I was sitting in a circle with college students, and we were discussing this saying of Jesus:
“When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers and sisters or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.And you will be blessed because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” (Luke 14:12-14)
There was some discomfort among students with the last portion of that teaching: If you will be repaid in a great resurrection, aren’t you still doing this to get something — at least in part? And is this just charity? Does this banquet have meetings of equals? Good questions.
But we were also moved by this thought:
When Jesus spoke these words, and when the first readers of the gospel heard them or read them, this list of invitees would have evoked names in their minds and hearts. They lived in small towns. They knew each other. They knew who was not getting invited.
Today, our society so greatly separates our socioeconomic realities, that many times “the poor” remain some kind of abstraction for us. We’re not always in relationship.
That’s when someone added,
“Gustavo Gutiérrez used to say, ‘If you say you love the poor, name them.'”
“We are in a moment where our elites, whether they admit it or not, do understand that our economic model is at war with life on earth. What unites this kind of strange, Frankenstein coalition that Trump represents where he’s bringing together the richest people in the world who have ever existed with many working-class people. So what binds the vision? They all have given up on this world. They have all bought into an apocalyptical fever. I’ve been in a lot of progressive spaces in recent months where we’ve talked about building these very broad coalitions. I’ve never encountered a potential coalition more broad that the idea of, ‘How about if we believe in this world? How about if we believe in the future?” Because we’re up against people who are actively betting against the future.” — Naomi Klein
Did you know that you can actually buy an FM/AM Radio-Cassette-Playing-Boombox at Best Buy? You can. Apparently, they are still being made new. In the Year of Our Lord 2025.
You may be wondering why on earth I would want to buy an FM/AM Radio-Cassette-Playing-Boombox. Turns out there’s a lovely reason.
I was rummaging through some things in my basement, when I found cassette tapes. They are sermon tapes from David, one of my most significant influences who died in 2009. It’s been many years since I’ve played any of them. In fact, I thought they were all lost when I had water damage in my basement four years ago. It turns out that the repair crew had just moved them.
I have hours of him talking — often, wise and deep, and sometimes, with hilarious stories and rants. I decided I would like to find a cassette playing boombox so I could revisit these, and I asked if anyone had one on an online Buy Nothing group. No luck there. So on a whim, I decided to search online, wondering if I might order one from a warehouse somewhere. It turns out that Best Buy still sells them, and my local store had them in stock. I went right over and bought one.
Last night, for the first time in years, I listened to David’s wisdom and hilarious stories and rants. I loved it so much. You might think that after losing a loved one, a voice might evoke tears of sadness or tears of joy. I actually did feel joy, but no tears. I realized that hearing him felt like the most normal experience in the world.
I think I’ve felt very connected to him the whole time.
We’ve hit September, and we’re in the last few months of the year. We’re not in the last quarter quite yet (sorry to sound so corporate) but we’ll be there soon.
Maybe it’s a good time to ask: What did we hope for in 2025?
I can already hear some of us us scoffing at the question, and I can’t blame anyone for doing that. I think many of us entered this year with genuine fear and trembling, expecting hardship especially as politics impacts our collective life. We weren’t wrong, and that is, of course, devastating.
But when we think about hope for the year, was there something deeper than a simple resolution? Something less cynical? Some kind of vision or values that we wanted?
I wonder if this might be a good time to take stock of that. We still have some time to return to these and act on them.
We have more wrinkles now. Some of our own kids have even joined the marching band. Some of us have moved away, while others have lived here the whole time. As the decades moved on, some of us have started businesses. Some of us joyfully came out of the closet. Some of us are caring for parents. Some of us are teaching. Lots of us can talk about physical changes, and lots of us can talk about the ubiquity of Teams Meetings.
Over the weekend, I went to my High School Reunion, and it was a great time. We set up space in a pool bar, while talking, laughing and yes, occasionally, watching our own senior yearbook photos scroll across a screen.
I admit that I don’t know exactly where all the fault lines used to lie — that is, who could hang out with whom, and who could easily gossip about whom — but undoubtedly, those used to be there, and now, they are totally gone. None of my closest friends from that time in my life came to this particular reunion. But if we recognized someone, the primary response wasn’t hesitation or distance, but an easy, ‘Hey! How are you doing?’—as if time had folded in on itself and we’d been old pals all along. I had engaging conversation all night long.
Sometimes, time itself erodes those lines. They’re just gone. No cliques. Friends who can start as friends again, at least for this night and maybe longer, too. We are certainly people who take an interest in wanting each other to be well and do well.
No doubt, there are bigger, more significant conflicts in this country and in our personal lives than the divisions of our high school days. But if time itself can erase those, what might be possible with real intentions to do the work in good faith — healing what can be healed?
A series of black dominos with quite dots; the ones in the back have fallen, and the ones in the front are about to fall. Public domain image.Public domain.
Many years ago, I worked in a context where everyone worked with their office doors closed. There may be many reasons for this — needing quiet, having a place to focus, or other kinds of needs entirely. That context was filled with lovely, supportive people, but this happened to be a very stressful period of time in our collective history. Some part of me wonders if we all kept our doors closed because stress pheromones were constantly floating through the air in that space.
Anxiety can function like a contagion. We can pick up on the anxious energy of others through body language and yes, even pheromones. We may also be anxious about similar concerns, and someone’s anxiety may evoke our own. That same anxiety in a person or community may also trigger older, stressful storylines from our lives. The anxiety can grow.
Sometimes, we need space alone or in small groups of non-anxious (at the moment) people so we can ground ourselves again and regulate or co-regulate our nervous systems.
In a remarkably anxious period of time, it is okay and helpful to take that space, both for ourselves and for the collective circles of people we love.
495.3 miles later, I’ve finished the Es! 3024.8 Miles Total
Since September 2023 (whenever it’s warm) I’ve been riding my e-bike successively to and through every street in Ann Arbor in alphabetical order. Yesterday, I finished the E Streets. Whenever I finish a letter, I write a reflection on place. Today, I’d like to talk about my summer as a whole.
This summer, three of my closest local friends went on sabbatical. I live in a university town, but none of these friends are professors. Each of them had unique circumstances, but they each took a substantial amount of time to get outside of their typical rhythms and travel. I admired them for doing this.
I wasn’t doing this in any official way, either formally or informally, but I thought, “How can my summer have the same kind of vibe?”
“How about… a… staybatical?”
I didn’t set out to stay exclusively in town, though mostly I did. I only made one larger trip. I’ve barely done any day trips either — something that is pretty standard for me in the summer.
Though minimal travel wasn’t my intent, I started calling this ‘my staybatical’ right at the very beginning. It was a framework. How might I relate to this place differently one summer later if I treated this as a special, set-aside time? How could I make space for memories right here?
It turns out, I could do that daily. I’ve kept a running list on my phone since Memorial Day, the informal beginning of summer. Today is Day 92. Every day, I’ve sought to do something memorable. It doesn’t have to be monumental — just something that might lead to me thinking or saying,
“Remember that time when we…?”
Or
“Remember that time when I…?”
Something that will stay with me.
My list is filled with things like,
“Dinner at ____ with ____”
“Walk and photography at ____ Metropark.”
There’s also,
“Mein erstes Mal am Stammtisch” (i.e. the time that I went to a German-speaking Meetup and discovered I’m an extrovert auf Deutsch, too.)
There were so many community events. (Thank you, Ann Arbor Observer Magazine). There were so many outdoor spaces. There were times with neighbors, including the literal ones on my actual street, and the ones that surround my life in this town where I live.
And here is where it led me:
I’m not trying to be overly schmaltzy, but I absolutely re-fell in love with Ann Arbor this summer.
It’s not that I had fallen out of love, though I confess, I have truly gotten to a place where I am over winter. But sometimes you need an experience and feeling of novelty. Sometimes you need to know that if you let a place hold you, it starts to form you.
And this staybatical gave me a framework and an experience of knowing I can shape and be shaped by seasons. Hopefully, this means I can be intentional in winter in unique ways rather than letting it be a blasé, throwaway, cabin fever time.
Two people carrying a chest of drawers into a moving truck.Public domain.
Every single day, there are real, raw, human stories of suffering in the news cycle. And likely, some of those harms are impacting real people we know and love. There are times when we feel helpless to prevent 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 those who are made vulnerable by harms and barriers.
In some spiritual traditions, we hear language of bearing each other’s burdens. Lately, within that vision, I find myself thinking about what it means 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 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 them. But alongside that commitment, we have to live and model our lives with a different rhythm altogether – with different commitments and ways of relating to one another.
We practice solidarity. Frankly, we practice love.
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.
Smuggling Grace 