It has been a dry August and September here in the St. Louis area, the remnants of the hurricanes adding to the humidity but the rain passing to the south and east of us. As I worked in my yard this evening, I could see the edges of the Hosta and patches in the lawn turning brown, along with the spent limelight hydrangea blossoms. The yard looks tired and parched, a drastic change from this spring when the entire landscape was a lush emerald green. We were blessed to have a wet summer up until August, but the last four weeks I have been watering bushes, plants and trees leaving my lawn to go dormant.
As I worked in my yard, I thought about the stress in our country and the loss of Justice Ginsburg. A friend had posted on Facebook Maya Angelou’s poem, “When Great Trees Fall” and I thought of the stanza “Great souls die and our reality, bound to them, takes leave of us. Our souls dependent upon their nurture, now shrink, wizened.” In a time when truth and integrity seem so lost, the falling of this tree or soul was especially hard, and we felt it collectively because of what the life of Justice Ginsburg represented. Her life is about the power of an individual to perservere against great odds with integrity and in doing so, change the world. But she also represented something else so dear exemplified in her and Justice Scalia’s friendship. Their ability to argue the law in a court where the outcome is not predetermined, but based in the end on the merit of the argument. Their friendship shows us, that diverse perspectives when respected and balanced, move our society forward. It represents our ability to see celebrate our differences, to put ourselves in other people’s shoes, while staying tethered to a greater truth – our constitution and rule of law and the importance of rituals. Something lost in the current battle over stacking the court in order to dictate the outcome before the arguments by the justices even begin.
As I watched the private service of Justice Ginsburg and listened to the Rabbi’s haunting voice singing a chant in Hebrew, I felt the ancient call to God and the need to be enfolded in ritual. In a time when we are fighting over an underlying narrative for the country, we have become ungrounded from a shared reality and the importance of our rituals, norms and processes. And this is even harder in a time when nothing is normal in our daily lives due to the coronavirus and constant climate disasters.
But as I thought further, I realized that in this week as a nation we are seeing more clearly. Our first priority must be our constitution and our norms which have become distorted. As Vice President Biden said Americans when told the truth, have always risen to the occasion. The birth of our nation was not easy, and neither was the Civil War, Great Depression, World War II, Watergate and other crises, but we are at a precipice of making a great change to more closely realize the dream of those who came before us. People like us who were imperfect but saw a vision greater than themselves and worked together. They lived in a time when their mistakes were not amplified millions of times or their words taken out of context in soundbites. They took their time and chose their words carefully with purpose, reimaging a new narrative for our country building on the vision written in the Declaration of Independence.
As a county we need a leader who will bring us together imaging our country based on our aspirations, reality and ideals. We can honor and celebrate the genius and ideas of our founding fathers while recognizing the limitations of their society, and the fact they were imperfect like us. And we can recognize the contributions of those Americans who have been minimized and subjugated for so long. Much of what we believe as Americans is based on myth. But myths and stories are important because they can bind us together in common purpose, but they must be true to those ideals that are good and honorable. So often, these stories and visions were spoken in great speeches by our presidents and other leaders. At other times through general impressions left on us in common culture. But in this critical time, we must not allow lies, false narratives, and conspiracy theories distract us from what is good and true. Let us follow the example of those like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and all those who came before, although flawed, knew what was good and true and aspired to be better.
“Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.” Maya Angelou
