Timeless | Elena Markova | Giclee on Fine Art Paper | 2018
Cosmos, by Krystyna Dabrowska (translated by Karen Kovacik) Until recently the universe was expanding with new suns, nebulas, constellations, vibrating waves, the breath of galaxies. Now it’s contracting to satellite images depicting Earth: not even the whole planet, just one country, not even each region, just one city, a single street, gray pavement. On it are strewn “dark objects of similar size to human bodies,” writes the New York Times. Not buried for weeks, their grave the satellite’s synthetic eye and the black holes of our pupils, surrounded by life.
My friend calls them “the Grief Ninjas.” I think it’s the perfect description.
She’s talking about those moments when you’re in the middle of a run-of-the-mill day or routine task, and all of the sudden, seemingly out of nowhere, feelings of grief come on very strongly. A wave of grief quickly emerges and interrupts whatever you’re doing.
Of course, the Grief Ninjas can also dance around with Love because that’s often how grief works. Grief is love that longs. Grief is love that misses or prepares itself for missing.
As Jamie Anderson says,
“Grief, I’ve learned is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.”
Those Grief Ninjas show up whenever they will. So will Love.
I love this quote from Elizabeth Barrett Browning:
“Earth’s crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God, But only he who sees takes off his shoes; The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.”
A treasured loved one introduced me to this quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer:
“If you board the wrong train, there’s no sense running along the corridor in the other direction.”
Sometimes, we need to get off of the train. It’s okay to change our minds. We can take in new information and act on it. It can be remarkably wise and courageous to step off and move in another direction.
We’ll never get to the destination we desire if we just keep running along the corridor in the other direction.
Not from the Olympics you’d think about most readily, of course. But from… the Choir Olympics!
I suppose it seems funny that there is such a thing — a Choir Olympics. I picture choristers trying to sing while jumping hurdles. But in actuality, this was an incredible event with 350 choirs from around the world that competed in different styles of music on a world stage.
In 2004, in ways that shocked us — we weren’t expecting this at all — my collegiate choir won the Choir Olympics in in multiple categories in Bremen, Germany. Each time, we were called to the front of a stage in a large auditorium, and we watched the flag rise with the national anthem.
This is one of the best, most surprising, and most adventurous memories of my life.
Food on a red lunch tray with silverware, mashed potatoes, bread, a milk carton, mixed veggies, and a cookie. Public domain image.
When I was seven years old, I was sitting at a lunchroom table in the Cafegymatorium. Our lunchroom tables were the kinds that people could pull down from out of the walls. At my elementary school, this room truly was a cafeteria, gym, and auditorium space all at once.
Each day, that table was pulled down from the wall, and we would sit there patiently. (Were we patient though?) until it was our turn. Then our 1st grade glass would be dismissed to line up where we would approach the lunch ladies. Once we reached the window where food was distributed, we would step bit by bit sideways, going down the line and receiving the various prepared food items onto our tray.
One day, I was sitting at that table, having already received my food along with most of my class, when one of our classmates arrived, sat down, and announced to all of us,
“I told them I didn’t want the green beans, and they didn’t give them to me.”
Wait, what?
“You told them you didn’t want them?”
I remember that we were astonished at this. First of all, the thought had never crossed my mind, and if it had, I would have assumed that we could get in trouble for this. But most of all, we were flabbergasted because we realized we could say No.
No — We could do that! That was a thing that could happen! We did not see this coming.
Over the next month or so, we relished in telling the lunch ladies that we didn’t want some odd item. And most of the time, they left an empty spot on the tray where it would have gone. This typically involved side dishes of various kinds. There was no way, for instance, that we were going to refuse eating one of those square pieces of elementary school pizza.
We found tiny ways to rebel and assert autonomy for its own sake.
Saying No is important. And we can learn it anew any time.
Smuggling Grace 