Volume 39 Issue 1,2,&3 | Posted: April 5, 2024
I am an ordained minister within the United Church of Canada. My Ministry was a calling from God to be with the poor, homeless, addicted, mentally ill and lonely on the streets.
Biblically: The Lord called me to minister outside the walls of Jerusalem. I have written the book Muddy Water, which will be published later this year by Wipf and Stock Publisher, USA. Social justice ministries working on the street will receive all profiles.
Once the book is released, I ask you to help create a ripple of interest around Muddy Water within the Catholic Church in and around Victoria. I would also be honoured if you could interview me about the book and if I could write a article about the book for the Island Catholic News.
Synopsis
A lifetime on Canada’s streets results in vivid stories that range from despair to humour to hope. Voices of street people are seldom recorded in print, yet homelessness, addiction, mental illness, poverty, and other causal factors are major issues today, making these stories timely.
Muddy Water is about understanding women and men who live on our streets. The seventy-two chapters are grouped into five sections: “Muddy Water,” “Dealing with Death” “Church vs. Street”, “Articles and Speeches,” and “Holy Rage”. As a minister of the United Church of Canada, the author covers the entire gamut of human experience and emotions in this unique volume.
Evocative drawings by artist Elfrida Schragen enhance and extend the informal style of the text, weaving art into street life. Significant references to the long-detrimental effects of Canada’s residential schools highlight why so many street people have Indigenous heritage. The often positive and powerful aspects of that heritage are also featured.
This book helps readers to understand why we must free ourselves from every vestige of colonialism, racism, sexism, and any other aspect of our institutions that enable inequality, injustice, and poverty. We must move from living in the ego to living for all our citizens.
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Allen Tysick, Victoria
