Happy New year Joseph
- out of prison. First son
Manasseh - God has made me forget

Happy New year
New town mums
Wishing divine mercy and forgiveness.
Habakkuk 3 'in wrath remember mercy'.
In the land of your affliction ...
Greatly afflicted
Try not to carry your bags of grief, of madness, of hate... Into 2018

Difficult -  but you know someone who knows affliction
Someone who watched his Boy suffer.
In wrath show mercy
1 Thess 5:18
Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is Divine will
2018

Enter with thanksgiving
Forgetting what lies behind.
Moving forward.@

Three Dots 

So much of the Christmas story is about waiting.  The Earth waited for the Messiah to be born. We waited then to see what He would do.  And now the bible says to await His return. 

And the most beautiful thing of all is that He waits for us to come to Him. 

Blessings for a wonderful Christmas Day from Soulkitchen

Sometimes when I am on my way somewhere…. picture the place with me…. a crowded bus, a shopping centre, the library, my office…. the whisper begins…. the melody…. the lyrics. 

Make me a channel of your peace

And I find my centre.

Listen to Sinead O’Connor’s version HERE

I should have known when, after an hour on the road, we stopped at a Caltex gas station for snacks. The kids returned with sweets and Hannes sipped on a cup of coffee.  It was going to be a long night.

We have travelled to Penang on an average of once a year for the past 20 years. It is known as the “Pearl of the Orient” and for us the shimmer and glow of the jewel seems to draw us back each time. The Malaysian government introduced a program to lure foreign investment about 15 years ago known as “Malaysia My Second Home”.  Indeed that rings true for us – although I now claim it as “Our Third Home”. 

A couple of weeks in Penang comprises of both relaxation and mission. This year we felt a stronger sense of missional purpose. We come as ourselves and make ourselves available for whatever and whoever comes our way.

The night I speak of is typical.  We were unsure of where we are going or what is expected. We met our friends at 6pm. We ‘ubered’ to an outdoor restaurant where we shared coffee and roti canai. The pastors told us they were hoping to plant a church up north and tonight was a gathering for prayer and fellowship in the town. 

Indeed, when we arrived about 2 hours later near to the Thai border, we came to a house where women hovered over the stove – cooking up a big pot of Bee Hoon noodles.  We were led in worship by a couple of children on a keyboard and bongo drum.  Throughout the evening the host would receive calls on her phone and race off to collect someone new on her scooter.  A woman obviously mentally disturbed joined us with her mother and she would periodically cry out and rock back and forth until her mother comforted her.  An older man had to be carried in from the car.  We met neighbours, family and church friends.  The host was nervous with so many in her home.  Most had to stand. Our pastor friend scolded her for not providing enough chairs.

We were asked to ‘bring a word’.  Be ready Louise in all seasons!

We worshipped. We prayed.  We ate.

As we departed the woman, who had demonstrated such disturbing behaviour that night, motioned to me by patting her head. She wants you to pray for her, the others said. She was calm as I prayed. Fear left her just for a few minutes.  

We piled into our car. Our friends dropped us at a McDonalds near their home in Penang where we could get onto wifi and organise an Uber to get us back to our hotel. The children in our car were exhausted.  The little boy, Jordan, has been coughing all night. I felt for them.

We entered our hotel at about 2am as a Chinese wedding was just wrapping up.  The gaudy Christmas snowy castle in the lobby looked even more out of place that night.

Dear Friends of Soulkitchen,

We've got sunny skies today and a nice chill in the air. We see the sprinkle of new snow on the local mountains. We love this city - rain, shine or snow!
And the work here continues.  Times are tough for people in the city as housing is so scarce and expensive.  The onset of the cold weather doesn't make life easy.  This year we have increased our focus to include another community in the West End where 450 mostly seniors are housed. Our partners, More Than A Roof, took over the management of that property.  The opportunities to serve there are many and somewhat difficult as the kitchen facilities are limited. MTR is building a commercial kitchen on that site which will be completed by 2018.  Meanwhile we continue to provide meals for our tenant population (which has doubled this year), taking hot meals onto the streets twice weekly, working with local churches to provide support for their outreach projects and taking meals into the homes of those who are sick or needy. We have just concluded Canadian Thanksgiving celebration dinners with over 400 Turkey dinners going out. All this production takes a team.  What is REALLY good is the work with our tenants on a  personal level. Soulkitchen is in a position to provide training, support and hope for many people. We give others the opportunity to redirect their focus - away from negativity and out of isolation. Our aim has always been to create a healthy community while providing wholesome meals to others. The kitchen is where it starts - cooking, training, connecting with others, mentoring. 

More than Food. 

We couldn't do the work without our many volunteers. We have a strong team of 15 volunteers together with a newly appointed Sous Chef. Special thanks to IGA on Robson, Earls Restaurants, Terra Breads and others who partner with us and provide provisions that enables us to serve good food. More Than A Roof are a great organisation and we are blessed to be partnering with them.

We use all three modules to get people into a more healthy state.  Our tenants work with us, we engage with them on many levels and we give them a purpose. Through all this we trust that our tenants and volunteers will find their way to experiencing the love and mercy of our Father in heaven who is ultimately the bringer of freedom.

Pray for us that we can make a big impact by bringing real purpose into the lives of those who are discouraged and poor through love and encouragement.

We are travelling to Perth and onwards to Malaysia this month. We will continue connecting with the churches in Penang and especially with our partners at Noah's Ark.  Hannes will be speaking at Fount of LIfe Outreach Ministries in Perth and Louise will speak at C3 Dunsborough mid November.  Pray for our ministry both locally in Vancouver, and, as we travel.

Blessing to you all.


Hannes and Louise Tischhauser

Poverty and low income have both been found to increase the risk of loneliness and social isolation. A Dutch study ( Hortulanus, Machielse & Meeuwesen Social Isolation in Modern Society 2006) of religiosity in people who are lonely found that people living on low incomes were twice as likely to be lonely and six times more likely to be socially isolated. A similar Australian study (published in the Journal of Clinical Nursing by Lauder and Sharkey in 2006) reached the conclusion that people who earned less than $600 per week were significantly lonelier than those earning more than $1,000 per week. Interestingly enough the Australian study also found unemployment to be one of the strongest predictors of loneliness.

It just seems so obvious that low-income seniors in Canada face an increased risk of becoming socially isolated. No employment and limited finances combine to marginalize this group of people.  We are right to concentrate our efforts to embrace and assist in any way we can to create community. 

Jesus calls us to especially be mindful of the poor.

Today I am tired of helping others.  I want to just enjoy my prosperity and health and sit amongst my 'stuff'.  Instead my ears hear the call of the needy. The Holy Spirit whispers and also helps me.  

O Lord help me not to turn away from you call to care for those who have only a little while I have been given so much.  Give me a spirit of generosity and joy.

This week, during a rather flow-style stretch session, I found myself sweating profusely. The room was stuffy and the temperature high in the late afternoon. Sweat.  A sign of success. The result of my effort to work hard and to remain focused on the instructions from the teacher.

So, what if perspiration is like a spiritual practice—not attractive but a sign of cleansing and reaching a place of release. We have to work hard if we want our inner core – the spiritual one – to become strong and able to hold up in times of stress. We maintain our spiritual practices of prayer and bible study to train our spirits and, of course, to worship.  To worship in order to love better, to fend off the diseases of anger and greed and jealousy. Perhaps a good session of prayer effectively releases the toxins that are harboured in a weak human system.

I snuck a line into that Lamentations verse ' we perspire in our effort to follow him'.  Sometimes it's tough to maintain a spiritual posture. But the results are worth it. It pays off.

In other words, as I stand at the bus stop and wait, after my class, I feel damn good. Feeling it – those beads of kindness running down my back.

Just finished reading Romeo Dallaire’s Waiting For First Light: My Ongoing Battle with PTSD and I can recommend it as a good and interesting read.  It’s such a desperately human book leading us through the despair and anger that Romeo feels as he carries the baggage of war in the form of crippling PTSD through decades of his highly publicized life.  It is as much a politically charged plea for government to care better for returning vets as an exercise in social finger pointing. ‘PTSD has a terminal side to it that demands more urgency’, says Dallaire.

Here is a retired Senator and General writing about his secret life – the one spent so often in total despair and inner torment. He seems to have lost so much of what we would think of as a normal life. His PTSD was left untreated – unrecognized - for too long.  Dallaire says it’s permanent now.  He still takes medication, has nightmares, goes to therapy, and has episodes of terror. I met him a few years ago when he was our keynote speaker at the annual BC Leadership Prayer Breakfast hosted by City in Focus. Although he spoke of his illness at the event, it is only now that I realize the severity and intensity of the illness. It was disguised in a business suit and an intelligent mind.

Spirituality leads us to peer closely at the unseen. Our faith encourages us to notice what is happening underneath the skin.  Surely God wants us to be a people equipped and ready to help those around us.

So often the unknown in others terrifies us. Yesterday as I waited for a bus an older woman ‘came unstuck’ emotionally. The dozen or people acted as if nothing was happening.  I was sitting next to her and began to engage – quite cautiously I might add.  She immediately softened and calmed down.  Just needed to be heard by someone – anyone.

Who is around us and suffering from depression, PTSD, loneliness, mental anguish?

If you do suspect a friend or loved one is experiencing a crisis, then reaching out in a sensitive way is the first step to providing help. Staying calm and doing more listening than talking might be a beginning. Demonstrate that you can be trusted and that you are able to offer support without passing judgement.

I’m flicking through a great little book by Bill Hybels entitled ‘Just Walk across the Room’.  It is yet another ‘How to’ book on evangelism. I like the section called ‘Living in 3D’ which points us to the direction and pace that evangelism should take. 

First, develop friendships. 

Next, discover stories.

Finally, discern steps. 

I like.  Seems like we are so ready to take someone through some steps in their faith without cultivating a genuine friendship or listening to their story. Let’s kill off the arrogance of the evangelical bully and, instead, become champions of love. Now there’s a Christmas thought. 

After six weeks away from my desk I choose to offer you a delicious podcast for your listening pleasure.

Krista Tippett , host of 'On Being' podcast, interviews poet Marie Howe. Her talk has had an effect upon me. It causes me to recognize my own thirst for the creative.  Everyone is creative and we have been hardwired with a DNA that longs to have the power unleashed.

Marie Howe appears to stumble upon the key to unlocking the power of her words. This leads her to a life devoted to poetry.  Kunitz,  from the American Academy of Poets, observed, “Her long, deep-breathing lines address the mysteries of flesh and spirit, in terms accessible only to a woman who is very much of our time and yet still in touch with the sacred.”  Howe composes the poem below as an elergy to her brother, John, who died of HIV Aids in the eighties. It also serves as a reminder to push ourselves to live in the present moment and to find the sacred in the ordinary things.

LISTEN HERE TO THE PODCAST 

Go to the place where your imagination lives.

The child spot.

 The dreamer place.

Experiences of life can stifle and numb this part of ourselves.  As Westerners we live in a culture increasingly interested in what is ‘right’.  What is just?  What is the tribal definition of justice?

In an increasingly   fearful community we endlessly analyse events and behaviours and place them up against the mirror of judgement in order to maintain a grip on order.

We have lost our glasses through which we see glory and are then free to imagine what a life without constant judgement looks like.

I am working on retrieving some of my lost functionality – my lost imagination.

To dream of pure friendships,  of mountain walks, of witnessing miracles, of beauty, of sleep…..

I draw your attention to an excellent cultural piece written by author and journalist, David Brooks as published in the New York Times last week. The moral dance the church, politics and secularism plays is every evolving and heating up.

Read the article HERE

An excerpt from Les Murray's poem, An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow 

and many weep for sheer acceptance, and more
refuse to weep for fear of all acceptance,
but the weeping man, like the earth, requires nothing,
the man who weeps ignores us, and cries out
of his writhen face and ordinary body

not words, but grief, not messages, but sorrow,
hard as the earth, sheer, present as the sea—
and when he stops, he simply walks between us
mopping his face with the dignity of one
man who has wept, and now has finished weeping.

Evading believers, he hurries off down Pitt Street.

Someone once said that when we get pre-occupied with just knowing stuff about God our spiritual lives become a bit like trying to view the galaxies through a pair of $5 binoculars.  In subtle ways convention wants to teach the 'believer/seeker' what to look for instead of how to look.  We put ourselves in spaces that speaks things into our ears instead of teaching us how to hear.  We are shown the best place to buy a new pair of glasses, instead of being led somewhere so that we can take in a view for ourselves.  The motives are good and are birthed from a hierarchical system that wants to pass on knowledge and experience.  The church likes to work out of this father/son model.  The majority are happy with this - they feel comfortable and safe with someone in leadership giving them all the answers.  We like the duality of good versus evil and black and white theology.  We want order, controlled order, even though we read the gospels and know that Jesus created havoc and social messes. We are praised when we know stuff and are seen to be reflecting back the words of our 'teachers'.  But the prophetic, instead creates futures that don’t seem ordered or sometimes sensible. We often aren't meant to tread in the steps of our forefathers.  We all long for the mentors, the fathers, the elders who will encourage, listen and promote rather than only to teach and direct. 

I went to a Writers Festival a few years ago and learnt about the rather fragile relationships between author, editor, publisher and publicist. The sessions were chaired by national experts in all these fields. It is a tough business and many fail.  The writer has to be prepared for their precious work to be restructured,analysed and changed all for the sake of sales. Everyone wanted a bestseller.  God, instead is looking for the 'voice in the desert'. A new voice telling the story.  The world is looking for the new voice.  

New York Times - Julianna Brion

MARCH 3, 2017

New Yorkers, if not city dwellers everywhere, might acknowledge a debt to Pope Francis this week. He has offered a concrete, permanently useful prescription for dealing with panhandlers.

It’s this: Give them the money, and don’t worry about it.

The pope’s advice, from an interview with a Milan magazine published just before the beginning of Lent, is startlingly simple. It’s scripturally sound, yet possibly confounding, even subversive.

Living in the city — especially in metropolises where homelessness is an unsolved, unending crisis — means that at some point in your day, or week, a person seeming (or claiming) to be homeless, or suffering with a disability, will ask you for help.

You probably already have a panhandler policy.

You keep walking, or not. You give, or not. Loose coins, a dollar, or just a shake of the head. Your rule may be blanket, or case-by-case.

If it’s case by case, that means you have your own on-the-spot, individualized benefits program, with a bit of means-testing, mental health and character assessment, and criminal-background check — to the extent that any of this is possible from a second or two of looking someone up and down.

Francis’ solution eliminates that effort. But it is by no means effortless.

Speaking to the magazine Scarp de’ Tenis, which means Tennis Shoes, a monthly for and about the homeless and marginalized, the pope said that giving something to someone in need is “always right.” (We’re helped here by the translation in an article from Catholic News Service.)

But what if someone uses the money for, say, a glass of wine? (A perfectly Milanese question.) His answer: If “a glass of wine is the only happiness he has in life, that’s O.K. Instead, ask yourself, what do you do on the sly? What ‘happiness’ do you seek in secret?” Another way to look at it, he said, is to recognize how you are the “luckier” one, with a home, a spouse and children, and then ask why your responsibility to help should be pushed onto someone else.

Then he posed a greater challenge. He said the way of giving is as important as the gift. You should not simply drop a bill into a cup and walk away. You must stop, look the person in the eyes, and touch his or her hands.