boost

It's not every day that one gets to have a cameo in a commercial. Especially when that day is your first at a new job. I love working for an ad agency.

These PSAs were produced for a company called Boost (which used to be the Toronto Child Abuse Center) and done by the ad agency I work for, Yield, pro bono. Yet another reason why I love my job.

"Boy"
(I'm in the courtroom scene)


"Girl"

touché

As iron sharpens iron, so are we:
Our wits, our words, our wills are often caught
In swordplay; leaving both sides overwrought
And out of breath, though neither claim defeat.
Some might find us brazen, not so me
Although our love is oft a lover's knot
We burnish one another's sully spots
In light of an alliance yet to be.
For now, I rest my head upon your chest
Until the cadence of our hearts are one,
My fingers and your own create a nest
Until the warmth of both have been outdone,
I step towards the steps that you request
Until a greater fusion has begun.

silver bells

Oh no. It's only November 8th and I'm already humming Christmas carols...

It's not entirely my fault. First, a friend of mine blogged about Christmas turds (?). Then, this morning, I witnessed the first few flakes of winter outside the kitchen window. Over lunch, I read an article in the Toronto Star about the window decoration on Bay Street. Which nearly made me cry.

I can remember going to "see the windows" with my great, great aunt Dodie back she was alive, back when I was young, back when the Eaton Centre was owned by Eaton's, back when we had one-dollar bills. I love that the city is so much a part of my childhood. It's why I love the Christmas carol Silver Bells (beware: link will get the song stuck in your head all day) - "It's Christmas time in the city..."

On my way into work this morning, due to an accidental lie-in, I was doing my makeup on the King streetcar.
Lady next to me: "Wow. Applying liquid liner on a streetcar. You're brave."
Me: "Toronto, born and bred. That's all I gotta say."

do you mind?

Do you applaud fear
Do you hold it near
Are you afraid to live your life
The way I perceive
In my arms I’ll catch you
Do you mind if I always love you

Heaven’s gonna burn your eyes

"Heaven's Gonna Burn Your Eyes" (Thievery Corporation)

to write love on her arms

I heard about these guys first through MySpace but only just read the story today. I suggest you do the same. Then get involved.

www.twloha.com

TO WRITE LOVE ON HER ARMS
by Jamie Tworkowski

Pedro the Lion is loud in the speakers, and the city waits just outside our open windows. She sits and sings, legs crossed in the passenger seat, her pretty voice hiding in the volume. Music is a safe place and Pedro is her favorite. It hits me that she won't see this skyline for several weeks, and we will be without her. I lean forward, knowing this will be written, and I ask what she'd say if her story had an audience. She smiles. "Tell them to look up. Tell them to remember the stars."

I would rather write her a song, because songs don't wait to resolve, and because songs mean so much to her. Stories wait for endings, but songs are brave things bold enough to sing when all they know is darkness. These words, like most words, will be written next to midnight, between hurricane and harbor, as both claim to save her.

Renee is 19. When I meet her, cocaine is fresh in her system. She hasn't slept in 36 hours and she won't for another 24. It is a familiar blur of coke, pot, pills and alcohol. She has agreed to meet us, to listen and to let us pray. We ask Renee to come with us, to leave this broken night. She says she'll go to rehab tomorrow, but she isn't ready now. It is too great a change. We pray and say goodbye and it is hard to leave without her.

She has known such great pain; haunted dreams as a child, the near-constant presence of evil ever since. She has felt the touch of awful naked men, battled depression and addiction, and attempted suicide. Her arms remember razor blades, fifty scars that speak of self-inflicted wounds. Six hours after I meet her, she is feeling trapped, two groups of "friends" offering opposite ideas. Everyone is asleep. The sun is rising. She drinks long from a bottle of liquor, takes a razor blade from the table and locks herself in the bathroom. She cuts herself, using the blade to write "FUCK UP" large across her left forearm.

The nurse at the treatment center finds the wound several hours later. The center has no detox, names her too great a risk, and does not accept her. For the next five days, she is ours to love. We become her hospital and the possibility of healing fills our living room with life. It is unspoken and there are only a few of us, but we will be her church, the body of Christ coming alive to meet her needs, to write love on her arms.

She is full of contrast, more alive and closer to death than anyone I've known, like a Johnny Cash song or some theatre star. She owns attitude and humor beyond her 19 years, and when she tells me her story, she is humble and quiet and kind, shaped by the pain of a hundred lifetimes. I sit privileged but breaking as she shares. Her life has been so dark yet there is some soft hope in her words, and on consecutive evenings, I watch the prettiest girls in the room tell her that she's beautiful. I think it's God reminding her.

I've never walked this road, but I decide that if we're going to run a five-day rehab, it is going to be the coolest in the country. It is going to be rock and roll. We start with the basics; lots of fun, too much Starbucks and way too many cigarettes.

Thursday night she is in the balcony for Band Marino, Orlando's finest. They are indie-folk-fabulous, a movement disguised as a circus. She loves them and she smiles when I point out the A&R man from Atlantic Europe, in town from London just to catch this show.

She is in good seats when the Magic beat the Sonics the next night, screaming like a lifelong fan with every Dwight Howard dunk. On the way home, we stop for more coffee and books, Blue Like Jazz and (Anne Lamott's) Travelling Mercies.

On Saturday, the Taste of Chaos tour is in town and I'm not even sure we can get in, but doors do open and minutes after parking, we are on stage for Thrice, one of her favorite bands. She stands ten feet from the drummer, smiling constantly. It is a bright moment there in the music, as light and rain collide above the stage. It feels like healing. It is certainly hope.

Sunday night is church and many gather after the service to pray for Renee, this her last night before entering rehab. Some are strangers but all are friends tonight. The prayers move from broken to bold, all encouraging. We're talking to God but I think as much, we're talking to her, telling her she's loved, saying she does not go alone. One among us knows her best. Ryan sits in the corner strumming an acoustic guitar, singing songs she's inspired.

After church our house fills with friends, there for a few more moments before goodbye. Everyone has some gift for her, some note or hug or piece of encouragement. She pulls me aside and tells me she would like to give me something. I smile surprised, wondering what it could be. We walk through the crowded living room, to the garage and her stuff.

She hands me her last razor blade, tells me it is the one she used to cut her arm and her last lines of cocaine five nights before. She's had it with her ever since, shares that tonight will be the hardest night and she shouldn't have it. I hold it carefully, thank her and know instantly that this moment, this gift, will stay with me. It hits me to wonder if this great feeling is what Christ knows when we surrender our broken hearts, when we trade death for life.

As we arrive at the treatment center, she finishes: "The stars are always there but we miss them in the dirt and clouds. We miss them in the storms. Tell them to remember hope. We have hope."

I have watched life come back to her, and it has been a privilege. When our time with her began, someone suggested shifts but that is the language of business. Love is something better. I have been challenged and changed, reminded that love is that simple answer to so many of our hardest questions. Don Miller says we're called to hold our hands against the wounds of a broken world, to stop the bleeding. I agree so greatly.

We often ask God to show up. We pray prayers of rescue. Perhaps God would ask us to be that rescue, to be His body, to move for things that matter. He is not invisible when we come alive. I might be simple but more and more, I believe God works in love, speaks in love, is revealed in our love. I have seen that this week and honestly, it has been simple: Take a broken girl, treat her like a famous princess, give her the best seats in the house. Buy her coffee and cigarettes for the coming down, books and bathroom things for the days ahead. Tell her something true when all she's known are lies. Tell her God loves her. Tell her about forgiveness, the possibility of freedom, tell her she was made to dance in white dresses. All these things are true.

We are only asked to love, to offer hope to the many hopeless. We don't get to choose all the endings, but we are asked to play the rescuers. We won't solve all mysteries and our hearts will certainly break in such a vulnerable life, but it is the best way. We were made to be lovers bold in broken places, pouring ourselves out again and again until we're called home.

I have learned so much in one week with one brave girl. She is alive now, in the patience and safety of rehab, covered in marks of madness but choosing to believe that God makes things new, that He meant hope and healing in the stars. She would ask you to remember.

holy matrimony, batman

It's been nearly a month since my last post. On the upside, things have been so busy recently I feel as if I haven't had time to suffer my September seasonal allergies. I feel like yesterday was the end of camp...and now it's basically Christmas.

I've been doing some beta.blogger.com housecleaning and have stumbled upon some drafts that I either a) lost interest in finishing, b) ran out of time to finish, and/or c) felt they were too personal to post. But, since I've recently opened a 24-7 Prayer Room (a seven-year dream realization for me) I've decided:

to heck with procrastination, and

considering approximately 8-14 people are daily walking in and out of a room that I feel is a symbol of my heart, to heck with self-preservation and fear of vulnerability.

So. Here they come.

First, a few quotes on the sanctity and communal protection of marriage. An idea I've been chewing, like so much cud, over many months...

"We want our marriage to fulfill all of our emotional and physical needs; we ask our partner to do what an entire village once did; and to desire nothing or no one else while doing it."
- Esther Perel

"Suddenly I realized - two people isn't enough. You need backup. If you're only two people, and someone drops off the edge, then you're on your own. Two isn't a large enough number. You need three at least."
- Marcus ("About A Boy")

"Though one may be overpowered,
two can defend themselves.
A cord of three strands is not quickly broken."
- Ecclesiastes 4:12

"Do you, their family and friends, promise your support and encouragement to the commitment that they are making to one another here today? If so, would each of you please respond by saying 'I promise'?"
- Pastor to the members of the congregation, traditional wedding vows

miss you, ed

Honest Ed Mirvish (1914-2007)

It's one of those moments that I miss my great aunt Dodie. Dodie introduced me, at the age of three, to the city of Toronto and I fell in love. With Dodie I experienced all the glories of the city, including riding the swans at Centre Island, going through the Bat Cave at the ROM, watching matinees at the Uptown, and feeding the pigeons at Queen's Park. For those of you who understand, she was my Dumbledore.

And she probably would have wanted to attend the funeral. And I would have had someone to go with.

www.torontounlimited.ca/video
www.mirvish.com/edwin/edmirvish
www.mirvish.com