The Authenic Power of Love: An Olympic Remembrance
I’m reminded of a moment, felt deep in my cells, of how the presence of a particular human being exuded this essence, as expressed by spiritual teacher Gary Zukav: “authentic power based on love.” I was sitting with my friend Anna Griffin (who later famously became “Anna Griffin”) in Centennial Olympic Stadium; the warm July night filled with excitement, anticipation, even wonder. Just that morning we’d treated ourselves (a spontaneous decision encouraged by our generous-spirited mothers, as I recall) to six-hundred-dollar tickets for the Opening Ceremonies of the 1996 Olympic games in Atlanta — our city, a city where we both had created unique, woman-centric businesses and in which we had a great deal of pride. I remember that we “dressed up,” caught the brand-new Marta train (finished just in time for the start of the games), and giddy with expectation (not a word I’d usually use about myself but we were giddy!), Anna and I walked the festive corridor to the new stadium (another miraculous completion.) Along the way we were given long stems of fresh sunflowers and, upon entering the stadium, a packet of instructions and mini flashlights to use during what would soon become a shimmering, otherworldly extravaganza.
Four years earlier, the joyful wizardry of Peter Minshall, Carnival-inspired Trinidad artist, dazzled the world during the opening ceremonies at the Barcelona Olympics. Now Peter was bringing his visual magic and mythological storytelling to Atlanta to celebrate the centennial of the modern Olympic games in the heart of the American South. (I got to meet Peter upon his arrival in Atlanta months before when he gave a keynote address, charming the costume symposium audience with stories of his boyhood love of “masquerade” — and the freedom and wild abandon he felt when dressing up in the costumes and masks of Carnival in Trinidad!)
Celebrating Southern culture during the extravaganza of Atlanta’s opening ceremonies, I remember blues-playing puppets on stilts, gospel choirs, a parade of gleaming silver Chevy pickup trucks, dancing children dressed like space-age moonbeams, and giant ethereal-winged fireflies lighting the summer night. Somewhere in all of this enchantingly unrelenting spectacle of costumed pageantry, Anna and I looked at each other and, again incongruously for me, squealed! (Just to note, I didn’t squeal thirty-one years earlier as a teenager in the thrill of seeing the Beatles perform at the then new Atlanta Braves stadium just across the way from where we were sitting.)
However, it was the moment in the finale of the evening, after the far-traveled Olympic torch was brought into the stadium and handed off for its final lap that brings back the most poignant memory. (Anna and I were delighted that “a girl” was doing the honors!) As we watched gold-medal Olympian Janet Evans run up the steps with the torch toward the Olympic cauldron — I don’t remember if I heard his name or saw his image first, perhaps simultaneously with the rest of the world — but when Muhammad Ali stepped into view, high at the rim of the stadium to meet Janet, light his torch then light the huge cauldron above them, I heard a gasp and burst into tears. It was as though all of us in the stadium caught our collective breath — “you could hear the loudest hush in human history,” as attendee President Bill Clinton said later — then a crescendo of cheers. I recall the look on Anna’s face — perhaps mirroring my own — whatever pure joy, wonder and the presence of love looks like!
It was a defining moment in that moment as well in reflection. A moment seen and felt by millions around the world. A once strong, virile championship athlete — a once lightening rod for controversy, a Black man who went against the system, who redefined Black manhood — now a messenger of love, trembling with Parkinson’s disease yet raising the lighted torch high in the air with a noble grace, with courage of a different sort on display, to a roar of, because of how it felt in my body, what could only be deep affection and appreciation. It felt like love vibrating the world center. And he was giving it back to us as only a man with such a capacious heart can do. (It was said later that Ali was caught by surprise with the ovation and outpouring of love; being out of the public eye for a long time, few had seen him in his unwell condition, and he had even hesitated to participate.) The moment was like a healing balm for the world, a universal acceptance. As we celebrated this compelling, complicated human being, we were celebrating all of humanity.
Norman Mailer had called Ali “the very spirit of the twentieth century.” And here he was, slowed and silenced by a crippling disease, yet “standing for something — courage, generosity and graciousness” — and inspiring us to do the same, as Ken Burns later shared in his documentary for PBS in 2021. Ali was holding the torch for all of us, lighting the way in a dark world. Although my friend Anna and I knew we were part of something extraordinary that night in Atlanta in 1996, I know now (thanks to Gary Zukav for putting it into words for me from his book, Universal Human) we were witness to the “new use of courage” with its authentic power of someone simply being love. ~
