I grew up in Lynn Valley, North Vancouver.
At the time there was a 7-Eleven and a gas station at the corner of the two major roads Mountain Highway and Lynn Valley. It was somewhat of a community hub, a place where teenagers gathered pre-internet, pre-smartphone. I remember that the 7-Eleven / gas station would welcome the money of the young people who hung out there, but they did not appreciate the loitering, and in the latter days they would play loud classical music hoping to annoy the kids away.
Now, in that same spot, there is a newer community hub. It is a lovelier place. There is a library, and some shops, and a restaurant, and a salon. There is a courtyard where people can sit outside. It is a gathering place.
A few days ago a young man, who had warrants out for his arrest from Quebec and Manitoba, turned that gathering place into a place of tremendous sorrow. He stabbed multiple people, one young woman, the same age as the perpetrator, died from her injuries.
Many people apparently rushed to help. There was the initial help, and then came the communal grief. I live 3km from the corner and yesterday I rode my bike to the sidewalk now full of flowers and hand-written messages that has grown at the site. People were gathered around in the quiet. People were respectful, sad, thoughtful.
This has been a terribly tough year, since last March, in just about every place on our planet. In every place there has been terrible sorrow, and in every place there has been great beauty and love shown. One of the things demonstrated by the events in Lynn Valley is that it can be the non-COVID related tragedies that make us more aware of the frailty of the human condition. We were frail before COVID. We will remain so after as well.
My evangelical heritage certainly carries with it many negatives, but as in most things, even in difficult or damaging things, the positives can outweigh the negatives. In my experience one of the things that the evangelical church could do well was communal grief. People were encouraged to gather and mark death and loss and suffering. I remain grateful for this.
What I saw yesterday was an expression of communal grief. What the people gathering held in common is that they were from the same neighbourhood and they were sad over such seemingly senseless loss.
There is something holy in communal grieving. Anything that brings humanity together, anything that connects one person on a deeper, emotional, even spiritual level with a stranger shows us the promise and blessing of being human. In humility, we are closer to being the same as we stand before the flowers placed in grief and respect.
The opposite energy to this solidarity was a question that could come up in the evangelical church after someone spoke of a death. I heard it repeatedly in my time as a pastor and I winced inside every time I did. The terrible question could be asked by the most loving, wonderful and caring people. It is this, “Were they a believer?”.
The question implied a horrific separation rather than a solidarity. The fear beneath it had to do with a belief in a hell of eternal torment and separation. I know now that the question showed theological distortion and misunderstanding of God, not theological clarity and faith in God’s goodness.
In the Christian faith, this week is Holy Week, the week of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday. English poet and priest George Herbert (1600’s) wrote a lengthy poem called “The Sacrifice”. It is an extended consideration of the suffering and death of Jesus written as words from Jesus himself. It expresses well how, in the death of Jesus, Christians believe that all grief and sorrow and wrong and even evil were taken up by Jesus himself in an act of utter and complete love. His sacrifice should show Christians that we are in solidarity with ALL others, not in any opposition or exclusion. Jesus has gathered us all in taking on our sorrow.
3 stanzas from the poem (Note: “woe” means deep sorrow, “weal" means deep joy)
In healing not my self, there doth consist
all that salvation, which ye now resist;
Your safety in my sickness doth subsist:
Was ever grief like mine?Betwixt two thieves I spend my utmost breath,
as he that for some robbery suffereth.
Alas! What have I stolen from you? Death.
Was ever grief like mine?But now I die; now all is finished
My woe, man’s weal, and now I bow my head.
Only let others say when I am dead;
Never was grief like mine.
I don’t feel in any way that others gathered around the flowers at the place of tragic loss need to believe the same things that I do. When I stop there, to pay my respects, I do so with a gratitude for the communal nature of grief. People are so good in so many ways. They come out to simply cry over the death of someone they maybe never knew. And in my faith I cry for all of the losses, and cry also that Jesus has loved all humanity so much that he has taken on all the grief and death that ever was.
Thank you for this Todd. There are so many pieces here that my heart deeply felt.
Beautiful, Todd.
I have lived in Lynn Valley for nearly 52 years. Apparently a young boy was witness to “a man with a knife”. Never have I witnessed in Lynn Valley a man with a knife.
If times were different and churches were open, perhaps there would be a “communal gathering”. Solidarity has brought folks together in their own communal gathering...an inter-faith kind of unity....the commonality being respect, sharing grief, loving humanity the way Jesus did.