Here is some history about why the L comes first in the LGBTQIA+ acronym.
Returned to Ourselves
Father Greg Boyle is a person I really appreciate. He’s the founder and spiritual leader of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles. Homeboy Industries provides jobs, training, tattoo removal, therapy, and a variety of classes for people who are leaving gangs and people who have been recently incarcerated. In the midst of these opportunities, Homeboy Industries has created a large, extended family of kinship — many meaningful relationships over time.
Father Greg was once a guest on Krista Tippett’s On Being. During that interview, he uses a beautiful phrase about the mutuality of relationship. He says that in kinship, we serve as enlightened witnesses, helping each other ‘return to ourselves.’
Toward the beginning of the podcast, he uses some language from Cesar Chavez. Once, a reporter said to Chavez, “These farm workers sure do love you. . .” And to that, he replied, “The feeling’s mutual!”
That line came up again when he discussed this beautiful experience of returning to ourselves. To bring it home, he told a story about one of the homies named Louie and a mutual blessing they shared with some humor. I want to share Greg Boyle’s words below:
“You want to be as spacious as you can be, that you can have room for stuff. And love is all there is, and love is all you are. . .
“Alice Miller, who’s the late, great child psychologist, talked about how we’re all called to be enlightened witnesses — people who, through your kindness, tenderness, and focused, attentive love, return people to themselves. And in the process, you’re returned to yourself.
“Like I have a homie named Louie who just turned 18. And he’s kind of a difficult kid. You know, he’s exasperating, and he’s whiny. And he works for me — although work may be too strong a verb. But homies lately have asked me for blessings, which is odd — it’s like in the last three years — and they always ask me on the street or in my office. And they never say, ‘Father, may I have your blessing?’ They say, ‘Eh, G, give me a bless, yeah?’ And they always say it the same way.
“So this kid Louie, I’m talking to him, and he’s complaining about something. And finally, at the end of it, he says, ‘Eh, G, give me a bless, yeah?’ I said, sure. So he comes around to my side of the desk, and he knows the drill. And he bows his head. I put his hands on my shoulder. Well, his birthday had been two days before, so it gave me an opportunity to say something to him. And I said,
‘You know, Louie, I’m proud to know you.
And my life is richer ’cause you came into it.
And when you were born, the world became a better place,
And I’m proud to call you my son.
Even though — ‘
And I don’t know why I decided to add this part —
‘– at times, you can really be a huge pain in the ass.’
“And he looks up, and he smiles, and he says, ‘The feeling’s mutual!’
And suddenly — kinship so quickly. You’re not sort of this delivery system. But maybe I returned him to himself, but there is no doubt . . . that he’s returned me to myself.”
Friends, I hope you’ve had this kind of experience lately, even if socially distanced.
Or I hope you can recall this kind of experience — of returning and being returned — in a way that fills you right this instant in the present moment.
Suddenly, kinship so quickly.
Every Day is Different
In my job role, every day looks different than the next. I love this, and I feel grateful for it.
I work as the Community Care Director at the Epilepsy of Michigan, and each day, I interact with community groups and community members who call us. I am not an expert about any of the following, nor do I pretend to be, but in this position, I regularly learn knowledge and pull from knowledge about medicine, law, social work, therapy, public policy, education, spiritual care, community organizing, and more.
I love this so much.
–Renee Roederer
Responsible ______
Two phrases popped into my mind. I hadn’t thought about them in a long time, but years ago, I read them in a book and found this to be a helpful framing.
When we think about responsibility, it’s helpful to remember that there is a difference between being responsible for and responsible toward.
Very often, we feel responsible for that which isn’t ours and that which we didn’t cause. We take on other people’s emotional states. We believe it is our responsibility to “fix” others. We believe that if someone is in a difficult mood, it must be our fault. We take responsibility for that which isn’t ours.
We are not responsible for these, but we are responsible for our own actions and emotions. And of course, we also can respond other’s needs with care.
As we think about responding, I think a better framing involves being responsible toward. We have a responsibility to live our values and be our best selves. We send these toward interpersonal needs and collective needs. We will also fail at this. But we can come back to these values continually.
There are many things in the world that need our care and attention. In these, we need collective action too. We are responsible toward them. We didn’t always cause them (caveat, that we’re sometimes complicit collectively) but if we are to live our values and seek to be our best selves in community, we will need to act.
In some types of instances, I hope that we will feel freed from being responsible for, and in others, I hope that we will feel empowered to be responsible toward.
–Renee Roederer
Check-In
My feet sank into the sand on the shore of Lake Michigan. Slowly, I noticed how that felt, and I smiled, enjoying it, additionally taking pleasure in the warmth of the sun on my back and the breeze moving toward my face. “Check in,” I said to myself.
That’s what I’ve been saying to myself lately. There are so many ways that we “check out.” We get stuck in our heads, ruminating over thoughts. We distract ourselves, picking up our phones a zillion times per day. We think about work when we’re not working. We project fears about future stressors that aren’t even happening right now (and likely, won’t happen at all). We easily check out.
It can feel so good to check in.
It feels freeing and enlivening to connect with our bodies, our surroundings, nature, the sounds of birds or children laughing, and the presence of our relationships.
Check in — yes.
–Renee Roederer
In Parallel
This blurry image above is a cruise ship on the Atlantic Ocean at night time. It’s a laughably terrible photo. But it has a nice thought attached.
I recently took a cruise myself, and when I snapped this image, I was on the top deck of my own ship. We were sailing overnight to our next port of entry, and as I looked toward the expanse of the ocean, not too far from us, there was another cruise ship traveling with us in parallel. Though the photo is humorously abysmal, I could see this ship very clearly.
I stood there for a while and watched it, wondering who might be on that ship. Though I couldn’t make out individual people, I knew that thousands of people were there, an international bunch, and some were in the pool, some were in their beds, some were eating dinner, and some were at shows and activities.
Then, I thought, “Oh, and there are probably a few standing on the top of the deck, watching my ship in the distance, thinking about the very same things about us.” I enjoyed knowing this was true, even though I couldn’t see the people in my same position.
I thought about how many times a day in every day life, we think about people we love, and they think about us. We rarely know exactly when and how this happens, but it’s certainly true. There are people in parallel with our own lives — from afar, or just living their own day nearby, thinking of us fondly, enjoying us, remembering us, wondering about us, hoping for us, cheering us on, and desiring goodness for us.
–Renee Roederer
Honoring Their Lives
From The New York Times daily newsletter:
Alexandria Aniyah Rubio, 10: Alexandria, who went by Lexi, played softball and basketball and wanted to be a lawyer when she grew up. Her parents saw her make the honor roll with straight A’s and receive a good-citizen award at her school on the day she was killed.
Amerie Jo Garza, 10: Amerie was “a jokester, always smiling,” her father said. She liked playing with Play-Doh and spending time with friends during recess. “She was very social,” he said. “She talked to everybody.”
Tess Marie Mata, 10: Tess liked TikTok dance videos, Ariana Grande and getting her hair curled, The Washington Post reported. And she loved José Altuve, the diminutive Houston Astros star whose position she emulated. She was saving money for a family trip to Disney World once her older sister, Faith, graduated from college next year.
Jose Flores: “My little Josesito,” his grandfather called him. He was an energetic baseball and video-game enthusiast. In a photo his grandfather keeps in his wallet, Jose has a beaming smile and wore a T-shirt reading, “Tough guys wear pink.”
Miranda Mathis, 11: Miranda “was very loving and very talkative,” the mother of a close friend told The Austin American-Statesman. Miranda would often ask the mother to do her hair like her friend’s.
Maite Rodriguez, 10: Maite dreamed of attending Texas A&M University to become a marine biologist, a cousin wrote on Facebook: “She was her mom’s best friend.”
Makenna Lee Elrod, 10: Makenna liked to sing and dance, play with fidget toys and practice softball and gymnastics, an aunt told ABC News. She also loved animals, and hiding notes for her family to find. She recently gave her friend Chloe a friendship bracelet.
Xavier Lopez, 10: An exuberant baseball and soccer player, Xavier also chatted on the phone with his girlfriend and made the honor roll. “He was funny, never serious,” his mother, Felicha Martinez, told The Washington Post. “That smile I will never forget. It would always cheer anyone up.”
Eliana Garcia, 9: The second-eldest of five girls, Ellie helped around the house, reminding her grandparents to take their pills, helping mow the lawn and babysitting her younger sisters, her grandfather told The Los Angeles Times. She loved “Encanto,” dancing for TikTok videos, cheerleading and basketball.
Layla Salazar, 10: Layla also liked dancing to TikTok videos, and she won six races at the school’s field day, her father told The Associated Press. She and her dad would sing every morning on their drive to school.
Eliahana Cruz Torres, 10: Eliahana played softball and particularly looked forward to wearing her green and gray uniform, along with eye black grease. The final game of the season was scheduled for Tuesday, and she was hoping to make the Uvalde All-Star team.
Alithia Ramirez, 10: Alithia loved to draw. She wanted to become an artist, her father told a San Antonio TV station. After a car struck and killed her best friend last year, Alithia sent his parents a drawing of him sketching her portrait in heaven and her sketching his portrait on earth.
Jackie Cazares and Annabelle Rodriguez were cousins in the same class. Jackie was the social one. “She always had to be the center of attention,” her aunt said. “She was my little diva.” Annabelle was quieter. But the girls were close — so close that Annabelle’s twin sister, who was home-schooled, “was always jealous.”
Jailah Silguero, 10: Jailah was the youngest of four children, the “baby” of the family, her father said. Her mother told Univision that Jailah liked to dance and film videos on TikTok.
Jayce Luevanos, 10: Jayce, Jailah’s cousin, would brew a pot of coffee for his grandparents every morning, his grandfather told USA Today. Friends would come over to his house, a block from the school, to play in the yard. He enjoyed making people laugh, another relative told The Daily Beast.
Uziyah Garcia, 9: Uziyah enjoyed video games and football. His grandfather told The Los Angeles Times that Uziyah “was the type of kid [who] could get interested in anything in five minutes. Just the perfect kid, as far as I’m concerned.”
Nevaeh Bravo, 10: “She’s flying with the angels now,” a cousin wrote on Twitter.
Rojelio Torres, 10, was “intelligent, hard-working and helpful,” his aunt told a San Antonio television station.
Eva Mireles, 44: “She loved those children,” a neighbor said. Mireles had worked for the school district for about 17 years. She enjoyed running and hiking. “She was just very adventurous and courageous and vivacious and could light up a room,” a relative told ABC News.
Irma Garcia, 46: Garcia spent 23 years at Robb Elementary, five of them as Mireles’s co-teacher. She liked to sing along to classic rock tunes and help her nephew, a college student, with his homework. Garcia was known as a steadfast optimist. She enjoyed barbecuing with her husband of 24 years, Joe; he died yesterday, of a heart attack.
This Week in Nature
If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you know that I sometimes like to post glimpses of nature that I find in my home state. Today, however, I’m changing it up. I recently arrived home from a week in the Bahamas. It was a gorgeous experience, and I thought I would share a bit of the journey.
Strange and Surreal
It’s strange and surreal to get news on a delay. I’ve been away for a week without internet access.
It’s devastating to learn about Uvalde. This morning, I’m thinking about people in Texas as well as everyone feeling this pain, loss, and anger.
–Renee Roederer
Smuggling Grace 