Downtown Vancouver after the riot has become a place of boarded up windows laden with messages of love, anger, revenge, apologies, and hope of redemption.  A couple who were handing out Tim Bits and smiles in Canuck jerseys offered us pens to get our thoughts out on those burdened walls.  I had so many as I starred at my community's pure emotions:  How far will a public's desire for humiliation of the offenders last? Will the public pulse to 'tag' every guilty soul turn into violence again?  What is a just punishment? How utterly bizarre is crowd behavior, why does civility and morality flee in the face of it? What are we made of anyways?  Has social media fueled this sort of behavior?  If we didn't crave capturing ourselves in "postable moments" would this event have occurred in the first place? Will grace ever rise to the surface for those who committed these acts of violence?  What would that look like?  Why is there a homeless man still here when a community has proven they can repair so much so quickly?

I definitely feel like this event marks us.   It tells us something about the times we live in and the kind of people we are, full of every sort of pain and destructive tenancy and every sort of blessing and generosity.   Its enough to make my mind swirl for a very long time.