This week, we lost a living legend in the notorious Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She was a fascinating, brilliant, and passionate defender of human rights, justice, and civility; the subject of a recent Oscar-nominated documentary (“RBG,” 2018); and even a fashion icon. When a Jewish person dies, it is traditional to say, “may their memory be a blessing,” rather than “may they rest in peace.” I hope that the memory of Justice Ginsburg is a blessing, and that her legacy continues to inspire generations to come. I feel overwhelmed in the wake of her death at 87 to metastatic pancreatic cancer, the same disease that killed my pastor three years ago, but I wanted to share this prayer, written by the Rev. Katy Stenta of New Covenant Presbyterian Church in Albany, New York, and shared with permission. I love her image of Ginsburg’s infamous “dissent collar” being hung in the stars so that it can be a reminder that justice shines in dark times.
God, how is it that I can have a relationship with someone I’ve never met?
Sometimes, I don’t even know the fullness of someone’s personality till after they die, and yet I feel their loss.
I’ve lost a piece of myself today. So I’m crying out to you, God.
A woman who worked hard, a woman who wouldn’t take no for an answer, a woman who had the imagination to see the world as a better and healthier place.
And because those things are what I want, too, I lost a piece of myself today.
You know what I mean, God!
Her notoriety was paved with refusals: refusals to back down to the dean of Harvard law, her refusals to let cancer have its way first with her husband, then with her career, and finally with her life.
Her dissent was for justice for all and sparkled whenever it was brought into the light.
She said no, when life told her to quit, over and over again. She was steadfast.
She was a fighter, small in stature and long in memory.
Lord, it is said a person who dies on Rosh Hashanah is tzaddik- a person of great righteousness; that they die at the last possible moment of the year because they are so needed.
Lord, you know we all needed a notorious and righteous RBG in our lives.
Lighting the way for all those who are striving to be notorious.
May that righteousness, that piece I feel like I’ve lost, actually remain like a lit fire in my belly.
Well done, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, good and faithful servant.
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 Chadwick 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.
Lord hear our prayer.
Amen.