A Tribute to My Uncle, Dave Lagore
I am currently in a season of grief and loss, taking the needed time to mourn the loss of my uncle Dave, who passed away June 24, 2024. It is hard for me to fathom that he is gone. Every moment, I expect another text or encouraging phone call from him, because he continued to do so up until he was incapacitated by a series of strokes over the past few months of his life. Yet, he still managed to call me one more time on the eve of his birthday, March 5, telling me how much he loved me and appreciated me. I could tell that he was close to the end. It strikes me that when Jacob died, the Egyptians mourned for him for seventy days (Genesis 50:4), which is so contrary to our current culture - we don’t know how to stop for grief so we medicate it.
Grieving
Through Gratitude
One
healthy way to grieve the loss of someone is to offer a tribute to their life
and to practice gratitude. Healthy grieving includes gratitude for the gifts our
departed loved one has given us. On July 11, I was given one of the greatest
honors of my life. I was asked by Dave’s immediate family and church to
officiate his celebration of life service in Anaheim, California, and to offer a
tribute. In his Examen Practice, Ignatius
of Loyola, (d. 1556) encourages us to look back over our days, weeks, months,
years, even our whole life at times, and gratefully see the way God has loved us.
For me, the life of Uncle Dave loomed large for me as a significant way that God has loved me. Dave was that adult for me, that significant adult in my life
other than my parents who saw me and influenced me towards good. Dave
was hands down my favourite adult growing up, and for good reason. He was
funny, energetic, and generous to a fault. I always looked forward to our
visits, along with Auntie Eileen, and my cousins Rob, Debbie and Kenny (Joshua
would join the family later). He always seemed to have a treat for me in his
pocket, like Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit gum. He had a great knack for relating to
children and youth. He had an energy and charisma about him that always made me
feel like the world was a lot better than it was before he arrived. He was the life of the party at our epic Lagore
family reunions at 11610-84th Street in Edmonton, the home of my
paternal grandparents where sometimes 4 or even 5 large families would cram
into that little house at one time. My cousins and I all look at that little house
today and wonder how in the world we all fit! Dave would tell stories and jokes
– multigenerational jokes like “the preacher’s horse,” and all of us kids would
laugh as hard as the adults, and he would laugh along with the rest us!
That Unforgettable Laugh... and Grief
I still remember his laugh, oh, he would laugh! Decades later, when I suffered a total psychotic breakdown at the age of 30, convinced I was falling into hell, he called me from his vacation in Hawaii and asked what was happening. I told him that I believed I had committed the unpardonable sin, and he burst out laughing. Now, laughing when someone is in pain may seem insensitive, and usually it is, but in this case, his laughter was exactly what I needed. He wasn’t laughing at me, nor with me (for I was not laughing!). No, he was laughing for me. Even though I was still to have a long period of recovery ahead of me, that laugh felt like an anchor for my soul that exposed the absurdity of the lie, and gave me the assurance I needed that my story was not yet finished. Indeed, laughter characterized much of the 10 wonderful years of pastoral ministry that I enjoyed together as a Youth and Associate Pastor alongside Dave at Calgary Christian Centre.
Dave
also knew how to grieve. I remember when his father, my grandpa, died of heart
failure in 1978, and I accompanied him on the plane to Edmonton from Calgary. Of
course I was grieving too, but he wept all the way there. He modelled a faith
for me that made room for suffering and even doubt. One time he confided to me
in exasperation, “Gordie, I just don’t understand God!” Of course, none of us do,
but this was frustration that he was expressing at the deepest level over continual
ministry reversals, doors that had been shut, people who had moved away, and the
constant ailments that he had suffered, even though God had used him
powerfully to heal the sick. He had great faith, but he was always so real.
“You
Can’t Walk”
Dave
embodied a blend of the “already, but not yet,” now a familiar term and
framework for the reign of God in this messy world. In a previous post, I wrote
how that Dave was born with club feet and could not walk as a child without
severe pain. The prognosis was that he
would spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair by the time he was 20.
However, his dad, my grandpa, took him to every healing meeting imaginable on
the Canadian prairies including an Oral Roberts tent revival. When Oral Roberts
laid his hands on Dave, Dave felt the power of God course through his whole
being. Dave testified that it changed his life forever, but he still wasn’t
healed. Then one day, Dave’s older brother, George, (my father), took Dave to a
healing meeting led by a healing evangelist, Fern Olson, a guest at Central
Pentecostal Church in Edmonton. She laid hands on Dave and told him to run.
Dave ran around the very large auditorium repeatedly. After that, Dave
continued to run, walk, ski, skate… you name it for the rest of his life
without pain. He became an elite and very competitive athlete. He was a star
quarterback for an Edmonton high school football team.
But
that isn’t the end of the story. Just over a decade ago, Dave had to get an
X-ray for calcium deposits on his feet. The doctor took a look at the X-rays
and immediately asked for another X-ray. He looked again, and called Dave into
his office. He said to him, “You have no tendons attached to your toes, and
with the bone structure of your feet, it is physically impossible for you to
walk.” From then on, the doctor and Dave shared this ongoing joke every time
Dave visited him, saying, “Oh, you’re the guy who can’t walk!” For all those
years, Dave had been walking, running, working, playing, even dancing (ok, the
“Pentecostal hop!”), with no tendons to his toes. He was literally a “walking
miracle.” The compassion and healing he had received gave him faith to pass
that same compassion and healing on to so many others. Yet, throughout his
life, he continued to suffer chronic ailments, but he did not let that stop
him. He was a wounded healer.
The
Gift of Generosity
Dave
embodied the goodness and generosity of God for me. One time, I was in my office on the phone having an
argument with my wife, Kathleen, about some very “expensive” new sheer
drapes she wanted to buy for our new home. Dave was eavesdropping and bellowed
out, “Oh Gordie, just get her the drapes!” So, we bought the drapes, but I
never remember paying for them, and I think I know who did! Dave wasn’t just
generous with money. I remember him confiding in me that one of the stalwart
members of our church was also a staunch supporter of the Federal Liberal Party.
Now, you have to know that back in the
1980’s in Alberta, during the National Energy Program of Pierre Elliott
Trudeau, many of us believed you couldn’t be a Christian and vote liberal! Yet,
Dave included him in our church without question, and even put his wife in
charge of prayer ministry, and I wondered how he could do that. What if she
prayed for the wrong party to win?
Err
to the side of Mercy
Probably
what stood out to me most was Dave’s generosity of compassion. In this regard, he
was way ahead of his time. One time, we had a transgendered woman come into our
congregation at Calgary Christian Centre. Now, remember this was the 1980’s, forty years ago, in a
conservative church in a conservative province. I will be forever grateful for
the way Dave engaged me in navigating the pastoral nuances and dilemmas in such
a context and time. I saw him wrestle
with the tensions of needing boundaries and definitions, yet finding
accommodation and compromises for the sake of love, and he invited me into that
journey to love this person. What
washrooms should she use? If she uses the women’s washroom, how will this make
the other women in our church feel? How
will she feel if she can’t? We found workable solutions, but it wasn’t
easy. He simply taught me to love people in the messiness of life with many
questions left unanswered. Through that season, Dave would often repeat a
phrase that has been deeply etched in my heart, “Gordie, always err to the side
of mercy.” That statement has shaped my pastoral ministry. Yes, mercy will be shown to
those who show mercy, and mercy triumphs over judgment. I saw Dave practice
this over and over again. He loved crowds, and we sometimes had some big ones, but
his greatest impact on me was how he was with “the ones and the twos”; for
example, this transgendered woman, plus countless others including a man dying of
AIDS, rejected ones, abandoned ones, and broken-hearted ones. He saw people,
and like the One he and I endeavored to follow, he was moved with compassion. He was a wounded healer.
The
Greatest Gift
As
mentioned in my previous blog, Dave gave me the gift of faith and was so
generous in giving me lots of freedom to spread my wings and grow, but never to
the place where I felt alone. He could offer a well-timed
rebuke, but it was always from a place of believing in me with eyes that saw
who God could be in and through me. Perhaps the greatest generosity he showed
me was when, after a decade of ministry together in Calgary, I felt God calling
me and my family to leave Calgary and move to Vancouver and literally start all
over again. I felt this was a calling from God, but it was still hard. Dave
represented God so much to me that I felt I was a disappointment to him in
leaving him in Calgary, and therefore letting God down! Yet, Dave let me go
with such generosity, even though I knew it was hard for him to do so. In the
years following, he never stopped believing in me and encouraging me, even
though we joined a very different style and culture of churches
than the ones he was familiar with. He invited me several times to preach at his church in
southern California. People would tell me ahead of time how much he had been
bragging about me. He never stopped pastoring me all through the thirty plus
years after Calgary, and I’ll never forget his last phone call, the day before
his birthday of this year just before he passed. It is a memory I will always
cherish.
Just
Show Up
In
a previous blog, We Have Promises to Keep, I wrote how that Dave taught me to show up, even if it’s for
the ones and the twos. Dave modelled this for me over and over again. He just
showed up. Reinhold Niebuhr, author of the Serenity Prayer wrote, “Nothing
that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore, we must be
saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense
in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith.
Nothing we do, however virtuous can be accomplished alone; therefore, we must
be saved by love…” Out of the burning bush, God is revealed to Moses as
multi-generational – the “God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” Thomas Cahill wrote
in his classic, “The Gifts of the Jews,” that this multi-generational dimension
of our faith is one of the greatest insights gleaned from the Jewish story. For
my family, this began in the form of a mysterious vow made to God by my grandfather,
Peter Lagore, who, still scarred from the ravages of World War One, was sensing
the call to ministry but circumstances in his life prevented him from doing so.
But he made a vow to God that instead, he would dedicate all five of his sons
to Christian ministry. Dave was the
fourth of five sons, (my dad was the second). There was also Arthur (oldest son
and missionary to South Africa), William, third son, an evangelist and pastor
(retired), and the youngest son, Stan, pastor in Edmonton (retired). Arthur,
George and Dave are gone now. As I stood together last week with many of my
cousins including Dave’s children at Dave’s celebration of life service, I felt
a sobering mandate on all of us to, in our own unique callings and vocations, just
continue to “show up” for those who are following behind. We are “dwarves on
the shoulders of giants,” continuing to live the story so faithfully entered by
our grandparents and parents.
Thank
you, Uncle Dave. You have been such a gift to me. I will miss you, but I know
God better because of your life and legacy. You loved well. You finished well. You
ran your race. Rest well in the arms of Jesus. Amen.
Gordie
Lagore
July
18, 2024
