Ruth Bader Ginsberg has died. I've spent the last several months thinking of other deaths that might complicate the election--we have the two oldest candidates in history running, and I don't know what happens if one of them dies before election day. I didn't think about the death of a Supreme Court justice this close to the election and what might happen.
If I had thought about it, I'd have assumed it would be one of the others. Ginsberg seemed indestructible. But of course, none of us is indestructible.
I will feel her absence keenly. I loved how outspoken she was, how fierce. She not only blazed a path for those of us coming behind her, but she took a power saw and hacked all sorts of hazards out of the way.
We're in a time when the path ahead seems overgrown again. Ginsberg's death will remind us that the election of a president has far reaching implications.
There are writers out there who will remember her life more eloquently than I can. There are those who will write about the implications with words more poignant than those I have now. One of those is Pastor Katy Stenta, who writes in this blog post:
"We here on earth are praying that you are hatching a plot with the company of saints, I know you are sitting with God and John Lewis and Chase Boseman.
And while you are plotting we pray that you are hanging your collar in the stars, so we might see, and remember how justice shines in the dark.
Help us in our grief to cry and rage, and then find ourselves in your work we pray."
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