Author: gracesmuggler

One of my favorite books is Gregory Boyle’s Tattoos on the Heart: The Boundless Power of Compassion. I admit that I cry easily, but still, I do not exaggerate: The first time I read this book, I had to close it and pause at least 20 times due to tearing up

Greg Boyle tells powerful vignettes about his community at Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles. Homeboy Industries provides jobs, counseling, and classes for people who are looking to exit gangs. Many of them are teenagers and young adults. Many have known long spells of incarceration. But long before they ever joined a gang or experienced that incarceration, they have carried deep burdens of trauma. As Boyle says, “Kids who join a gang are not running toward something. They are always running away from something.”

The whole book is filled with compassion, and it works to address an internalized belief we tend to carry, one that distorts our views of others and ourselves – that is, “the sneaking suspicion that some lives are worth less than other lives.”

That is the lie we must confront.

Greg Boyle confronts that lie by telling stories of transformation. He’s a Jesuit priest, and he weaves theological reflection together with stories of his relationships at Homeboy Industries. Throughout the book, he encounters shame with love and compassion. We get to hear the transformative moments when these loved ones truly began to know for themselves that they are worth loving. We might step away from the book coming to know that more deeply for ourselves too.

We need to mirror this kind of love toward one another, especially when a suspicion seems to be growing that some lives are worth less than other lives.

That’s the lie of our age, and it’s simply untrue.

Greg Boyle tells a sweet story about a man and his father, and he opens that story up to speak a conviction about God and human worth. I want to leave it with all of us today for own thinking and our own loving.

As his health was failing, an old man moved in with his adult son, someone that Greg Boyle knows personally. In the evening before bedtime, the son would read aloud to his father. In a beautiful role reversal, the adult son put his father to bed every night.

The son would often invite his father to close his eyes while he read aloud, but over and over again, he would catch his father looking at him. He would say, “Look, here’s the idea. I read to you, you fall asleep.” The father would apologize, but at some point, one eye would eventually pop open.

This went on every single night. When it was time to sleep, the father could not take his eyes off of his own son.

Greg Boyle says that God is like this: “God would seem to be too occupied in being unable to take Her eyes off of us to spend any time raising an eyebrow in disapproval. What’s true of Jesus is true for us, and so this voice breaks through the clouds and comes straight at us. ‘You are my Beloved, in whom I am wonderfully pleased.’”

One eye open, looking at us with love and wonder.

Maybe we need to pop one eye open and view each other with this kind of love too – no longer heaping shame upon shame, accusation upon accusation, or stereotype upon stereotype, but viewing one another love and wonder.

One eye inevitably and playfully open.

–Renee Roederer

Yesterday, I heard a recent episode of the Freakonomics Podcast that I will likely be pondering for a long time. Arthur Brooks, a person with whom I likely disagree on so much (I looked at some of his other book and article titles) has written a book about the state of American culture and politics, naming that we have a serious crisis of contempt. And I definitely agree with him about that.

The podcast episode is entitled, “How Can We Break Our Addiction to Contempt?” and I highly recommend it.

He shares that when we are angry, we care about the other person with whom we are sharing. We care about them, and we want them to understand our pain, stories, experiences, or views.

When we have contempt, however, we have anger plus disgust. We view the other person as someone not worth caring about, and when this goes even further, we might not even view the other person or group of people as fully human.

There is a whole media and social media infrastructure building and fueling our contempt. It even functions in our brain as an addiction. We are in trouble because of this. It helps to name it, I think.

This is a good conversation starter. Feel free to have a listen.

-Renee Roederer

Everything catalyzes everything.

Everything affects everything.

This, of course, is so obvious that it’s hardly worth being the topic of a blog post. But perhaps it’s obvious to the point that we could think about it more often. Maybe with some intention, we might feel greater hope too. Because….

What we do matters.

Now surely, some actions have bigger impacts than others. And when we move in directions we regret, we can always change course. After all, everything catalyzes everything, and our course correction shifts the whole. Even the recognition that we need a course correction had a catalyst. Something woke us up to that. And now the shift will have impacts too, creating space for new possibilities.

So back to this:

What we do matters.

What we do – how we spend our time, how we speak, how we relate, how we create, how we care – it all matters.

Because it always initiates a sequence of effects, often well beyond what we might have imagined. It’s not about us. But our actions matter. We impact things, just as they impact us.

–Renee Roederer

I serve as the Co-Director of the Interfaith Round Table of Washtenaw County, and in that role, I have the privilege of visiting many communities during their worship and times of spiritual practice. When we were in lockdown before vaccinations, most of these communities were not meeting in person but are using technological platforms to connect virtually. I remember having the occasion to join the Zen Buddhist Temple in Ann Arbor for their Sunday service.

I sat outside on my deck, stilled myself, connected with my body, and listened. I heard the sound of so many birds with their various calls. I heard neighbors multiple streets away using a weed eater and a leaf blower. I wondered… what’s the farthest sound I can hear right now?

When I asked that question, I heard birds chirping on the recording from the temple. Yes, those are across town and certainly the farthest away.

In all the upheaval of these days, it’s a great gift to simply sit still, check in with our bodies, and notice. When we slow down and notice, we can have greater pleasure and connection with all that’s around us.

–Renee Roederer

A quote from Randy Woodley:

“The very land itself meant something quite different to the newcomer than it did to the host people. Something was missing. The difficulty, as the Natives saw it, was with the settlers themselves and their failure to tread lightly, with humility and respect, on the land. The settlers wanted to live on the land, but the host people lived with the land. Living on the land means objectifying the land and natural resources and being shortsighted concerning the future. Living with the land means respecting the natural balance.

“To Indigenous peoples, the problems of a Western worldview are obvious. The way of life demonstrated by Western peoples leads to alienation from the Earth, from others, and from all of creation. This lifestyle creates a false bubble called ‘Western civilization,; which people in the West think will protect them from future calamity. This false hope is detached from all experience and reality.

“The problem is that the Western system itself is what brings the calamity. There is little doubt that much of what we are experiencing today as so-called natural disasters have their origin in human carelessness.

“How do we avoid the impending disaster brought on by a settler lifestyle of living on the land and against nature? The answer is simple: we learn to live with nature.

— Randy Woodley, Cherokee Descendant,
“Becoming Rooted: One Hundred Days of Reconnecting with Sacred Earth” (Broadleaf Books: 2022), 101–102.

During a Zoom meeting, a community group I’m close with had a conversation about interdependence. As part of that discussion, we asked a two-part question. Our relationship to the question might be complex. We asked,

“What do you need right now, and what is your relationship to having those needs?”

We were inviting each other to get specific and detailed about what we need and how we could use help. A number of cultural elements come together to cause a strange twinge of guilt or shame in having needs and especially asking for help with our needs. But I think some part of us is longing to be liberated from all of that.

So it was very freeing for us to get specific.

And this lended itself quite naturally to having those needs met.

As a result of this conversation, someone is getting a ride to surgery, someone is getting their printer fixed, someone is getting invited over for dinner, and multiple people will be thought about and checked-in-with. The community was easily able to rise to those occasions because we don’t feel that same twinge of guilt or shame when we have opportunities to help others.

And I hope this bolsters our ability to ask.

We can just name our needs.

–Renee Roederer

Something I’m pondering…

Concern and worry are not quite the same. They’re different experiences, I think.

When we’re concerned about something, we take it seriously. And this feels proactive: We think ahead. We consider consequences. We galvanize our strength, our inner resources, and our community resources.

But…

When we’re worried about something, we just spin around our own anxiety. It can feel like a whirlwind.

It’s not easy, and sometimes, not possible to just snap our fingers and exit worry. Anxiety is very physical, and when it takes hold, we’re really in it. This deserves compassion and never shame or criticism.

I wonder, if we can practice moving our worry energy into concern energy, might we inhabit a different stance? Then we can be in a different relationship with what we face or fear.

–Renee Roederer

Sometimes, we take on too much — more tasks than we can actually do, more emotions than we can adequately hold, or more directions in which we can easily move.

Sometimes, I take on too much.

I’ve also gotten much better at this over the years. But I was raised and socialized in ways that made me feel as though I was responsible for everything — responsible for everyone’s feelings and everything that needed to happen.

In the midst of my care work, I cannot do this. It doesn’t help me or frankly, anyone.

So I’ve pondered this quite a bit:
There is a difference between being responsive and being responsible.

When needs come my way, I want to be responsive. I want to listen well. I want to extend care. I want to hear the needs in the way that a person is presenting them. I want to hear their own resources (practical, emotional, financial, social, or spiritual) and when it’s helpful, as often as I can, I want to connect this person and need to more people who can help meet that need. That is being responsive.

We are not always responsible for every task or emotion needed, nor are we the cause or end of the situations that created the need in the first place.

But we can participate. We can care. We can be responsive, and this is vital action.

This helps me do care work.

–Renee Roederer

Show your roots —
Make known the ones you named you (the truest you)
Make known the ones who shaped you (the still becoming you)
Live roots made visible.

The love,
The care,
The nurture,
The belonging.

The wholeness,
of every community,
of every neighbor,
of every parent,
of every friend,
of every guide,

still shaping,
still claiming.

–Renee Roederer