendition Jingle Bells on the piano. Grace told me about all the plans she has for Joy--swimming lessons, gymnastic lessons, piano lessons. Grace would do anything to protect her little Joy from the kind of life she's got. Grace is a prostitute and a great mom.

I was at the Marriott hotel last week, helping to host a party for the street girls of Toronto. The biggest thing that surprised me was how human they were. Laughing, singing Christmas carols with their kids, handing out Christmas cards and gifts.

And one rant against Wal-Mart. I met another wonderful woman at the party too. She works at Wal-Mart, but Wal-Mart won't give her enough shifts nor does it pay enough. Instead of going on welfare (which would probably give her more money, but seems more degrading for her), she has to work the corner the last week of every month in order to pay the bills. That makes me angry.

grace and joy.

Merry Christmas, everyone! And the title has nothing to do with Christmas Greetings, really. I met Grace last week. She's about my age with a huge smile, a vivacious laugh and a vibrant personality. She was wearing jeans and a t-shirt. Joy is her daughter-- a three-year old who loves running around touching people's hair and giving compliments. Joy also loves music, and can plink out an 'artistic' rendition Jingle Bells on the piano. Grace told me about all the plans she has for Joy--swimming lessons, gymnastic lessons, piano lessons. Grace would do anything to protect her little Joy from the kind of life she's got. Grace is a prostitute.

I was at the Marriott hotel last week, helping to host a party for the street girls of Toronto. The biggest thing that surprised me was how human they were. Laughing, singing Christmas carols with their kids, handing out Christmas cards and gifts.

And one rant against Wal-Mart. Have I ever mentioned how much I hate Wal-Mart? It offers cheap prices for the poor by exploiting the poor. I met another wonderful woman at the party too. She works at Wal-Mart, but Wal-Mart won't give her enough shifts nor does it pay enough. Instead of going on welfare (which would probably give her more money, but seems more degrading for her), she has to work the corner the last week of every month in order to pay the bills. That makes me angry.

this is where I live.

My room mate and I were on a mission: to find the coolest view in Quebec.

My bum was not the coolest view.

Neither was the wall I was looking over.

Mission Impossible: to sneak into the elevator

of a hotel that costs $2500/night and find the secret floor.

Aha. The view was found.

Actually, pictures don't really do justice. At all.

In fact, this picture here, "c'est plat" (It's boring).

You should come visit me instead.

i still don't have any paper.

I just wanted to buy paper. There's this ecological shop, Ecologik, that I've been meaning to check out, in hopes that it sold some hemp paper. It didn't. By "eco" they were referring to plants. And by plants, I think they were referring to marijuana. If anyone is interested, I've a 5% discount (personally created for me by the shop owner) on your choice of bongs or hookahs.

And then I found half of a cathedral. I don't know where the other half went. But it definitely wasn't there. Maybe I was high.

And then I found a Middle Eastern shop. It smelled like Ecologik. I met a man in black and he had a long beard. Not only did he look mysterious, but he also acted mysterious. When I asked him where he was from, he said, "Not Thailand." Great. That narrowed down my choices to 192 other countries. Eventually I learned that his parents smuggled him from Lebanon to Quebc when he was 3 years old. Since then, he's been travelling wherevever the wind blows him. He's "only visited 20 or 30 countries." His next plan is to live by the sea in Brasil.

And then I went to a coffee shop. At the coffee shop, a strange thing happened: instead of me being the people-watcher, I was people-watched. A man sipped his coffee and watched me read my newspaper. I know because I could see his reflection in the mirror. And when he left, he said, "Bonjour."

he wore two hats.

There was this man on the bus today. He wore two hats. One was a blue khaki bandana. The other looked like he skinned his neighbour's cat. His plaid coat was overflowing with paper towels. He was carrying Christmas lights. And he sat by himself at the front of the bus.

It was rush hour, so the bus was crammed with people. There were no seats left, except the one beside him. Once, a lady sat down beside him. But after a few furtive glances at his tobacco-stained hands stuffing his pipe, she quickly got up and moved.

My heart hurts when I see people fall through the cracks of society and no one offers them dignity to help them climb out of their rut. "They" are people too.

snow and evanglizing.

I don't know whether to laugh when I have to climb snowpiles to get on the bus or to cry, knowing that I'm going to be surrounded by snowdrifts for a long, long, long, long time.

Does anyone have any thoughts on evangelism? More specifically, effective and ineffective ways to go about doing it? I have some fairly evangelical friends who are handing out tracks and randomly sitting down at cafeteria tables to talk to people about Jesus. Me, I find it has at least two dangers: (1) of explaining things too simplistically (how much can you express your faith in a 10 minute conversation?) and (2) often (though not always) there is a wrong attitude of trying to get more jewels on your crown in heaven...oh, and maybe I'll add a third...there is also an attitude of "I'm right. You are wrong" (again, not always). I'm uncomfortable with this blatant approach, but is that simply a personality clash or something theologically inside of me screaming that this isn't what evangelism should be?

Where do these thoughts come from? From hanging out at a coffee shop last night with friends for the pure purpose of discussing theology. Mmmm. It has been much too long since I've done that. And my exciting news: I spent hours expressing myself ONLY IN FRENCH! Not Franglais. Not Fringlish. French. I think that you can finally call yourself bilingual when you are able to express feelings and faith-- that's the hardest part of learning a language. And I have finally crossed that barrier...