Author: gracesmuggler

In his lovely book, Being Peace, Buddhist Monk Thich Nhat Hahn says this,

“Interbeing: If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So we can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are. ‘Interbeing’ is a word that is not in the dictionary yet, but if we combine the prefix ‘inter–‘ with the verb ‘to be,’ we have a new verb, inter-be.

“If we look into this sheet of paper even more deeply, we can see the sunshine in it. If the sunshine is not there, the forest cannot grow. In fact, nothing can grow. Even we cannot grow without sunshine. And so, we know that the sunshine is also in this sheet of paper. The paper and the sunshine inter-are. And if we continue to look, we can see the logger who cut the tree and brought it it to the mill to be transformed into paper. And we see the wheat. We know the logger cannot exist without his daily bread, and therefore the wheat that became his bread is also in this sheet of paper. And the logger’s father and mother are in it too. When we look in this way, we see that without all these things, this sheet of paper cannot exist.”

“Independence is a myth,” I said yesterday over the phone. I shared this to encourage someone who felt pressure to stand alone and keep their needs quiet and totally out of view.

Afraid that we will be — cultural shudder — a burden, we have been taught to believe that we are all solitary units and that there is high value in needing as little as possible. Some have been socialized to take up as little space as possible. Some have been socialized to wear a mask of invulnerability and show strength only, carrying an internalized message that it is acceptable to provide for others but completely unacceptable to receive care from others.

“Independence is a myth,” I said. “If we think about it, we all depend upon each other. Every single one of us has needs that are unique to who we are and how we move in the world. And every single one of us has gifts and strengths unique to who we are that allow us to care and provide for others.”

Then looking at my meal on my desk and remembering Thich Nhat Hanh, I added, “I have a bowl of pasta in front of me. If I slow down and think just about this one meal which is sustaining me today, how many people have been involved in bringing this bowl of pasta to me? People grew the wheat. People grew the zucchini, bell peppers, and onions, and likely in different places. How much sunshine, water, and soil participated in growing all of these? How many farmers participated in bringing this to me, and in how many locations? How many workers harvested these foods? Who canned the tomato sauce? Who drove the elements of this food to distribution centers? Who displayed these vegetables in the grocery store?  How did my own coworkers provide funding for me to purchase these items?”

Even a bowl of pasta reveals that independence is a myth.

Interdependence is a reality. It is also our greatest possibility to grow and distribute care so no one is standing solitary, isolated, and without what they deserve to need.

—Renee Roederer

Today, I’d like to share a quote and an image from @the_open_space_ — an account I so appreciate on Instagram. What do these questions call to mind for you when we think about need, difference, calling, belonging, and community?

The image reads…

me to me:

have you considered that your absence of a skill set, your experience of living without a particular perspective or insight, your lack of some identified trait or feature or way of being is *not* a deficit

— but rather a mark, a signal, a call to the collective that you belong to some interdependent whole on which you rely?

have you considered that differences, variance & multi-faceted being sustain our ability to survive?

In a couple weeks, I’m going to be speaking on a beautiful passage from the Hebrew Bible. The poetic text of Isaiah includes this vision:

And now the Lord says,
   who formed me in the womb to be his servant,
to bring Jacob back to him,
   and that Israel might be gathered to him,
for I am honored in the sight of the Lord,
   and my God has become my strength—
God says,

‘It is too light a thing that you should be my servant
   to raise up the tribes of Jacob
   and to restore the survivors of Israel;
I will give you as a light to the nations,
   that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.’
(Isaiah 49:5-6)

An unexpected vision… one that might be hard to believe? Nearly impossible to believe?

These words were originally spoken to captives — people who had been forcibly removed from their homeland with no obvious likelihood of return. They were stripped of their culture and humiliated. They were traumatized, separated from layers and layers of their identity, and treated as the lowest people. Why should they believe in any form of expansiveness? For their lives? For their community’s lives? For the world?

It is too light a thing…

It makes me wonder how a vision can catch us, unexpectedly, in ways that are hard to believe right when we’re traumatized and feeling broken. Maybe it is also too light a thing to lose vision.

Returning to ourselves
Returning to each other
Returning to hope
Returning to possibility

Expanding ourselves
Expanding each other
Expanding hope
Expanding possibility.

—Renee Roederer

Slowly and intentionally over the last few months, I’ve been listening to Bessel Van Der Kolk’s pivotal work, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma on audiobook. Truly, I’d place it in the top five books I’ve ever read. As we move through this pandemic — undoubtedly a collective trauma — I am recommending this book to everyone I know.

The book is remarkably insightful and impactful in addressing how traumatic experiences are carried in the body. In addition to explaining the physiology of post-traumatic symptoms in detail, he uplifts a number of somatic approaches to healing trauma in our bodies and relationships.

Today, I’d like to uplift a quote that really spoke to me. Bessel Van Der Kolk says,

“Study after study shows that having a good support network constitutes the single most powerful protection against becoming traumatized. Safety and terror are incompatible. When we are terrified, nothing calms us down like a reassuring voice or the firm embrace of someone we trust.”

After hearing him talk about so many other protective factors, studies, and forms of therapy, I thought it was really significant for him to say that support networks and forms of community are the single most powerful protection against becoming traumatized. 

When you reach out to someone…
When you share how you’re really doing…
When you introduce people to each other…
When you learn about community organizations…
When you suggest community resources…

You are participating in the protection of the body, mind, and spirit. You are building networks that protect yourself and your neighbors from becoming traumatized.

–Renee Roederer

So I confess that I’m not a big Marianne Williamson fan, but I have been sharing one of her quotes for years. I see that someone on the internets has put that quote into poem formatting, which I will now copy and paste below.

There are times when we realize we are swimming in self-doubt, struggling with internalized shame, or limiting what we think could be possible. What changes might we make to shift our thinking and acting? How might we change our roles in relationship? No need to play small.

Our Deepest Fear
By Marianne Williamson

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness
That most frightens us.

We ask ourselves
Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.

Your playing small
Does not serve the world.
There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking
So that other people won’t feel insecure around you.

We are all meant to shine,
As children do.
We were born to make manifest
The glory of God that is within us.

It’s not just in some of us;
It’s in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine,
We unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we’re liberated from our own fear,
Our presence automatically liberates others.

I’ve been thinking about this more and more:

Every single person has a strength, gift, talent, or way of being in the world that comes so naturally to who they are — so much so, in fact, that it’s easy for them to forget it’s a strength, gift, talent, or way of being in the world. It’s just always a part of who they are.

And yet, when this gift turned in the direction of community with intention, it can be absolutely transformative. Every single person has a rare gift like this. In fact, probably more than one.

Due to the pressures around us, our task load, expectations (our own or others’) and a myriad of distractions, there are times when this rare gift gets put to the side; we’ll get to it when we have time for it, or when we’re practicing better care of ourselves.

But we can stay rooted in our rare gift. Our family and community benefits from our gift. The world needs to receive our best, rare gift.

Protect that rare gift.

Do what you can to honor it. After all, when you’re living in connection with it, you probably feel most alive, right? Howard Thurman used to say, “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs are people who have come alive.”

Do what you can to make sure it gets time.

Do what you can to make sure it is addressing a larger purpose.

Do what you can to make sure that it gets care, and that you get care for yourself as the keeper of that gift. (And all that you are).

And

Put it into practice. Come alive.

–Renee Roederer

Over the last few weeks, on three occasions, I have just happened to spot something really wonderful. While scrolling through social media, I’ve encountered three examples of connections that are very meaningful to me.

Specifically, I’ve spotted moments when my mentors have reached out intentionally to people I’ve mentored — asking how their week is going, expressing a desire to get coffee, and donating to their GoFundMe fundraiser. I’ve introduced these people to each other. They don’t live in the same places, but they are connected.

And I realize that we’re all a part of a generational structure of sorts, both by age and by mentoring. There’s a big sense of kinship in all of it.

This is a great gift to my life.

—Renee Roederer

Independence is a value in Western cultures, but… independence is also a myth.

I’ve just finished reading the transcript of a powerful address by Mia Mingus, a disability justice activist whose work I greatly admire. Her remarks are entitled, “Access Intimacy, Interdependence and Disability Justice” and were given as the 2017 Paul K. Longmore Lecture on Disability Studies at San Francisco State University.

Within those remarks, she says this:

“Access should be happening in service of our larger goals of building interdependence and embracing need, because this is such a deep part of challenging ableism and the myth of independence. The myth of independence is the idea that we can and should be able to do everything on our own and, of course, we know that that’s not true. Someone made the clothes you’re wearing now, your shoes, your car or the mass transit system you use; we don’t grow all our own food and spices. We can’t pretend that what happens in this country doesn’t affect others, or that things like clean air and water don’t bound us all together. We are dependent on each other, period. The myth of independence reflects such a deep level of privilege, especially in this rugged individualistic capitalist society and produced the very idea that we could even mildly conceive of our lives or our accomplishments as solely our own. And of course, the other side of this is not just that it’s not true—not just that the emperor has no clothes, but that everyone else should pretend he’s fully clothed too. So, the Myth of Independence is not just about the truth of being connected and interdependent on one another; it is also about the high value that gets placed on buying into the myth and believing that you are independent; and the high value placed on striving to be independent, another corner stone of the ableist culture we live in.

“Interdependence moves us away from the myth of independence, and towards relationships where we are all valued and have things to offer. It moves us away from knowing disability only through ‘dependence,’ which paints disabled bodies as being a burden to others, at the mercy of able-bodied people’s benevolence. We become charity cases, a way for able bodied people to feel better about themselves and we in turn, internalize our sense of being a burden, sad, and tragic. All of this sets up a dynamic where disabled people feel like we have to be ‘liked’ in order to receive basic daily access to live and where able bodied people feel entitled to receive praise and recognition for providing access. This is not access intimacy and this dynamic of disabled people being ‘dependent’ on able bodied people shapes so many disabled people’s lives and is the foundation upon which so much domination, control, violence and abuse happens.”

We are dependent upon one another.

We all need care from others.

We all have care to offer to others.

We all have need.

What if we embraced this? What if we created relational intimacy around this? What if we received more freely and fully from others? What if we gave more freely and fully among others who are also giving and receiving more freely and fully?

–Renee Roederer

When I was training to be a pastor, I spent a summer working as a hospital chaplain in a CPE program. CPE stands for Clinical Pastoral Education. It teaches skills for ministry that are used in hospitals and hospice programs, and it provides a learning community where all participants collectively explore the ways their life journeys have shaped them with strengths and growing edges. It is a valuable experience.

During one of our early CPE group sessions, we had an opportunity to tell our life stories and the ways that faith has shaped us. In the midst of telling these stories, one of my cohort members spoke a sentence that intrigued me. I found it to be quite beautiful. As she described a conversion experience, she said, “On that day, I adopted the Christian narrative to myself.” Years later, I do not want to assume all that she meant in that sentence, but I interpreted her words mean that as she received this story, she added her decision to let this Christian narrative mark her life.

I love that sentence:
Today, I adopt the Christian narrative to myself. 

I’m remembering this again because in our current American context, many cultural pockets of “Christianity” claim this religion and tradition but are greatly out of step with the Christian narrative itself.

What does it mean to adopt this Christian narrative toward ourselves? To keep living the story… To keep having the story written upon our lives… to love the neighbors in the story… and to love today’s neighbors? — those who are made to be outsiders, and lepers, and sex workers, and widows, and tax collectors?

Perhaps that narrative needs to be claimed and made alive right now.

–Renee Roederer

 Every body is a good body. 

Every body is a worthy-of-love body.

Every body is a worthy-of-care body.

Every body is a worthy-of-resources body.

Every body is a worthy-of-taking-up-space body.

Every body is a worthy-of-dignity body.

Every body is a worthy-of-connection body.

Every body is a worthy-of-self-expression body.

Every body is a worthy-of-advocacy body.

Every body is a worthy-of-self-determination body.

Every body is a worthy-of-having-needs body.

Every body is a worthy-of-tenderness body.

 Every body is a good body. 

–Renee Roederer