Smuggling Grace

Over the next six weeks, I am helping to lead a weekly church service for a congregation that is currently searching for a pastoral leader. It’s lovely to be with them. They are so kind. And I like spending a little time sojourning with people so that I get to know them more closely and we get to journey with each other.

This congregation is currently holding a coat drive. It’s a small effort, though they do a lot in the wider community. Members of the congregation are collecting coats that the church will donate to people who need them.

Every day, we receive painful notifications about fresh horrors and corruption in the world. We live with so much uncertainty. And in the midst of it all, it’s easy to think that our gifts are nearly insignificant.

But they’re not.

These coats will go to people with names. People who need them. People who want them. We may not even know their names in the end. In fact, we probably won’t.

But doesn’t this matter, too?

We have food in our pantries. We walk down the grocery aisle that contains toilet paper. We could pick some up. We are alsoable to pick up the phone and call a friend. These things can seem so small when we offer them to others, whether we’re donating items or giving our time. But they go somewhere. They change things.

There are people with names connecting with people with names. It’s always specific.

So what do you have that you can share?

This congregation nudged me in that direction without them even knowing. I’ll be dropping off some food at the food pantry today.

Sometimes it’s a contagion of giving.

—Renee Roederer

–Photos by Renee Roederer

I learned something new. Thought you might as well. 🙂

I sat at a table surrounded by a variety of delicious scents that could represent both breakfast and lunch. I was there with two of my colleagues as we enjoyed food from a Coney Island-style diner and connected before holding a planning retreat later that day. Very naturally, without any prompting, our conversation moved toward our origin stories — meaning how we came to join our work team and do the work we do.

Of the people around the table, I had been with the organization the longest, so I already knew how all three of us had come to this workplace. But you can tell an accurate story of external events, and it’s still not the full story. The three of us shared what we were thinking internally, what we were processing at the time, the questions we were asking ourselves about our lives, and what we were dreaming about — including what gave us a sense of energy or even a sense of calling.

It was so lovely to share those stories with one another. And even though I work with these people daily and know them very well, I still learned new pieces of their stories, and I shared things they had not heard from me.

It’s interesting that it’s rare to know fully when we are in an origin story.

Maybe some pieces of our lives are moving or changing. Maybe we’re going through a transition. Maybe we’re asking a question we’ve never asked before. Maybe we see a need in the community or in ourselves, and we know there is a gap that needs to be addressed.

Whatever it is, we might be in this kind of experience right now.

All of our daily internal movements are significant. They’re always leading us somewhere.

What if we’re in an origin story right now?

—Renee Roederer

It’s time for my annual Jacob Collier post.

Multi-instrumentalist, creative, and kind musician Jacob Collier is someone I greatly admire. His musical skills amaze me, but in addition — or maybe all the more — I love the ways he brings people together, and I love the values he shares. He just seems very alive, and that inspires my own sense of aliveness.

I try to make sure I see him in concert once a year. There’s no one else I do that for. But over these last few years, one of my very favorite things has been treating people to tickets to come alongside me and experience these concerts, too.

Jacob Collier’s live concerts are unlike any other context I’ve ever been in. They are a masterclass in collective effervescence — that feeling of awe and magic that can come over a crowd of people when they feel like they’re part of something bigger than themselves.

He gets everyone participating in the music and creating it alongside him. He’s highly improvisational and full of energy, and quite simply, there is no Jacob Collier concert without the audience. The people gathered aren’t simply watching the experience. They’re helping create it.

I’ve loved bringing friends alongside me so they can experience this, too. And it makes me think that when we know something special, there’s something touching and meaningful and even intimate about bringing other people to that gift.

Sometimes we have the opportunity to point not only to something or someone we love, but to an experience, and then widen that experience by inviting other people to add themselves to it.

That’s what it’s been like to take my friends to these concerts.

So what about you? What invigorates you? Have you shared your joy with anyone else? Have you invited someone into it?

—Renee Roederer

Forget the title of this video, please. 🙂 When asked, “What’s the most mind blowing thing you can tell me that’s true?” Neil deGrasse Tyson talks about the universe inside us.

A friend recently introduced me to the work of M. Gessen and a powerful essay they wrote titled “To Be, or Not to Be.”

Gessen is a Russian-American journalist and essayist who has lived in both countries. They are married to a woman and have children. When they were living in Russia, Gessen began to feel that their family could be in danger after the passage of anti-LGBTQ legislation. So they moved to the United States, expecting better outcomes, only to find some of the same threats emerging here.

In the essay, Gessen writes about their body and the choices they have made about it. After learning that they carried a genetic mutation associated with a high risk of breast and ovarian cancer, Gessen chose to have a preventive mastectomy and breast reconstruction. Years later, they also had their ovaries removed and began taking estrogen.

But Gessen came to recognize something about those experiences: There had been assumptions embedded in them that they hadn’t necessarily recognized as choices. After a mastectomy, people assumed they would consider reconstruction. After having their ovaries removed, people assumed they would consider estrogen.

What if there were other possibilities?

Gessen eventually stopped taking estrogen and began taking testosterone. In doing so, they began imagining their body and identity differently.

I’ve been thinking about choice points. There are moments in our lives when we have a clear before and after. This might be true in our sense of identity, the place where we live, the direction our lives take, or the relationships we enter. Sometimes a choice point might even involve recognizing that something we assumed was inevitable was actually a choice all along.

I wonder if you have moments that feel like clear choice points for you? Moments with a clear before and after?

What did it feel like to make that choice, and how did it impact you? What have you learned from that experience?

And what supports your imagination when you’re faced with big choice points?

Are there any you’re hoping to take in the future?

—Renee Roederer

I stood before a congregation yesterday and told a personal story from my life. In fact, it’s one that I shared here recently: the story of my skiing accident when I was 25 and how a community came alongside me, rallied, and took care of me on a level that taught me how a community can love a person and care deeply for their body.

In the midst of telling this story, I also talked about the concept of interdependence. Independence is truly a myth. Nearly every single thing we do has other people embedded in the experience, and we are upheld by them.

I shared that when I would come home to eat a bowl of soup later in the day, I could invite myself to be aware that farmers grew the vegetables in my bowl. People picked them. Someone took the container of vegetable broth currently at my house to the store on a truck. Even a simple meal is embedded with contributions from people, and we are upheld within them.

Immediately after that service, I got in my car and jumped on Zoom for a second service. Farm Church, my beloved community in Durham, was having a rainy day, so they were on Zoom, and I wanted to participate in their time together. I listened in the car and occasionally unmuted myself to say hello. Then I took them on errands.

I ended up listening as the community shared stories about identity, belonging, and the choices we make for our lives in the midst of other lives, all while I was doing the most mundane things — walking through grocery store aisles and eventually eating a slice of pizza there..

I found myself thinking that in this day and age, with the easy accessibility of technology, we actually could become more aware than ever that people surround us with their presence, their care, their contributions, and their wisdom nearly all the time, if we will be open to it.

Of course, we also have moments of solitude, as we should. In those moments connect deeply with ourselves, including the parts of who we are, what we care about, what our skills are, and what our needs are. But even then, we are never separated from those relationships.

I’m going to invite myself — and invite all of us — to pay attention more and more to who shows up around our lives, people known and unknown.

–Renee Roederer

–Photos by Renee Roederer

Zoom in on DNA: