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 one of my very best friends has started mailing me handwritten cards recently, and they are such a gift. In fact, she’s making this a personal practice. She sends many people handwritten notes these days. 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. 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 all the big things that are happening in our lives. I send her photos and videos over texts. We’re connected 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

This little fish, y’all.

This tiny, seemingly insignificant pufferfish astounded me the other day. I have never heard of such a little artist until I watched a BBC Earth video a few days ago.

Check out this video, and see what he does to impress a mate.

This little fish creates an artistic structure in the sand – one that’s complex in its detail and mathematical precision. It’s astonishing. We’re left curious, how does this little being have such an ability?

And we feel a sense of wonder.

I think we need a sense of wonder, particularly in times of great stress. We need to be reminded that there is a world worth feeling awe about – a world worth living in, a world worth protecting.

Perhaps there are times when we struggle to access a feeling of wonder. And if so, that’s completely understandable and okay. But thankfully, curiosity and wonder are things we can practice. They aren’t goals or benchmarks. They’re play. We can always engage them. 

So what initiates your sense of wonder these days?

– Renee Roederer

Franchesca Ramsey is a writer, Youtuber, comedian, and podcast host. She is most well-known for her time as a writer and contributor on The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore and as the host of MTV’s Decoded, where she cultivates conversations about race.

Among other characteristics, she’s smart, honest, and funny. Those are her three, chosen words.

I follow Franchesa Ramsey on Snapchat. Recently, she shared a story about a moment that changed her direction. She met with a coach who encouraged her to choose three words to define her work and way of being in the world. She was invited to say or ponder these words like a mantra before she engaged in work or meaningful tasks. She wanted these three words to come from her sense of who she was — from her aliveness, if you will. And she wanted those characteristics to weave their way through all that she was doing.

As she recounted this story, she encouraged us to choose our own three life words and do the same.

I’m curious. . . what three words would you choose?

Mine are hanging on the fridge now.

–Renee Roederer

Do you know this saying?

If a thing’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well. 

Don’t get me wrong. I support hard work and excellence and all of that, but ultimately, I think this saying is garbage. G.K. Chesterton was known for turning common sayings on their head in order to gain greater meaning from them. He started to say this instead:

If a thing’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly.

That’s better. It may sound strange to our ears, but it’s more life-giving. Because if we think about it, it brings home this truth: If a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing. Period. No matter the result.

– This saying bolsters people who are willing to try something innovative, even as they recognize the possibility for failure. If it turns out badly, it may be the necessary catalyst for learning. The process or the failure itself may yield insights and discoveries toward the next idea, one that would have never been conceptualized beforehand.

– This saying bolsters people who are pursuing a calling, even as they reckon with the reality that some will place roadblocks in their path. The journey toward any kind of calling takes twists and bends. At times, the these turns are remarkably unfair. At times, they are thoroughly unjust. I do not make light of this. They are harmful — not good. But the calling can emerge in spite of them.

– This saying bolsters people who are willing to tell the truth, even as they recognize it marks them for risk. Whistleblowers come to mind, in particular. There are times when we honestly cannot afford such risks. But when we can, there is life and vitality in speaking truth to power. Even if we do not shift the power entirely, those words of truth are out there in the world. They keep working. I trust that they take on a life of their own, especially as they inspire more people to come forward and speak truthfully.

It’s messy.

But if a thing’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly.

– Renee Roederer

These days, I’m working to place hope in unknown seeds. Have a look at this video:

Death Valley, a desert in California, gets its name for obvious reasons. It’s rare for much to grow there. Most of the time, it’s just not habitable.

But every once in a while when the conditions shift, seeds sprout all over the place. Often, people didn’t even know these seeds were there… And Death Valley experiences a surprising phenomenon called a Super Bloom.

We certainly place hope in actualities we can count on. Thank goodness we can name and trust some of those. It takes courage, perhaps, to place hope in the possibilities we cannot fully anticipate. Yet often, life is found right there.

Even in the driest of conditions, some of those possibilities can begin to form –

When people discover new visions for their communities,
When voices long-silenced rise into leadership,
When we discover the gift and grace of unanticipated abundance,
When Love becomes the foundation of resilience and liberation . . .

Yes, a Super Bloom.

May it be with us.

– Renee Roederer

May the return of Life completely surprise us.

With astonishment,
May we find ourselves
Upright,
Steady,
Moving Forward.

Vigor enlivening brittle bones,
Vision enlivening dormant dreams,
Vitality enlivening trauma’s torrents.
YES!

A couple of evenings ago, I sat on the floor with some beloved people, and we pushed lights around. We gathered around a map of the earth. Together, we held a Service for Peace, singing meditative music and placing candles prayerfully over many nations.

I was very moved by this. 

I do admit, however, that there was a moment when I wondered, are we really accomplishing anything here? Does prayerful intention change things? 

It certainly opens us to listen. If we listen, we find ourselves called to be a part of the prayers we make. We discover pretty quickly that we are called to action.

But we are also called to sit with the pain, recognizing that we fall drastically short of peace. We do violence with grave consequences. Some of this is beyond our control, but we participate in this reality.

One day after moving the lights around, along with the rest of the world, I heard the news that the U.S. had detonated the largest, non-nuclear bomb in human history. This made me deeply concerned for civilians, military personnel, and the world at large.

And as I write this, I am concerned that we might wake up to discover that bombs have been dropped over North Korea as well, the third nation in two weeks. We don’t know where this is headed, but it feels devastating.

We need care and support in one another, but as much as can, we need to sit with the pain too. That’s part of what solidarity is about. It’s about action, but in order to get there, we have to grapple with the pain.

Today is Good Friday in my faith tradition. On this day, we remember the trauma of death in the face of state violence. We sit with that pain, recognizing our complicity.

Tonight, I will remember the lights that we moved around. And I hope that they move me.

– Renee Roederer

If I could choose a person to be my personal patron saint or even an additional Grandpa, I would likely choose Fred Rogers. I admire him so much – not only for his tremendous work but for his way of being in the world.

A couple of days ago, I ran across a testimony that demonstrated how crucial and life-saving his work truly was. It involved a continual commitment to remind vulnerable people how special and valuable they were. He changed the lives of children, including children who were abused at home. This testimony said,

“. . . he seemed to look me in the eye when he said, ‘And I like you just for being you’. In that moment, it was like he was reaching across time and space to say these words to me when I needed them most. . .  I was sure I deserved every last moment of abuse, every blow, every bad name. I was sure I earned it, sure I didn’t deserve better. I knew all of these things … until that moment. If this man, who I hadn’t even met, liked me just for being me, then I couldn’t be all bad. Then maybe someone could love me, even if it wasn’t my mom.”

I believe we need a renewed commitment — as a spiritual leader, I will also say a renewed theological commitment — to uplift the intrinsic worth and value in human beings. We need this in the wake of hatred, poverty, racism, exclusion, violence, abuse, and more. . . These forces are intense and entrenched among us. They require us to speak truth to power, so I don’t mean to be reductionistic or say that a simple declaration of worth is all that it takes. But it’s never not about that.

It’s a life-giving, foundational truth, that —

despite the pain we know,
despite the pain we cause,

despite the harsh words we hear,
despite the harsh labels we believe,

despite the forces which declare some to be ‘less than,’
despite the despair which internalizes the same,

we are loved with a Love we cannot lose.

And that Love says that we are worth it.

–Renee Roederer

 

 

I am reminded that the largest portion of the Bible was compiled by people who were deported.

Most religious scholars believe that the Hebrew Bible was written down and organized in its final form around the time of the Babylonian Exile. The ancient Babylonian Empire decimated Jerusalem and the Kingdom of Judah in 586 BCE. The Babylonians burned the temple to the ground and took the majority of people captive, removing them from the land of familiarity to the foreign land of Babylon. It was a large-scale trauma.

While some of the texts were written beforehand, scholars believe that until that point, many stories from the Hebrew Bible were largely oral traditions told across generations.

Think about that. . .  A displaced generation compiled these written texts and oral stories into the form we know today. I thank my friend and pastoral colleague Kathleen Henrion for using the word deported in connection to these texts recently. While deportation is a modern category with its own unique challenges, it resonates with this ancient trauma. I had not quite thought about that before.

-And-

I am reminded that the New Testament was written by people who were terrorized by the occupation of the Roman Empire. The 1st century Jews of the Jesus Movement lived under fear and economic exploitation without personal freedom or collective autonomy. Jesus himself was tortured and killed by the state.

Then later in 70 CE, the Roman Empire destroyed the temple in Jerusalem again, changing the expressions of Judaism and the formation of Christianity.

Think about that. . . Jesus and his followers daring to empower the most marginalized, right in the presence of the most powerful, threatening Roman leaders.

In our modern context, powerful people often utilize the texts of the Bible to oppress others, but first and foremost, these texts were written by the oppressed.

– Renee Roederer

These days, I pray to the God between us.

Not to a distant God far away off in the sky somewhere. Not to a mechanistic God, constantly making things happen with the push of a “save” or “smite” button, reminiscent of some old Far Side cartoon.

I pray to the God between us.

Beyond us, yes, but only in the sense of being greater than any one of us. That, and calling us to transformative realities beyond our wildest dreams. Never far away.

Between us.
With us.
Among us.

A couple days ago, I found myself reflecting upon one of the most powerful experiences I ever had in a worship service. It was 10 years ago at Mo Ranch, a camp and conference center in Hunt, TX. I was there with a couple hundred college students at a conference aptly called College Connection.

That night, we were together around 9 PM. The beginnings of a warm summer were just beyond the door of the building, and the space was filled with hundreds of candles. Students sat on the floor in close proximity. Together, we sang a lot of beautiful choruses, music with rich meaning.

Midway through that time together, we began to sing a powerful song called “Prayers of the People.” Already, we could hear the tinkling of rain on the metal roof.

The song is by Ben Johnston-Krase. He was there with us, leading us on the piano as we sang it together. We sang these words, not necessarily about ourselves, but about humanity at large. . .

We are hungry, whoa, we are hungry,
We are hungry, whoa, we are hungry,
We are man, woman, we are children, whoa, we are hungry. . .

And that’s when it happened. We moved onto the main part of the chorus:

So let the rains go, let the healing river flow. Let justice roll like waters. Let the days begin when new life enters in, and let your kingdom come.

Right then, a deluge of water poured from the sky onto that tinny sounding roof. And not only that. It began to flood the space where we were sitting!

Thankfully, this was not from the roof above us, but it did come through the door onto the floor. Some of us got up quickly to move and cover electric cables, but other that, we just let it happen. As we continue to sing those words, we let that water flow right to the tables that held our candles.

The imagery and the synchronicity was not lost on us. We wanted justice to roll like waters, and in that moment, we even believed it possible.

So what happened that night? Did a far away God, off somewhere in the sky, push a “rain” button and mechanistically make that happen? Certainly, if there’s a God, God made the glories of rain. But if there’s a mechanistic process to everything that happens, I have to start worrying that there’s a cancer button, and a tomahawk missile button, and a school shooting button. I don’t believe that everything that happens is destined to happen.

But I pray to the God between us. Because when that glorious rain happened, I think God was between us, waking us up to the sacred moment as we recognized beauty and sensed a real calling to justice.

I think God is always between us, constantly inspiring us to act in transformative ways, sometimes beyond what we can easily imagine if we will notice what is around us and who is around us.

And without question, the God between us turns us toward one another, so we can marvel at shared humanity and the world.

So we can participate fully in their transformation.

– Renee Roederer