Author: gracesmuggler

Do you know what’s great? Handwritten letters.

I didn’t really know I was missing this. In fact, I viewed letter writing purely as a genre from the past. But during this pandemic, I’ve received a number of them, and they give me joy. One of my very best friends sends many people handwritten cards, and they are such a gift. She’s made this a personal practice. I love it.

This has helped me think about something within the letters too. It has me thinking about the beauty of slow connections. We need these.

When I say slow connections, I’m talking about more than the amount of time between sending and receiving mail, though that’s certainly a slow connection. (And getting slower all the time? Eeek?) I’m also talking about the types of life snapshots we might capture in handwritten letters – how letter writing depicts them in a slow and unique way, then uplifts their value as we share them with others.

As I mentioned, this person is one of my very closest friends. We talk over the phone about significant things that are happening in our lives. I send her photos and videos over texts. We connect about large things and immediate things. But when she writes me a handwritten card, I have the opportunity to learn what’s going on that particular day and that particular moment through written words.

For instance, the cats just jumped across the room in a funny way, though they were cuddly a few minutes before. The tea is really good this morning. Her husband just said a funny one-liner.

Slowness takes time to capture these, prioritizing the small things as meaningful. Slowness takes time to share these with a friend.

To enjoy them. To choose them. To write them down. To put them in the mail in the anticipation of a friend seeing them too.

We need slow connections.

– Renee Roederer

I vividly remember that before my brain surgery in 2012, I signed consent forms. On these forms, my surgery was called “elective craniotomy.” I asked the nurse what that meant; after all, I never got the sense in the months leading up to surgery day that this procedure was optional. They explained that “elective” meant this was not an emergency surgery; I was conscious and able to consent. We scheduled the surgery in advance. It didn’t have to happen that exact day. I had waited three months for this surgery, so that I could finish college first. That’s what elective means in this context.

Having to cancel elective surgeries because of COVID — again — is causing people to have some very important treatments delayed. It’s not a mere inconvenience. These are often necessary and lifesaving surgeries. Hospitals are running out of room and patients are having to be transported great distances and at great cost to other hospitals with capacity. Nearly all (>95% generally, often 99%+) of the patients hospitalized now for COVID are unvaccinated. Everyone, except for those under 12 years old or those with severe allergies to the ingredients in these specific vaccines, has had the opportunity to get vaccinated by now. We could have prevented the hospitals from filling up again. But too many people have refused these very safe and effective vaccines, in the name of “freedom” or whatever. In the richest country in the world, which spends the most per capita on healthcare even before the pandemic, having to postpone one’s very necessary surgery because of a surge in preventable infections doesn’t feel like freedom to me. (Neither did having a house with indoor temperatures in the 40s during the freeze in February.)

These vaccines were developed and purchased mostly with our tax dollars. Every day they’re getting wasted when people don’t show up to get a shot. To waste a vaccine that’s already bought and paid for by all of us, and then rack up the healthcare costs associated with a preventable disease, which can add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars, is such a travesty. To lose one’s life to COVID because they believed in misinformation rather than getting a vaccine is also a terrible waste. So-called fiscal conservatives should be outraged by this tremendous waste caused by vaccine refusal. But instead we are hearing about freedom and personal responsibility, and we have neither.

No one has a civil right to spread a deadly contagion. Failure to participate in public health should bar someone from certain aspects of public life. I’m all for employers requiring their employees to be vaccinated, and onerous consequences for those who do not, such as rigid testing requirements. I strongly support any evidence based strategies for getting people to choose to be vaccinated. I just wish we didn’t need any of this. I volunteered over 20 hours in February to qualify for a vaccine. Now it’s easier than ever to get one, and so many still refuse, and the hospitalization rates are climbing. We see so many stories of people hospitalized now saying they wish they had gotten vaccinated. I see GoFundMe campaigns raising tens of thousands of dollars to cover hospital and funeral costs of people who refused a free vaccine. It’s just such a waste.

I feel so much dismay just sitting here on my couch, largely removed from the crisis unfolding behind the closed doors of hospitals. I can’t imagine the frustration and desperation of the healthcare workers handling another wave of COVID, having to hear the patients who can still talk expressing their regret about not getting the vaccine. Or those treating children who of no fault of their own were not adequately protected by the adults around them.

It did not have to be this way.

— Lauron Fischer

Lauron Fischer is a Special Projects Manager for the city of San Antonio. She is a brain tumor survivor, a public health advocate, and a friend to many. She lives with her partner Colin Meyer and their daughter Sloan in Olmos Park, TX.

During a recent conference call, my colleague Andrea Thomas said,

“Our thoughts, feelings, and actions are all connected. If one isn’t feeling right or working in the way that we’d like it to, we can change one of them, and the others will shift too.”

This is true, but we rarely think about it. It’s somehow simple and anything but simple at the very same time.

Which of these do we want to shift?
Which of these do we need to shift?

–Renee Roederer

You are loved as you are.

You’re
worth it.
fabulous.

Not when you,
Not if you.

You, right now,
Loved presently,
Loved thoroughly,
Loved wholeheartedly.

Worth it.

Fabulous.

–Renee Roederer

I was spending some time with people at a barbecue held by the Ann Arbor Friends Meeting. When I won the game of Get-To-Know-You Bingo — you know, that game where people attach people’s names to various details on the squares? — my prize was a Black Lives Matter sign for my yard.

I love Quakers.

–Renee Roederer

In these days we’re living, do you feel overwhelmed by the news cycle?

Yes, me too. Of course. Who doesn’t?

Behind the news cycle, there are real, raw, human stories of suffering. And so often, we feel helpless to prevent that suffering and powerless to change it.

It’s incredibly understandable to fall into those feelings. In such times, we need the solidarity of one another – that is,

. . . the sense that we are in each other’s view, that we encounter each other’s pain with empathy,

. . . the sense that we have each other’s commitment, that we are in each other’s corner for the long haul,

. . . the sense that we have each other’s action, that we covenant to act on behalf of one another, especially and most readily for the vulnerable.

In my Christian tradition, our scriptures speak to a calling of bearing each other’s burdens. Lately, within that calling, I find myself encouraging people to shift each other’s burdens. 

We can easily become incapacitated once we realize we cannot instantly fix the systems that are causing burdens. But our empathy, and most importantly, our committed action can change these systems and these burdens. Do not underestimate what these can do.

When we see pain for what it is, we add our validation, and it shifts burdens.

When we add our resources of money, time, or skills, it shifts burdens.

When we use our voices to name wrongs for what they are, it shifts burdens.

When we use our minds to create solutions, it shifts burdens.

When we put our bodies in places that disrupt harm, it shifts burdens.

When we honor the humanity of people who are being dehumanized, it shifts burdens.

When we take direct action and demand justice for the oppressed and vulnerable, it shifts burdens.

If we want to change the large-scale systems that cause harm, we have to disrupt and dismantle them. But alongside that commitment, we have to live and model our lives with a different rhythm – with different commitments and ways of relating to one another.

We practice solidarity.

And within that way of living, we share and lighten the loads that people are carrying. We assign energy and responsibility to where they really belong.

We shift each other’s burdens.

–Renee Roederer

It’s that simple.
It’s that profound.

It is Truer than True.
You have worth that cannot be diminished.

No matter
any of the words that have stung in the past,

No matter
any of the dismissals people have thrown your way,

No matter
any of the failings that keep you up at night,

No matter
any of the items left unchecked on your to-do list,

No matter
any of the unkind comments said to your own reflection,

No matter
any of the the stigma people associate with the diagnosis,

No matter
any of the “gaps” on your resume,

No matter
any of the things pundits have said about you,

No matter
any of the fears you carry inside your living cells.

No matter
anything
anything
anything.

You are valuable.
Full stop.

With a love that can’t be lost.
With a life that can be lived.

– Renee Roederer

From my vantage point, looking at a screen as I sat at my dining room table, names emerged within the Zoom chat window. But I had not read them yet with my eyes.

Instead, gathered virtually with the Beth Israel Congregation in Ann Arbor, I listened to my dear friend and colleague, Rabbi Rob Dobrusin, pray in Hebrew. The sounds flowed meaningfully, though most of the words were unknown to me. Here and there, I would hear, Adonai, a name for God. In a language unknown to me, definitions, grammar, and syntax all fell away. Instead, I heard spoken, melodic sounds.

Then I began to hear our names.

In the midst of words I didn’t understand, I opened my eyes suddenly and looked up at the screen in recognition when the name of another colleague alerted me to understanding. This language of prayer was carrying names. Then I began to hear more names interspersed within these sounds. Then I heard the names of the people I had placed in that chat window.

I felt language itself lifting us up, knowing that our words are intentions, knowing that our melodic speaking is often filled with love for people.

–Renee Roederer

For many people, 1 Corinthians 13 is a very familiar text. Some of us grew up hearing these words in church communities. Many others have heard these words at weddings.

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (1 Corinthians 13: 4-7, New Revised Standard Version)

These descriptors get translated as adjectives, but interestingly enough, in the original Greek language, these descriptor-words all have verb roots. We describe love by enacting love.

Here’s a verb-friendly translation of this text.

Love lives long-hearted in adversity. Love practices kindness. Love envies not. Love boasts not. Love swells-up not. Love does not act unbecomingly, does not seek the self, does not provoke to anger, does not calculate evil, does not rejoice upon the injustice, but rejoices together with the truth. It covers all things, entrusts all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  Love never perishes.

–Renee Roederer

I was thinking about the butterfly effect this week, and specifically, I was wondering, is that really real?

Do you know which thing I’m talking about? Sometimes, it’s also called Chaos Theory. Ultimately, it’s a realization that very small actions can lead to very large effects, particularly as they create a series of changes in large systems. The butterfly effect gets its name due to Edward Lorenz. He demonstrated that the flapping wings of a butterfly in one part of the world could ultimately lead to a tornado weeks later somewhere else. Thankfully, this doesn’t happen all the time; otherwise, we’d have tornados and hurricanes everywhere. But the point is this: Tiny, minuscule changes can create complex results in large systems.

It turns out that this theory is true.

It’s pretty astounding, actually. It means that every thing — every action, every interaction — is affecting a whole, enormous host of other things.

In a tumultuous time, don’t underestimate how positive actions can lead to large scale results. Even tiny ones have an effect. Each and every day, what we do matters. What we do this very day matters.

So what kind of change is possible, not only when we act alone, but when we act together?

– Renee Roederer