previous

Good News, Bad News, New News
January 03, 2006 - 12:19 p.m.

next

Good news, good news...I met with the rector of St. Bartholomew's and it's a go. I'll be starting my placement this Sunday.

The bad news...one of my jobs will be working on the Tuesday/Thursday breakfast program. This, in itself, is not bad news. The program feeds a lot of very hungry people and does very good work. The bad news is the fact that the people who prepare and serve the food have to get to the church at...wait for it...4:30am.

Really. 4:30am. That means I have to get up no later than 3:30am. Heh. Why bother going to sleep, really? Except if I stay awake all night Monday to Tuesday and then sleep afterward, I'll throw off my entire sleep schedule. It'll mess up Wednesday, and then I'm back at it Thursday. The weekend would be shot, and I'd be a mess on Sunday.

Maybe I should ask for a cot in the church hall...

Nevertheless, the news is very good. Fr. W is an intelligent and good person, and I think he'll be a great supervisor.

The parish is located in Regent Park, a sketchy neighbourhood. Actually, I think it goes beyond sketchy. Parkdale is sketchy...not really dangerous (usually) but there are a lot of people walking about who seem to be up to something. That's how I think of Parkdale...just about everyone you see walking down the street looks as if he or she is sneaking and plotting. Most of them are probably just going to get groceries or catch the streetcar, but they look like they're sneaking. It's the neighbourhood...I probably look like I'm sneaking when I go for Chinese take-out.

Regent Park is more of a shooting, stabbing, stealing your trainers sort of place. Less sneaking, more outright crime, mostly gang on gang. Right now is perhaps the safest the area has ever been, since the large housing projects (across the street from the church) are being torn down. The old warehouse of the poor will be replaced with a richer mix of housing, a denser urban fabric...hopefully a more dignified and pleasant place to live, at any rate. In the meantime the very poor, the ones pushed into criminal activity, are no longer living there.

And as I typed this entry I received an e-mail from the archdeacon of the diocese of Niagara, who just returned from her homeland, the U.K. Just now getting in she's just weighing in on the (now solved) placement crisis. She strongly suggests a parish in Georgetown, about an hour and a half from Toronto by bus. (It never rains...) I'd like to get involved in Niagara ASAP, but the placement I already have looks so promising...I replied with a suggestion to split the internship.

We'll see how that goes!

To answer that question, the archdeacon replied almost instantly...she'd rather I concentrate on the Niagara possibility next year. Solomon has spoken!

|