Toronto: Cowbirds Stellar, Blue Jays In The Cellar

Let’s state it clearly: One great idea of the biblical revelation is that God is manifest in the ordinary, in the actual, in the daily, in the now, in the concrete incarnations of life, and not through purity codes and moral achievement contests, which are seldom achieved anyway.
Richard Rohr

We walked into the Romero House 15 minutes late for lunch on Friday. We got to Toronto the night before and were still getting acclimated to the treacherous road conditions: traffic, street cars, timed lights, weaving taxis, parked cars that made two lanes become one lane and then back again. The six Romero interns were downstairs sharing a vegetarian lunch of mashed potatoes, coleslaw, tomatoes and bell peppers, green salad and fresh strawberries. We were received warmly and curiously, no doubt strange that two thirty-somethings from California would find themselves half a world away in this house of refugees.

Actually, Romero House is four houses of Canadian interns living together with refugee families from Ghana, Iran, Namibia, Romania and elsewhere. The interns, under the care and leadership of director Sarah Villager and Mary Jo Leddy, the Founder of this two-decades-old project, commit to one-year renewable contracts. They eat every lunch and dinner together and divvy up the cooking and cleaning tasks throughout the week. Their food, rent, healthcare and transportation needs are included and their "take home pay" is a couple hundred dollars a month.

Named after Latin American martyr-priest Oscar Romero ("If they kill me I shall rise in the Salvadoran people."), this community is profoundly committed to solidarity with and advocacy for the refugee families who live in the High Park neighborhood of Toronto. The interns work as advocates and translators with lawyers, health professionals & government bureaus, as well as help provide advice, transportation, and just about anything else these families may need. At the core of their mission, the good folks at Romero are committed to a mentality of walking alongside of these sojourners. They reject paternalism and charity for the deeper, more authentic love embodied in solidarity.

Lizzie, a 2nd year intern from Wales, took us on a tour of the neighborhood.

They converted this old garage into a sacred space for morning meditation:

She led us up to a beautiful rooftop garden:

Actually...it seemed there were gardens EVERYWHERE:

We did not know what to expect when we met up with Bill Heffernan at Gate 403 on Roncevalles St, just a 10 minute walk from the Romero House. Billy greeted us immediately with a warm hug and quick wit. A newly-retired Catholic school teacher of the Bible, Heffernan, thankfully, exuded none of the typical qualities of such a profession. Beer-drinking, story-telling and authority-dissing, he took it to another level as he recanted the first time he ever met the Biblical scholar and activist Ched Myers.

As it turns out, Bill read a Myers essay back in 1980 and was immediately hooked. Bill had been intuitively stretching the imaginations of his high school Scripture students, focusing on God's consistent call for all people of faith and conscience to commit themselves to dynamic social, economic and political action...and now he found the compelling scholarly resources that defended his teachings.

Bill roused up the other fellow Teachers For Social Justice and they roadtripped down to Detroit where Myers was headlining at a conference. When they arrived, Billy and the boys sacramented late into the night at the local pub. They slept in, missing the morning praise and worship session and raced down to the conference. A quick stop at the coffee vending machine found Myers (and some of the other speakers sinners) oversleeping the holy time too! The weekend led to many deep and challenging conversations with Myers and to a now-three-decade-old relationship.

About 20 years ago, Billy started a little group called Trucks For Nicaragua. He convinced folks to donate their trucks to the 3rd World country and he and his friends drove them all the way down the Continent. This (ad)venture led to the creation of Casa Canadiense, an NGO dedicated to educating Canadian youth (his students!) about Central American society through the facilitation of real relationships between Canadians and Nicaraguans. He eventually bought some property from some Catholic priests who held him to a beer-induced promise that he made late one night in Nicaragua: one day, if given the chance, he would buy a place of his own for the Cause.

Heffernan treated us to local beers and Indian food before he sidelined himself briefly for a nap. At 9:30pm, we reunited at The Hole In The Wall in The Junction neighborhood of Toronto: the Billy Heffernan Trio was playing to a packed crowd!

On a beautiful 25-degree (celsius!) Saturday morning, we met Sara Stratton at The Spit, a human-made landform with a series of trails and paths jutting out into Lake Ontario on the southeast side of Toronto. Sara's friends, Julie and Jenn, joined us on the bird-watching adventure. We know virtually nothing about winged creatures so this was quite a fascinating time for us. Sara and Julie work for Kairos Canada, an ecumenical Christian organization committed to working with churches and other religious organizations in the realm of social justice education and advocacy, especially ecological and economic.

We were struck by their ability and desire to get to know us, while still watching and listening for different birds all around us. At one point, Sara was sharing something about her personal life and then suddenly called out "Kingbird! Eastern Kingbird!" And then naturally settled right back into our previous dialogue. Truly impressive. Sara and Julie's sarcastic banter was pure entertainment and made us feel right at home. We heard the three-peat songs of the mockingbird and saw cowbirds, gulls, terns, swallows and a white-bellyed something-or-other that just stared at us from a branch just above our view of the city.

On Sunday morning, we slept in and then met Wendy Gallegos for brunch at a great little place called the Cardinal Rule. A pastor's daughter from nearby Hamilton, Ontario, Wendy used to work for Sojourners in Washington D.C. She was full of energy and inspiration, two qualities that, no doubt, go a long way in her vocation as a social worker. Wendy's husband, Aaron, was home with their 6-year-old son Amado who had a bit of a summer cold! Hopefully, we'll get to meet them in California soon.

On our journey out of Canadian territory, we stopped at Niagara-on-the-Lake for lunch and coffee and then parked on the side of the road and did a 45-minute midday run to see the Falls. Beautiful, but hotter than dogshit.