Author: gracesmuggler

Let’s have some wonderment today for the Mantis Shrimp.

Last night, over dinner with some students, the topic of mantis shrimp came up, and there were a lot of fun facts shared at the table. Did you know that mantis shrimp can see a myriad of colors we can’t even comprehend? Did you know that they punch with such velocity that it’s equivalent to if we could just throw a baseball into orbit? Did you know that this punch makes surrounding water boil because it briefly becomes as hot as the sun? What?

What on earth is this wild creature?

This video describes the mantis shrimp as the “Swiss Army Knife of the Marine World.” Very fitting.

The Oatmeal: Why the Mantis Shrimp is My New Favorite Animal

In a commencement address, environmentalist Paul Hawken said,

“Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars came out only once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would create new religions overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead, the stars come out every night, and we watch television.”

— I learned of this quote by reading Mary McKibben Dana’s newsletter, The Blue Room.

Zen Master and teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, says,

Life is filled with suffering, but it is is also filled with many wonders, such as the blue sky, the sunshine, and the eyes of a baby. To suffer is not enough. We must also be in touch with the wonders of life. They are within us and all around us, everywhere, anytime.

This is the very first paragraph in his book, Being Peace.

He continues with these words,

If we are not happy, if we are not peaceful, we can’t share peace and happiness with others, even those we love, those who live under the same roof. If we are peaceful, if we are happy, we can smile and blossom like a flower, and everyone in our family, our entire society, will benefit from our peace. Do we need to make a special effort to enjoy the beauty of the blue sky? Do we have to practice to be able to enjoy it? No, we just enjoy it. Each second, each minute of our lives can be like this.

Do we have to make a special effort to enjoy the blue sky?

Truthfully, yes, sometimes. There are days when it may really be an effort. Perhaps today is a day like that.

We may be struggling with ongoing feelings of sadness and anxiety. We may be grieving. We are certainly grappling with difficulties in the news cycle. This ignites loss, pain, and fears.

Sometimes, it probably does take a special effort — or at least, a special intention — to enjoy the blue sky. Or the sunshine. Or the eyes of a baby.

But we really can choose the intention to enjoy these too.

Thich Nhat Hanh does not teach people to put their heads in the sand. His primary teaching is that love is understanding — that if we want to love others and ourselves, we have to listen and understand one another’s suffering. This is so important.

And alongside that suffering, we can marvel at the joys and the beauty too. “Suffering is not enough,” he says. Joys and beauty can come alongside these pains.

Thich Nhat Hanh says, if we can enjoy and smile at these, we can embody peace — peace that will be made available to the suffering we and others carry.

So today, I put that wonderful intention in the world —
That we might enjoy the sky also.

–Renee Roederer

Over the weekend, I enjoyed the occasion to witness a spontaneous moment of personal sharing and gratitude.

Michigan Nones and Dones met over Zoom, and we celebrated our 6th birthday. As we often say, Michigan Nones and Dones is “a community for people who are spiritually curious and institutionally suspicious.” This community has been meeting for six years to experience care and explore spirituality through a community of friendships in Southeast Michigan. Participants include those who are religiously unaffiliated (the Nones), those who have left established forms of institutional churches (the Dones), and those who remain connected to particular faith traditions but seek new, emerging visions for their expression. After six years, even though those words are in our group title, a lot of those particulars have fallen away, and we’re just a community of people who support each other’s growth and celebrate our connection together.

The spontaneous moment I witnessed involved a round of wishing Michigan Nones and Dones a Happy Birthday as if it was the guest of honor, sitting at a kitchen table. What would we tell it collectively? What gratitudes would we share?

It was so lovely.

And so I pass that along to you today, but with your own communities. If you could imagine that community taking up a seat at your table, how might you wish it well? What a gratitudes would you share?

–Renee Roederer

I’ve watched this live, improvised performance of Jacob Collier and an entire audience in Lisbon several times this weekend. It makes me really happy, and I’d love to share it.

I got to see Jacob Collier perform live in May, and it was the best performance I’ve witnessed. So skilled, so joyful.

Here are my reflections on it:

Mastery and Play
Jacob Collier Concert (Part 2)

A quote from Howard Thurman:

“How do you interpret the events of your life? How do you measure them? Do you live your life on the basis that all that there is to you and what you do is wrapped up in the movement, the isolated, circumscribed movement, pulse beat of your little life? Now, if you do, then you know, you see, that the very nature of life is of such that it is fixed … it is finished, it is complete, and you know you can’t do anything about anything anyway so you don’t try….

Now there is another point of view, and this is the point of view of the prophet. And that is that human life, as well as the lives of nations, takes place within a context that is dynamic. That always when I am in the presence of any event, I am caught in an encounter with a series of potentials that spread out in the widest possible directions and with the most amazing variety of variation. So that if I am alert in the presence of the event, I seek to deal with the event in terms not merely of what it says, what it looks like, but in terms of what seems to me to be the dynamics of the event, the potentials of the event.

“Do you deal with events of your life in that way? Do you believe that life is really dynamic? That it isn’t quite finished yet? That not only are you involved always in a circling series of potentials, but that you are potential. You, potential. And no time band, no time interval is able quite to contain you and the dynamics of your life and your situation. Do you believe that?”

Howard Thurman, “The Message of Isaiah II,” June 22, 1952, in Moral Struggle and the Prophets, ed. Peter Eisenstadt and Walter Earl Fluker (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2020), 156, 157, 158–159.

We gathered on the Zoom screen and sat in silence. I joined the community from my kitchen table. One of the Zoom squares showed people in person as well. They were gathered in the meeting room of the Ann Arbor Friends Meeting.

Worship began, and we were all quiet for at least ten minutes.

Then someone read the queries for the day. We sat quietly as reflection questions washed over us. These were questions about about spiritual practice.

Often Quakers will pray by saying, “We hold this person in the light.” We can also hold ourselves and each other in questions. The light is in the questions. One of my loved ones often says, “If you find yourself feeling stuck, ask a new question.”

If we ask a new question, we open ourselves to possibilities – creative pathways and new angles for relating.

The light is in the questions.

— Renee Roederer

Beware of playing trivia with strangers.

Because once you’ve chosen a goal of having people time every day, but you’re in COVID isolation, you’ll find a Meetup group that’s plays Trivia over Zoom, and you will register. And then you’ll get on a screen with “Ann Arbor Adventurers,” and they’ll all know each other, but you’ll be new. (They’ll also welcome you kindly).

And then, as soon as you get to the very first question, you’ll hear this prompt:

“What kind of document was created in the 1920s by the League of Nations, and every nation today uses it?”

And you’ll think, well… the timing doesn’t seem right, but I’ll go ahead and say,

“Geneva Convention,”

but every single other human on the screen will say,

“Passports!”

And they’ll be right. And you will have said Geneva Convention.

Beware.

Beware.

–Renee Roederer