Yes. Yes. Yes.
and f*ck no. f*ck no. f*ck no.
I can hardly write. The words pasted over this morning’s Almanac card slayed me.
never forget you are a breathing accident of chance ample with reverberations of the impossible a bright buoyant moment in the dark indifferent stream of time
Maria Popova
An Almanac of Birds; 100 Divinations for Uncertain Days1
How could this card come up today, the day after a 37-year old poet and mother2 was shot and killed as she tried to drive way from militants threatening her for reasons they did not provide and she could not have guessed to be anything other than threatening? How?
Yes. Yes. Yes. We are breathing accidents of chance.3
Yes. Yes. Yes. Each morning, as we begin put our foot to the cool floor, we enter a day that is ample with reverberations of the impossible.
Yes. Yes. Yes. We are, each one of us - each and every gorgeous confluence of genetics, events, molecules, dreams, ineffability, and ancient story - a bright buoyant moment in the dark indifferent stream of time.
Yes. Yes. Yes. We are made to bask in the rays of love surrounded by those with whom, our self-protective impulses laid down, we dare to share the beauty of our hearts.
Yes. Yes. Yes. We are courageous, strong, and imaginative, and in our very best moments, we blaze with readiness for life.
That’s as far as I got in my handwritten journalling this morning. I had to edit some of it for this post; otherwise, it would have made little sense.
Addendum …
I don’t know any other way to go forward from places like this than to keep going.
I don’t know any other way to gather our courage and remind ourselves that we are everything Popova pasted onto Audubon’s images than to persist in believing she is right and living into that belief.
I don’t know how to live up to those words, the understanding of them that trickled through tears into my journal, than by re-membering our hearts, picking up their broken pieces and being the people we must, frailties, fears, and faults notwithstanding.
I don’t know how to change the world, to make it more loving, more tolerant, safer, stronger in a gentler kind of way than to persist in being all those things in the face of everything that works to, and happily would, undo them.
And, still, even as I type all this, I weep for the man who thought shooting an unarmed citizen was okay. I weep for however he came to hold thought processes that, on instinct, told him to shoot a woman who was no threat to him at all. I weep for the systems that created him and the systems that will protect him. I weep for the brokenness of everyone and everything that led to this tragic outcome, the consequence of a madman’s unpresidential arrogance, ignorance, and goading.
And I weep for the “accidents of chance” and “reverberations of the impossible” that found their nexus in this fateful, horrible moment.
Thank you for bearing with these challenging times in whatever way you are able. For reaching out to someone. For listening when it’s hard. For acknowledging courage when even you’re afraid. For comforting others and yourself. For loving beyond the f*cking limits. For speaking truth to power. For resisting when you can and only when you can. For meeting life, heart on. For weeping when there is nothing else to do.
For me, and I expect for Popova, words like “divination” do not suggest something supernatural; rather, they speak to the extraordinary capacity for poets, artists, and imaginaries to articulate truths we don’t normally run into or calculate in the routines of our day to day. In my opinion, the word “divine” is best understood when spoken as one tosses a hot pink feather boa over one’s shoulder.
This has been edited from the original written when early reporting had identified Renee Good as a mother of three. She is survived by one child.
All words in italics are Maria Popova’s from her American Anhinga card.
I cannot think of any leader of a democratic country who would not have responded empathically even if it had to be written for them.
Thank you for this, Gretta. Your words reflect what has been on my mind since I first heard about this beautiful human’s killing. Moments like this demand more than silence or abstraction. They demand that we name the loss, honor the life, and refuse to look away from the pain that was inflicted.