Smuggling Grace

This week, I’ve been listening to Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds on audiobook, read by its author adrienne maree brown. The book opens up analogies to us through biomicry, inviting us to learn from nature-inspired innovation and organize our human living, loving, and changing through these patterns of nature.

Today, I’d like to share a quote about fractals. We often live in patterns: The small mirrors the large. Likewise, the small can shape and change the large. If we want to change big things, we can start small and let our largest values show up in our small, day-to-day interactions, especially through our relationships. If we want liberation, love, wholeness, and interdependence to be lived on the large scale, we must practice it as lived right where we are in the relationships we have and in our day to day living.

adrienne maree brown says,

“A fractal is a never-ending pattern. Fractals are infinitely complex patterns that are self-similar across different scales. They are created by repeating a simple process over and over in an ongoing feedback loop.

“How we are at the small scale is how we are at the large scale. The patterns of the universe repeat at scale. There is a structural echo that suggests two things: one, that there are shapes and patterns fundamental to our universe, and two, that what we practice at a small scale can reverberate to the largest scale…

“This awareness led me to look at organizations more critically. So many of our organizations working for social change are structured in ways that reflect the status quo. We have singular charismatic leaders, top down structures, money-driven programs, destructive methods of engaging conflict, unsustainable work cultures, and little to no impact on the issues at hand. This makes sense; it’s in the water we’re swimming in. But it creates patterns. Some of the patterns I’ve seen that start small and then become movement wide are:

— Burn out. Overwork, underpay, unrealistic expectations.
— Organizational and movement splitting.
— Personal drama disrupting movements.
— Mission drift, specifically in the direction of money.
— Stagnation — an inability to make decisions.

“These patterns emerge at the local, regional, state, national, and global level — basically wherever two or more social change agents are gathered. There’s so much awareness around it, and some beautiful work happening to shift organizational cultures. And this may be the most important element to understand — that what we practice at the small scale sets the patterns for the whole system.

“Grace [Lee Boggs] articulated it in what might be the most-used quote of my life: “Transform yourself to transform the world.” This doesn’t mean to get lost in the self, but rather to see our own lives and work and relationships as a front line, a first place where we can practice justice, liberation, and alignment with each other and the planet.”

-adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds, pages 51-53

* If you’d like to read the book, you can find it here:
https://www.akpress.org/emergentstrategy.html

It’s a new month.

This month, I’ve decided to reflect upon, choose, and act upon what it means to say, “No.”

This might mean…
— saying no to tasks that aren’t best for us to do,
— saying no to what brings down our energy,
— saying no to beliefs that no longer serve us,
— saying no to narratives (external, internal, or cultural) that are painful distortions,
— saying no to injustices,
— saying no to systemic ways of doing harm,
— saying no to old patterns we no longer want,
— saying no to doing too much,
— saying no to unreasonable expectations,
— saying no to… (fill in the blank)

And I’m also going to reflect upon, choose, and act upon this realization:
When we say “no,” to some things, we are making way to say “yes” to other things.

We are making space for our best affirmations, intentions, and priorities.

Want to ponder this with me?

–Renee Roederer

I learned something really fun about turkeys yesterday. Enjoy!

Getting Turkeys to Gobble in a Group

-Renee Roederer

I’ve written about this before, but it’s on my mind again this this morning, so I thought I’d share it once more. I love a particular quote from Frederick Buechner.

This quote has been voiced during milestone events in my life and the lives of people I love. I first heard it when a loved one spoke it aloud to frame my ordination service (that was so meaningful). I have voiced it when I’ve officiated weddings. I wrote it at the beginning of someone’s commencement letter.

There’s something special about this because the quote has become communitied. Ordination services, and weddings, and commencements. . . A whole bunch of people in my wider community know this quote and hold it dear. Here it is:

In the entire history of the universe, let alone in your own history, there has never been another day just like today, and there will never be another just like it again. Today is the point to which all your yesterdays have been leading since the hour of your birth. It is the point from which all your tomorrows will proceed until the hour of your death. If you were aware of how precious today is, you could hardly live through it. Unless you are aware of how precious it is, you can hardly be said to be living at all.

Yes, this is great for milestone days.

But also. . . Frederick Buechner didn’t write this about milestone days. His point is that every day — every single today — is this unique. Every day is a hinge moment. Every day is precious.

So every day this week, I’ve said this quote aloud first thing in the morning. I’ve invited this to frame my days. It doesn’t mean that every day is easy. I’ve actually waded through some challenges this week. It just means that every day is particular. Every day has value. Every day can teach us.

Today is precious.

–Renee Roederer

This quote was originally published in Whistling in the Dark and later in Beyond Words.

Image Descriptions: Two pictures of a golden doodle resting his head on my leg. I’m wearing red and black plaid pajama pants.

Sometimes, I get to watch this little buddy. He’s my friend’s golden doodle pup, and he’ll be with me this weekend. When he stays with me, I notice this:

He’s nearly always aware of me. He follows me around the house. He watches me. He lies at my feet. He explores the house, sniffing things, but then he looks at me here and there to anchor and orient himself.

It makes me wonder…

To what… to do I orient myself? What am I aware of? What’s in my consciousness? Who and what are my anchors? Who and what do I attune toward?

— Renee Roederer

Earlier this week, I sent someone an article that I appreciate:

The Best Drug I’ve Ever Taken Wasn’t Even a Drug. It was EMDR Therapy by Adam Copland.

EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, and it’s a highly effective treatment for trauma. I have also done it, and it changed my physiology in significant and beneficial ways.

It’s also a helpful form of therapy for people who 1) want an experience that is somatic (reorganizing the body’s reactions to trauma, stress, and anxiety) and 2) want to do less talking with a therapist (though this can be part of it too if desired), particularly if it’s hard to put emotions into words.

We have all gone through significant stress during this pandemic. That alone has been a lot to manage. Then we think about anything personal and particular we’re experiencing, or the sense that we’ve been in collective crisis at least since 2016, and this… has been a lot. I want to recommend EMDR as one possible modality to work through these things.

–Renee Roederer

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