Smuggling Grace

This week, Nathan Chen set a new world record in the men’s figure skating short program. You can watch that moment here.

I went to the doctors’ office today for a routine visit. A few months ago, the office made a location change, and their new building is a total glow up. In addition to noticing that broadly, one particular detail caught my eye as soon as I walked in, and it really moved me. In the waiting area, there were chairs of various sizes. They weren’t all the same. That meant there was comfortable space for people of all body sizes. That meant there was space for a parent and child to sit together in the same seat.

There is frequently a lot of fatphobia in medical settings. And research and personal anecdotes alike tell us that people with larger bodies often avoid doctors’ offices and other medical settings because they have been shamed, misdiagnosed, undiagnosed, and/or discriminated against.

It was beautiful to see this space, both as a a tangible accommodation and as a symbol of a different set of commitments. I definitely noticed. Equality and equity are not the same. With this setup, Packard Health demonstrated the importance of the second with intention and care.

–Renee Roederer

We were talking about the Olympics — what events we’ve watched so far and which ones are our favorites. Two people in the group began talking about memorable moments from Winter Olympic games in past decades. We learned that the phrase, “Do you believe in miracles?” came from the U.S. hockey team upset in 1980. We talked about figure skating moments that the whole country seemed to watch at once.

“There’s something lost now. Back then, everyone was watching at the same time. Now you have to have Peacock TV, and people just watch things piecemeal. We’re really missing those communal rhythms.”

And this turned our conversation in a deeper direction.

“We don’t have as many communal moments anymore. And some other versions of them feel overwhelming, like election nights.”

“Yeah, when you think about these last 6-7 years, one of the primary communal rhythms we’ve had is shared trauma. Election nights, insurrections, a pandemic.”

That is a sad thought that we all shared together.

And we also committed ourselves to cultivating the communal rhythms we’re able to make.. The ones that feel life-giving. The ones that bring a sense of connectedness. The ones that feel restful. The ones that are hilarious. Even if it’s only small circles of people at the moment, we need this way of life.

–Renee Roederer

This sermon was preached with Covenant Presbyterian Church in Southfield, MI and was focused upon
1 Corinthians 13:1-13 A written manuscript is below. 

“And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.”

‘Love’. It’s a simple word, and we use it all the time. . . But ‘love’: Maybe it’s not such a simple concept. And then there’s this passage – familiar, familiar, familiar – read at a million-and-one weddings, but maybe it’s not so simple and straightforward either. There’s much to hear again — to hear anew. There’s much to challenge us. There’s much to invite us to sit back and reflect, much to move us to gratitude. And there’s much to invite our questioning: I mean, what is love, anyway

I wonder, do we ever really ask ourselves that? It’s definitely a worthwhile question. When’s the last time you’ve asked yourself that question? What is love? And other than that Night at the Roxbury song with the same name, when’s the last time you’ve heard anyone ask it? My hunch is that we might not verbalize the question very often — even to ourselves — but I bet we’re asking it with our lives all the time. And we can ask it this morning too: What is love?

So how do we begin to ask that question? I guess we could try to ask ourselves as objective investigators. We could try to take a step back from love, this object of our study, and pull out a couple of dictionaries or a Wikipedia article to try to come up with a definition. But I have a feeling that we’d step away unsatisfied. Because the truth is that there’s much more at stake about love than a definition. We aren’t simply objective observers. We don’t even want to be! We don’t want to be removed from love in some way; we want to be immersed, surrounded, caught-up, nurtured, and found in love. We don’t want to be researchers. We want to be participants.

But just for the heck of it, did you know that there actually is a Wikipedia entry for love? Who knew? Here it is: “Love is any of a number of emotions and experiences related to a sense of strong affection and attachment. The word love can refer to a variety of feelings, states, and attitudes, raging from generic pleasure (i.e. “I loved that meal”) to intense interpersonal attraction (i.e. “I love my boyfriend”). This diversity of uses and meanings, combined with the complexity of the feelings involved, makes love unusually difficult to consistently define, even when compared to other emotional states. An abstract concept of love usually refers to a deep, ineffable feeling of tenderly caring for another person. Even this limited conception of love, however, encompasses a wealth of different feelings, from the passionate desire and intimacy of romantic love to the nonsexual closeness of familial and platonic love to the profound oneness or devotion of religious love. Love in its various forms acts as a major facilitator of interpersonal relationships, and owing to its central psychological importance, is one of the most common themes in the creative arts.” Well, there ya go. Good ol’ Wikipedia.

As Wikipedia states, love is unusually difficult to consistently define.

And you know what? I’m glad.

How boring would life be if love was stuck on paper — if it was narrowed down into some stale, crusty, written-in-stone definition? If we confined love to paper — to some dictionary definition — do you know what we’d do? I feel confident that we’d find a way to keep the definition entirely too narrow. We’d nail it down into some paradigm, and then we’d chastise all the other wonderful, creative, imaginative, out-of-the-box expressions of love that wouldn’t meet that definition to a tee.

I’m glad that love can’t be buckled down like that.

I’m glad that love is unusually difficult to consistently define.

I’ll tell you one thing I love about this beautiful passage that the apostle Paul wrote millennia ago to a church in Corinth. Our translation this morning reads: Love is patient. Love is kind. Love is x, y, and z, but in the original Greek test, without fail, every single description of love is a verb. Think about that! That kind of love isn’t narrowed down to an ‘is’ kind of definition. That kind of love acts. Here’s a stab at what a verb-filled translation might sound like:

“Love lives long-hearted in adversity. Love practices kindness. Love envies not. Love boasts not. Love swells-up not. Love does not act unbecomely, 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.”

That kind of love is active! It can’t be narrowed down to some definition on paper! It’s active – in here, living in this community; out there, transforming our world; beyond us, swirling about and working in ways we can’t begin to comprehend! We’re not love research scientists. Thank God! Love is verb-like. We’re participants.

We’re also recipients. The scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are honestly asking different questions than Wikipedia. Our scriptures aren’t ultimately asking, what is love, but Who is Love? Who is Love? Who is God, this One-Who-Loves, this One who is Love — and how does this Loving-One love us? Who are we when we are found in this Who – this Who, who loves? Love is active. And love is personal! Or to get away from the ‘is’ entirely – love acts in and through a personal, grace-filled God — Who does immerse, Who does surround, Who does catch, Who does nurture, Who does find us. We’re held fast and secure in the One Who is Love. We’re recipients. And we’re participants — acting on that love toward others, spreading its influence.

And this God, this One Who Loves, reveals love to us in a myriad of ways that are beyond definition. How have you experienced love in your life? What are the tangible forms it has taken? Who did God use to reveal it to you? How did you realize it? How are you still realizing it? For that matter, how did love act for you — this week? How is love acting for you right now in this moment?

Love is active. It shows up in specific forms — in particular actions. Isn’t that how we’ve all come to know love? Just think about children. How do they begin to understand love? Someone once sent me an e-mail that has circled around a bit. I’ve read it several times over the years, but it’s always fresh because it speaks of love so well. The e-mail gives responses of children who were asked our question, “What is love?” Here is how love has acted for them:

Billy, age 4, says, “When someone loves you, the way they same your name is different. You just know that your name is safe in their mouth.”

Karl, age 5, says: “Love is when you go out to eat and give someone most of your French fries without making them give you any of theirs.”

Danny, age 7, says: “Love is when my Mommy makes coffee for my Daddy, and she takes a sip before giving it to him, to make sure the taste is OK.”

Noelle, age 7, says: “Love is when you tell a guy you like his shirt, then he wears it everyday.”

Bobby, age 7, says, “Love is what’s in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.”

Mary Ann, age 4, says “Love is when your puppy licks your face even after you left him alone all day.” And some answers are just plain funny. . .

Karen, age 7, says “When you love somebody, your eyelashes go up and down and little stars come out of you.”

And Emily, age 8, says: “Love is when you kiss all the time. Then when you get tired of kissing, you still want to be together and talk more. My Mommy and Daddy are like that. They look gross when they kiss.”

What are the concrete expressions of love that have come to hold you up? And where can you find them in the coming days? Who knows? They tend to emerge — to act — sometimes when we aren’t looking for them. Love might be found right here today in the God Loves You Food Ministry when someone is handed some produce that will support a family throughout the week. It will certainly be found in the wisdom of the recipients who come here, who have so much to teach us. Love might be found as you get to know one of PPC’s Young Adults today, as you learn names, as you invite them into your lives. Love might be the laughter that happens over coffee as we gather on the patio in just a little while.

Where will love find us? Who will it act in patience? In kindness? In relationship?

This week, let’s look everywhere for it. And let’s live in gratitude that it’s finding us, even now.

–Renee Roederer

I took these photos over the weekend at Parker Mill County Park and the Hoyt G. Post trail in Ann Arbor. The scenery is gorgeous after a lot of snow this week.

–Renee Roederer

Today was a very snowy day in Ann Arbor, and while I’d choose a return to California and February beach days any time, there are also things I love about the snow. Most days, I go for a walk in my neighborhood in the late evening, winding down for bed and reflecting on the day. It takes on a whole different character in the snow, though. The sensory quality is boosted: the soft crunch and squish of snow beneath my feet, the distant thrum of a snowblower, tiny shivers of ice when a few bits of snow fall down the side of my socks, small lights that I’d never notice in someone’s yard until the beams reflect threefold on the blanket of shiny ice…and everywhere the dulled sound of a world muted by layer upon layer of soft snow

But I think my favorite parts are all the little asynchronous signs of humanity. It’s footprints that were placed at different points in the day, the edges of some softened by hours of additional snowfall, others sharp and icy from another evening walker just a little ahead of me. It’s varying degrees of “shoveled-ness” on different patches of sidewalk: some houses haven’t touched it all day, others have been shoveling consistently so there is just a thin layer of snow remaining, still others have crisp lines with tell-tale tire tracks on either side of the sidewalk and I know it’s a fancy house with a machine to do the work.

It’s a weird display of the American obsession with private ownership, crossing the property lines of each home and noticing the differences in how and when each household cleared the snow, but there’s also something lovely in it. I notice that the change in shoveled-ness (is there a better word?) often doesn’t exactly line up with a fence or property line. Many of the more diligent snow-clearers shovel a few extra feet, offering their neighbor a bit of grace for their own snow-clearing process. But no more than a few feet—your back starts to hurt and the gesture seems like enough (I say from experience). As I pass each house, I wonder about what thinking went into each of those extra inches or feet of shoveling grace. It’s the Matthew 5, “go a second mile” dynamic, but with a little winter-time apathy thrown in. It’s cold. Snow is heavy. Who can blame us?

On these cold days, when it’s hard to get much further than your own sidewalk, I’m thankful for the little glimpses of humanity that the snow freezes in time. (But I’ll also take a ticket back to California any time, then I’ll wax poetic on how the sand doesn’t hold its footprints for very long).

Hannah Lundberg is a Presbyterian minister serving in her first call at First Presbyterian Church, Ann Arbor. She graduated from Union Theological Seminary in New York City last May, and was ordained in October, when Renee served as part of her ordination commission! Hannah was born and raised in Southern California and is reluctantly learning to appreciate the beauty of “real” winter in Michigan.

Today, I want to recommend two YouTube channels that are valuable tools to learn more about ourselves, our patterns, and our personal needs. They are helpful invitations to grow in our self knowledge and understand more about all kinds of relationships.

The Personal Development School — Thais Gibson

On this channel, Thais Gibson talks about personal growth and development and delves deep into attachment styles. How do these impact our relationships in our families, at work, in romantic partnerships, in parenting, and in friendships? You can also take a free quiz about attachment styles.

Crappy Childhood Fairy — Anna Runkle

Okay, provocative title. But whether or not you’ve experienced serious trauma in your childhood years, we all have childhood wounds that impact our patterns in adulthood. And I think this channel is a valuable tool in learning how trauma lives in our bodies and is expressed in patterns throughout all kinds of relationships. And we’ve certainly lived a collective trauma over the last few years in this pandemic. It’s good to become trauma-informed and learn how we and others are impacted.

I hope these recommendations help. What channels would you recommend?

–Renee Roederer

What are you favorite, feel-good, start-your-day-out-well morning songs? Have any? I’d love to know.

Here are two of mine. And if you need a pick-me-up, I hope that these help.

–Renee Roederer

After so much upheaval and collective trauma during this pandemic, what needs tending? What needs care and attention?

When we tend to ourselves with care, we are also tending to our relationships and our community.

After personal stressors during this era of time, what needs tending? What needs care and attention?

When we tend to ourselves with care, we are also tending to our relationships and our community.

–Renee Roederer

First of all, oh my gosh, meet Chester the Toucan. Listen to the cute sound he makes when his human pets him! And those moments when he loves the shower mist — So cute.

https://www.tiktok.com/@thedodo/video/7058103691273899310?_t=8PUmw3wBsj8&_r=1

Second of all, oh my gosh, meet Maury the Pup. I love this prancing little survivor so much.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CY3yBH6Ka5x/?utm_medium=copy_link

You don’t need to have a TikTok or Instagram to view these. Just click on the links. Enjoy!

–Renee Roederer