Cultural Conversations on Death, Dying, and Grief

On the afternoon of Sunday, April 27, Rev. Ryan had the privilege of taking part in a panel on Cultural Conversations on Death, Grief, and Dying by the Comox Valley Hospice Society. He was the “Christian” panelist and was provided with a series of questions. Answers are below.

Name, perspective, and why you are you here? 

My name is the Rev. Ryan Slifka, an Ordained Minister in the United Church of Canada. I’ve served at St. George’s since 2014.

I am here representing every Christian everywhere. All kidding aside. The United Church is part of the liberal wing of the Christian church. Having said that, I am comfortable representing a broadly Christian perspective, as there are a lot of commonalities on this subject. But I do it all from a Protestant Christian lens more specifically. The United Church being Canada’s largest Protestant Christian denomination. Protestants having separated from the Catholic Church in the 16th century.

I’m so grateful to have this opportunity. I have had the opportunity to minister to several people at the end of their lives in the hospice facility at Oceanfront Village.

I’m here because I think this might be one of the most important conversations that needs to be had. We’ve made some incredible advancements in recent years, both social and technological. We have a greater material abundance than anyone else in history, in many ways we are so free to do what we want with our lives. And yet there’s a great uneasiness, unhappiness at the heart of modern life.

I love what the poet, essayist and funeral director Thomas Lynch once said about funerals is that they “get the dead where they need to go and the living where they need to be.” How we think about death and dying says something as to what we think life is, what its purpose is. And that’s the business I’m more or less in—getting the dead where they need to go, and the living where they need to be. That’s why I’m here.

Where do you find comfort or strength when facing the loss of a loved one? Through your belief system or culture lens, what offerings of support - for the person who is dying, their loved ones or community?

Well, at the heart of my particular belief system is a message, or a promise. One that comes to us in the form of the great sweeping narrative found in the Bible. All the other stuff that brings comfort and strength, like practices or rituals, it radiates from that center, like a stone in a pond.

And the message is that at the heart of the universe is a personal being. One who is love. This personal being was sufficient in itself, so didn’t need anything or anyone else, so brought the universe into being out of no other reason than love and a desire to be in relationship. All of us, every single person, every atom in the universe is made for this.

And it’s a relationship that is so strong that even death can’t break it. We believe that the personal being who is the love at the heart of the universe came to us in human flesh—Jesus Christ. Our central symbol is a cross, the cross that Jesus was crucified and died on, only to be raised from the dead three days later. We just celebrated it last weekend with tons of joy. From it we derive the message that Jesus overcame death, never to die again, but to live forever.

Which is an incredibly hopeful thing. Because we don’t think Jesus is the only one to be raised, but he’s the first fruits, the first child in a large family, a sneak preview of our own destiny—to be raised by the same Creator who raised him, to live with in love and in joy forever.

We’re able to cope with dying and death because it’s not the end, and grief because we’re not only not alone in it, but also because the promise is that in the end every tear will be wiped away. Reunion with loved ones, a whole new creation, all things made new. There’s an image out there of spirits growing angel wings and going up to the clouds, but the Christian vision is actually heaven and earth coming together in a final, everlasting embrace.

From Sunday worship to funerals, and personal prayer, all of our practices are about pointing us towards this message, this promise. I’ll say more about these specifically later, but they are all centered around this message. This is where our comfort and our strength comes from. You could say our practices are the container that gets the message to us.

What would you like to share for people to get a taste/experience of each of your cultural/spiritual practices to flesh out question 2?  

One of the things about Christian tradition is that it’s endlessly adaptable to local cultures and circumstances. Your First Nations church in Bella Coola will have different rituals around death and dying than, say, a church in rural Zimbabwe, urban England, or St. George’s here in Courtenay. But there are certain practices that almost all Christians hold in common. And they are all, for the most part, communal in some sense.

Again, the message of the God of love who rose from the dead sits at the center of everything we do.

We gather for worship at church every Sunday—the day of the week Jesus was raised—which we call “the Lord’s Day,” and it is a reminder of the resurrection. It infuses hope into every week, every day. Because in day-to-day life it’s easy to forget.

We officially become part of the Christian community through baptism—going and out of the waters like Jesus went in and out of death, which symbolizes our own future being brought from death to life, meaning that our core identity is one that will not be erased by death.

We regularly partake in the Lord’s Supper, or Holy Communion, which in addition to being a reminder of Jesus’ last supper, it’s also a sign or symbol, a foretaste of our eternal future, which the Bible often depicts as a great inclusive banquet.

Myself, Elders in our congregation, and ordinary church people regularly visit the sick, dying and those who are grieving to pray with them and offer comfort. Anointing the sick and dying with oil is an important practice, which reminds the person dying that they belong to the Creator in death as in life.

And finally, there is the Memorial Service or Funeral. Where we gather together to remember and give thanks for that person’s life, to support each other and bear one another’s burdens, but we do it all in the light of the promise that the grave isn’t the end of them. They have had a reputation for being dreary things but they aren’t in our corner of the church, because they are explicitly services of resurrection. You can’t spell “funeral” without “fun.” Again, kidding aside, they exist not primarily for the person who is died, but that their life can become an icon or a sign pointing to the hope for everyone gathered. That we gather to comfort and support one another and grieve, in the words of the apostle not as ones who do not have hope. But we can accepts these things, and take heart in the promise that one day every tear will be wiped away.

I wouldn’t say that I “like” funerals but they are always the most meaningful services. There aren’t a lot of opportunities in our culture to gather and talk about these things, let alone receive some hope. Weddings… meh. I can take them or leave them unless I know the couple well. But funerals—sign me up!

All of our practices, though, in the end, point back to the main message, the story, the promises.

One of my favourite ways of describing it is from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Do we have any LOTR fans in the house? Tolkien was a lifelong Roman Catholic Christian. And, while the LOTR was weaved together from Norse, Old English and Icelandic mythology, the Christian message has its finger prints all over it.

Near the end of the third book, Frodo and Sam have survived everything, and Gandalf, the Wizard appears.

“Gandalf!” Sam said. “I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue? What's happened to the world?"

A great Shadow has departed," said Gandalf, and then he laughed and the sound was like music, or like water in a parched land; and as he listened the thought came to Sam that he had not heard laughter, the pure sound of merriment, for days upon days without count.”

Sam’s words, everything sad becoming untrue. That’s the message, in the end, the great shadow of death will depart, and everything sad will become untrue. That’s the message that lies at the heart of Christianity, and what all our practices are all about. How we deal with death, grief, and dying.