This blog is my personal practice in showing up for my own creativity. It’s a commitment I’ve made to myself to give voice to whatever is stirring in me each week.
I love it when I can plan my posts a couple of weeks in advance, when I show up to my computer with a quasi-clear idea of what wants to be written.
The plan I had for this post, a follow-up to my previous one, no longer feels relevant. I do have more to share about creativity, but not right now.
Earlier this week, a young person in profound inner torment expressed their agony out into their community of Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia. As I write, nine people, including the shooter, are dead, and at least two dozen more are injured.
Shock is visceral. I cannot wrap my head and heart around this.
Tumbler Ridge is just over an hour’s drive from my home town. As part of my professional responsibilities in my mid-twenties, I travelled there at least once a month for over a year. The community has changed a lot since those days, but it is still part of my history, part of my heart.
Northeastern British Columbia is a collection of small towns and communities, knit together by their distance from a major city. Anything that happens in one town reverberates throughout the entire area. My home town, and every town in the area, is reeling this morning.
My country is reeling.
Just yesterday, someone shared with me the Buddhist story of Indra’s net. (It’s worth an internet search to find the whole story.) At each knot in the net, there is a jewel, representing a life on earth. Each jewel holds a light, and reflects the light of the other jewels. All are connected by the cords that form the net.
Today, I feel this in my physically. Unspeakable tragedy has ripped into a community over 1200 miles away. It is likely I don’t personally know any of the families directly affected, but I feel the wounding. People I do know and love are much closer to the event than I am, and their heartache and heaviness is mine.
One thing I know for sure is that my country, all of my country, is this week thinking of this tiny community in the northern Rockies. There is and will continue to outpourings of love and compassion.
We feel the net that connects us. We feel the loss of the lights that were extinquished. We feel the violence of the act that took those lives, and the pain that prompted it.
In this moment, I also feel in my very bones that community is what will carry us through. The greater community of the BC Peace region will hold the community of Tumbler Ridge as they make their way through this awfulness. The provincial community of British Columbia and the national community of Canada will add their arms of compassion, support and solidarity. Care will flow in from compassionate hearts around the world.
Then, just yesterday another tragedy erupted in the community Kitigan Zibi Anshinabeg in Quebec. Three more lives have been extinguished, and another community, another region, another province mourns. Our country mourns with them.
Political, religious and cultural differences don’t matter much in the BC Peace Region or in northern Quebec right now.. Those of us not directly impacted by the tragedies aren’t asking who the hurting families voted for or what church they attend or don’t attend. It is our common humanity we’re feeling, our place in the great net to which we all belong. (There are those who are trying to use certain details to create controversy, but so far, they are in the minority.) We are mourning as a country, as a wide spread community.
It is this that brings me comfort in the horror and heartache. Community is our refuge. Our shared humanity is our strength.
It is this that gives me hope for our world at large. Every time we remember our interconnectedness, we strengthen the net that holds us all.
Hold tight to your community today. Whether, like me, you connect with just a few people each day, or like my more extroverted friends, have multiple connections, each one matters. Each hug you offer, each encouraging smile, each word of kindness strengthens the net.
Thank you for your light.
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