Smuggling Grace

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

Over time, particularly in Western cultures, the word believe has become quite narrowed in its meaning. For instance, in the context of my own Christian tradition, when people hear the word believe, they may hear it as—

. . . I believe in God.

. . . Do you believe in Jesus?

. . . I believe what the Bible says.

. . . Do you believe in heaven? —

people typically understand the word believe to mean “intellectual assent to a propositional idea.” In that framework, people consider these statements and questions, and then choose to affirm or reject them as logical possibilities.

But what if that’s too narrow a definition of the word believe?

The English word believe has been shaped greatly by the frameworks of the Enlightenment and Modernism. The words of the Hebrew Bible and Greek New Testament, however, speak of something quite different in their original languages.

These are words of the heart. . . words of will. . . and words of action. The words that often get translated into the English word believe are actually verbs of love, devotion, trust, purpose, and action.

Recently, I was reading Christianity After Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening by Diana Butler-Bass. (Great book. Check it out.) She suggests that if we want to best translate these verbs into English, it would be better to use a word like Belove. . .

. . . I belove God.

. . . Do you belove from Jesus?

. . . I belove the way of love that the Bible reveals.

. . . Do you belove toward the Transformation of All Things?

Of course, these sentences I’ve created are remarkably clunky. But they cast a different vision entirely, don’t they?

The life of faith is not some intellectual, get-it-right-or-else game, working to conform the intellect (and in some instances, stretch it to incredulity) toward a set of particular propositional affirmations. It is not an endeavor to complete a holy, ‘check yes’ list and thus secure a key to a distant, heavenly future – the ultimate fire insurance.

The life of faith is much deeper.

It is love of God — Love itself, revealed among us,

– and –

It is love of Neighbor — Love itself, enacted between us.

This I belove.

– Renee Roederer

I had a meeting at the University of Michigan campus, and when I finished, I realized I was really hungry. It was almost 10pm, close to Chipotle’s closing time. I walked in, and I was just about to order. Then, at the precise moment when the staff member asked me what I would like, I realized I had left my wallet in the car.

“Oh, you know what? Nevermind. Don’t start that. I just realized I left my wallet in the car.”

“That’s okay. We’ll make it for you anyway.”

“But I don’t –”

“Oh, no worries. Really, it’s okay. Glad to do it. We wouldn’t want you to go hungry.”

He said this in such a sincere way and seemed to take pleasure in offering this gift to me. I ended up with a free burrito bowl, and it was very kind.

When I left, I found myself reflecting upon those words of intention and action:
“We wouldn’t want you to go hungry.”
He meant it.
It was kind.

But when I left, I began to reflect. . . wondering how often people are honest that they’re hungry without ever receiving such a statement from us, or most importantly, the food they need. I found myself thinking about times when we’ve encountered the needs of people but consciously or unconsciously, put them into the category of, “They’re always hungry. That’s a type of person who is hungry. And a person to avoid.” Racism and classism are certainly a part of this.

I found myself remembering that there are humanitarian food crises in parts of the world right now.

And then there are people we meet in our daily encounters.

“We wouldn’t want you to go hungry.”

That intention and that action needs to grow in us.

– Renee Roederer