Steven Schroeder | for Genevieve
in memoriam Genevieve Olsen Miller, 4 May 1919 – 16 February 2023
I'm gonna let my feet go dancing to my very favourite songs,
'Cause I know my time for leaving is bound to come before too long.
And there ain't no way of me knowing how tomorrow's gonna be,
So I just dance the shores of Jordan 'til the angels carry me.
-Iris Dement
There is no way to peace, peace is the way
-A.J. Muste
1
When a reporter asked my friend Genevieve
how she got to be a hundred, she replied
I lived.
[Nothing matters on these high plains
where she lived her whole life.
If you can’t hear it,
you don’t get it.
Do you see what I’m saying?]
2
After a full stop and a deep breath, she went on.
That’s about all I did was live.
I lived a full life,
not an unusual life, just full.
3
The prophet Micah knew
as Laozi knew, as Emma knew
that nothing is less usual than just
living, just living,
just living a full life.
Do justice, love kindness, walk humbly.
4
A circle of friends comes to mind,
broken by the death of one,
two of them walking,
talking about everything
that had happened.
They do not know
the absent one
present in the stranger
who joins their walking
meditation until
they sit
and break bread
together, all of them.
5
I remember every time
we knocked on the door in Dawn
and waited to hear Genevieve
call from the kitchen
as she always did
Come in this house.
And I can hear Stevie Ray singing
if the house is rockin’ don’t bother knockin’
just come on in.
6
And here now we all recall every time
we sat at the table in Genevieve’s kitchen
before the dining room table was set
talking about everything,
feeding our lives,
waiting for every guest to arrive while she
prepared a table for us all, just living.
And when we tried to help clean up,
she said the dishes would wait
and moved with all of us
into the other room, the living room,
full of books, impossible piles of books,
where the conversation (which she always said
she would live again when she washed them) went on,
as we all did, as we all do, here, now, just living.
7
When I recall those impossible piles of books
and the impossible circles of friends
Genevieve drew around her in Dawn,
I hear Leonard Cohen singing
every heart to love will come, but like a refugee.
Yes, like that.
8
I came to know Genevieve as a co-conspirator
in a circle of friends who believed working
for peace meant dwelling on the way
we dwell on the land,
what our dwelling on it means
for the water, what our dwelling
on it means for the air we breathe
together, what our dwelling
on it means for the world,
what we think we are
doing, just living.
And when you think about it,
that’s what the bishop born and raised
just down the road on this same land said
in the modest proposal that caught
the world’s eye for a moment.
He did not tell workers who would be
making a bomb intended to kill
people but spare property
to resign. He asked them to reflect
on what they were doing and consider,
a full stop and a deep breath.
9
Circles of friends have me thinking
about circles in circles and wondering
if that is what Ezekiel was going on about
when he looked and saw
an immense dust storm coming
from the north, an immense cloud
with lightning flashing from it.
Sounds like home.
10
When the same reporter asked
if there was anything
she regretted,
Genevieve did not say yes or no.
She said I would have liked to have danced more.
11
Anyone who knows Genevieve knows
she knew the universe, full of life, is a dance.
And still, full of life, she dances
as we dance, as the universe dances.
A life is full not when it is finished
but in every moment it is lived.
We did with what we had
she said. And so we do when,
after a full stop and a deep breath,
we go on walking the walk together,
dancing the dance.
And now it’s Iris Dement I hear singing,
dancing the shores of Jordan
with Genevieve.
...the rhyme of life confounds me, things will be as things will be.
So I'll just dance the shores of Jordan 'til the angels carry me.
There is no way to peace, peace is the way.
Rest in the power of peace, dear friend, now and forever.
Chicago
28 February 2023
