On the same day here in Minneapolis, Memorial Day 2020, my mother died of Covid infection and George Floyd was killed by police. It took about 6 weeks for me to sufficiently steady the mix of grief inside before I could make the pilgrimage to 38th St and Chicago Ave where Floyd was killed, just a few miles from where I live. Yes, there were banners of outrage and memorial painted across outside walls. Yes, there were flowers heaped at the corner of his death. Yes, the intersection’s core was a growing ad hoc monument to the mattering of Floyd’s life and black lives. But there on the quieter northwest side of the intersection was a garden someone had started, with dirt and mulch and plants of all varieties right along the edge of Chicago Ave, right where the tires of a thousand and one cars have splashed through standing water and where a thousand and one cigarette butts and candy wrappers have in the past been tossed. Into that garden, someone had placed painted rocks, and the rocks spoke of beauty and hope in the midst of grief of multiple varieties.
“Thou takest the pen – and the lines dance. Thou takest the flute – and the notes shimmer.
Thou takest the brush – and the colors sing. So all things have meaning and beauty in that space beyond where Thou art.
How, then, can I hold anything back from Thee.”
— Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings
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