Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died yesterday. This feels devastating to me. She was dignified, feisty and graciously ferocious in her lifelong pursuit of equality for all. She was a tiny human who left a giant legacy. We have absorbed so much loss this year. Everything is different and changing and it feels like every step is risky because the ground keeps shifting. Things you could once count on are vaporous. It’s not even the lifestyle changes of Covid because those changes, while traumatic, feel more temporary. Temporary, at least, for those of us who have not lost a loved one. I feel like there are deeper changes that are causing fear for me. I feel aching grief for disappearing civility and decency, for the willingness to sacrifice humanity for expediency, the rampant disregard of common sense and the overall absence of principles and integrity in positions of power. Perhaps none of this is new but only recently revealed in ways that leave me feeling shaken and raw. And so to lose people like RBG and John Lewis, icons who stood on their principles with quiet dignity and integrity, who fought for the underdog with an unwavering vision of righteous fairness, it seems too much. Too much in a world driven by greed, power grabbers and sycophants who shop their integrity around for the highest bid. I went to bed last night feeling bereft, like the world had lost a stronghold and a champion. This morning I am thinking of that story of the man walking the beach, who questioned a young man picking up starfish and throwing them back into the ocean asking him if he thought he could possibly make a difference when there were miles of beach and thousands of starfish. That story comes to mind because it is in my nature to feel deeply the seemingly hopelessness of the task but to also feel a responsibility to do something, no matter the odds. The quote, “The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion,” also rings in my ears. So I will continue to pick up respect and decency, truth telling and fairness, optimism and laughter, a little bit of righteous fury, justice and humanity, kindness and grace, and I will fling them with all my might into the ocean of my brothers and sisters hoping to make a difference to someone. In the light of the morning I know there are many others with sandy feet tossing starfish and fighting for hope. Perhaps the ripples we create in our attempts will meet and swell into a current for good.
Something to Shay 