Smuggling Grace

Image Description: A person is sitting with a laptop on their lap; the screen has an image of a galaxy.

As I’ve been doing pretty frequently these days, I led a worship service over Zoom yesterday morning. Many communities are using this platform, but I’ve noticed that each congregation utilizes it with slight differences in order to fit their own worship rhythms and preferences.

Many congregations have chosen to mute everyone during collective prayers and liturgy while one or two people speak the words aloud. This way, we don’t hear everyone’s voices at once, speaking out of sync with time delays. Muted people can speak aloud at home, but we don’t hear their voices.

Of course, we lose a sense of the collective sound in the midst of this also. The congregation I was with yesterday enjoys speaking prayers all together, all aloud, with the time delays.

I enjoyed and appreciated this too. There were times when I let all of that sound wash over me in a sense. This was especially true when we prayed the Lord’s Prayer together. I spoke the words, but I listened even more. I heard the phrases overlapping with one another as they were voiced from many places. And this felt like a true recognition of prayer over distance. We can feel surrounded in a sound like that, and when we’re physically alone, this is a lovely gift.

–Renee Roederer

Image Description: A sunflower.

“I wonder, what can I share from my walk?” I asked myself.

Questions shape what we experience. We often see and perceive what’s before us in particular ways because we’ve asked asked a specific question.

While walking alone, I looked for beauty in my very-familiar-to-me neighborhood. Because I asked that question, I noticed new things. I wanted to take a photo of something beautiful and share it.

I saw some sunflowers. I’ve never walked in their direction before, even though they are in view from the route I travel nearly every time I walk through my neighborhood. I snapped a lovely image and shared it with several people.

Sometimes, we need small glimpses of beauty, and we shouldn’t underestimate the ways they can lift people’s spirits or help us feel connected to each other. I had not thought of this in a long time, but years ago, my friend called me and left a really lovely voicemail. With her permission, I shared it on my blog. I’m going to share it again.

She said,

“I feel so happy every time I have to drive this way because sunflowers are in full bloom now. We have these huge fields and fields and fields of sunflowers being grown as crops, and they’re just so pretty. Unfortunately, they’re not ever in a place where I can pull over and take a picture because they’re on the freeway, and there’s not much of a shoulder. But I wanted to tell you about that, because I thought that is something that would also bring you joy like it does me.”

Let’s share our little glimpses of beauty.

–Renee Roederer

On behalf of the Interfaith Round Table of Washtenaw County, I had the pleasure to partner with a new local community of faith leaders, Interfaith Pride – Washtenaw, to create an Interfaith Pride Celebration. The theme was, “Each Unique, All Beloved.” It aired live on Facebook and Youtube last Thursday night, and it can be accessed now in both places.

I could not be more pleased about how it turned out. As Anna Taylor-McCants, the pastoral intern at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, says in the introduction, “Our intention for creating this event is to bring together LGBTQIA+ affirming religious, spiritual, and faith traditions across the Washtenaw County area. Our hope is that whoever you are and wherever you are, you will experience a flavor of the Divine, of the Holy One, that nourishes your soul. Tonight, some of us will be celebrating together, and others of us will be lamenting together. And for some, I hope this is a beautiful worship experience. Thank you for being on this journey with us.”

These segments are so beautiful. I provided one as did members of my Chosen Family. I’d love to share this with you today. There is an ASL interpreter throughout, so feel free to share this with your Deaf friends too.

May you be affirmed!

–Renee Roederer

A few years ago, a video about Prince’s 2007 Super Bowl performance made a resurgence. (See above). People passed it around social media and remembered his great life and presence. And I love this video.

I cannot get enough of it as a moment.

What I mean is that some elements of the experience happened apart from anyone’s decision or control. Namely, lots and lots of rain. But Prince and his team also embraced those elements to synergize a moment of creativity, connection, and electrifying energy. At Super Bowl XLI, Prince sang ‘Purple Rain’ in an absolute downpour. It was magical.

Along with sections of the performance itself, the video above includes interviews with Half Time Show designers and managers. They agree this performance was truly  a remarkable moment. In their own words, they share what made them so impressed:

Prince embraced a situation of potential inconvenience,
and completely transformed it.

Prince demonstrated confidence on the stage,
and performed music written by others.

Prince rolled with a great deal of spontaneity,
and launched it into the world as if this is exactly what should happen.

It all leads to the finale. As Prince wraps up “The Best of You” by Foo Fighters, he flashes this foreshadowing look across his face that something special is about to happen. And then it does. Fireworks explode, and standing in the downpour, Prince captivates the stage even more as he starts to sing, “Purple Rain.” The crowd goes wild.

Then he pulls the crowd into the creation of the experience too. They sing along with him, and suddenly, everyone is participating in this strange yet magical moment. They are drenched but connected with wonderful energy.

It’s beautiful.

There’s an ancient Greek word for moments like these: Kairos.

Kairos is a type of time. It’s different the most common conception of time, which more clearly matches the Greek word chronos – time which marks things linearly i.e. one event leading naturally to the next, as the past leads to the present, etc.

But Kairos is a form of time which marks a significant moment.
Some might even call it a sacred moment.

Kairos is not measured by length in seconds, minutes, days, or years.
It isn’t about length or anything linear at all.
It’s about an experience.

Kairos an opportune moment where everything comes together.
It isn’t a measurement, but a recognition,
a realization that a moment is to be embraced and savored.
Kairos is a moment to be fully alive.

In those moments, what can else can we do but take it all in and say thank you?

That’s what one of the interviewees says in the video: “When he did do ‘Purple Rain,’ that was one of those times where things just work magically, and there’s nothing you can do but say, ‘Thank you.’”

–Renee Roederer

Image Description: Snowcapped mountains with elk in the foreground. They are foraging for food in the snow. Public domain image.

A couple years ago, I was driving home after an out of town meeting. Some folks like long drives because it allows them to think. I admit I usually just get bored. These days, during a pandemic, I have not filled up my car with gas since March. I mostly stay home and take walks. My car is getting a big break and so is my time spent driving.

On this night, however, I was less bored, and instead, I arrived in place of thinking. Specifically, I ended up in a lovely place of remembering. I was listening to the radio when U2’s song, “But I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” came on. That song always transports me to another time and place. I instantly see the mountains on a drive upward from Salida, Colorado. I feel a sense of belonging with gratitude.

More than ten years ago, I traveled to this place on an annual ski trip with college students. There are so many memories connected to these trips. Laughter. Inside jokes. Texans seeing snow for the first time. And… that particular time I became seriously injured (I don’t even remember most of the day) and a whole community surrounded me with care in ways that astounded me.

And I remember feeling belonging — such a rich feeling of belonging.

Every year, some odd student would be tasked with creating a playlist. We would pop in a CD (a CD! remember those?) and listen to music as we drove up the mountain in a caravan of two or three vans. Several songs had to be included each year (The Who’s “Baba O’Riley,” Barenaked Ladies’ “If I Had a Million Dollars,” and Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song,” which we had to play specifically when we turned into the parking lot of the ski resort). Good trips have good traditions.

But then the playlist creator o’ the year would add other songs of their choosing. One year, or maybe multiple years, “But I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” was on the CD, meaning we listened to it several days in a row as we drove up into those mountains and prepared ourselves for full days of skiing.

I suppose the title is a bit ironic because I have such deep sense memory of listening to that song and having a feeling of arrival. I was a very young seminary student, just barely out of college myself, and I knew I had found some of my best friends. And along with it, there’s that feeling — do you know it? — of resting in the realization that this is your group. These are my people. I remember feeling such a visceral sense of gratitude to be gathered with them and to know what this kind of group-belonging feels like.

So all these years later, I drove home in Michigan on a night when it was cold, dark, and oddly foggy, and when that song came on, I could still feel that exact same feeling. And I cried. And I loved it.

–Renee Roederer

See also, J.J. STARK BLIMP JR. All these years later, they’re still my people.

Image description: A circular clock with roman numerals; it’s surrounded by ripples as if it was dropped in water.

I’m pondering timescales and the ways that change is connected to time. If we want to participate in the creation of lasting change, we might…

. . . work for seven generations beyond ourselves, as the Haudenosaunee nations have taught us.

. . . feel through one day, for as Jesus says,”Do not worry about tomorrow. . . Today’s trouble is enough for today.”

. . . live fully in the present, as this time has been given to us for significant impact and enjoyment.

. . . expect that today’s work ripples meaningfully into the future, perhaps in valuable directions we cannot even anticipate.

. . . recognize that our liberation is bound up in the liberation of others, and our lives are intimately connected to the devastation and deliverance of the past and future.

. . . trust that collective intentions toward justice are truly moving in the direction of justice, even if we cannot see this at its completion, and that future expressions of justice call forward our work for today.

– Renee Roederer

Image Description: A rainbow stretches across a cloudy, evening sky above the trees.

I had the most incredible walk in my neighborhood.

I have hardly ever seen so many different, beautiful scenes in the sky in one night. If I looked in one direction, I saw a deep, glowing, gorgeous orange. Around a corner, I discovered swirling pinks and purples.

We also had a light rain. So my favorite moment happened when I turned a different corner. I suddenly saw a full rainbow. I wasn’t expecting it at all, and it was breathtaking.

I stood there and enjoyed it. Rather ephemeral, it only lasted about two minutes before fading away. Suddenly, the sky looked typical, as if it hadn’t even happened.

But I knew it did. And I smiled with gratitude to have seen it.

For the rest of the rainy walk, I found myself reflecting upon that. There are probably so many moments each day where things line up in remarkably beautiful and surprising ways – not only in nature itself but also among human beings. Those moments rarely make the news, but people know about them. Perhaps they smile with gratitude to have experienced them.

Sometimes, solidarity is about being in the right place at the right time and choosing to add deep connection to the moment.

Let’s look for opportunities to discover it.

– Renee Roederer

Image Description: A close up on a person’s eye; roman numerals surround it like a clock.

We carry time within us.

Sometimes, a simple smell, sound, or sight can transport us to another time –
a time long ago, but a time we still carry within ourselves.

Somehow, the present moment can bring the past right into focus. In the midst of this, we feel connections to previous moments and people who were a part of them. We even experience this in our bodies. The past makes itself known in our feelings and physical sensations.

All of this is true
in our very best memories and connections,
in our relationship to grief and loss, and
in our experiences of trauma.

Time travels so easily because we carry time within us. This is part of being human.

But we are not solely passive agents in the midst of this. We can make some choices about how we bring time to ourselves. We can build connections between moments, and these connections can give us ahas of insight. We can make space to feel our emotions. We can honor people who have died. We can allow time to speak to us and make new meaning for the present.

And

We can be a Mediator. We can facilitate communication between past and present — toward healing, toward insight, toward laughter, toward joy.

Then speaks to Now,
Now speaks to Then,
Older and younger versions of ourselves are in communion.

–Renee Roederer

Image Description: A communion set with a cup, pitcher, and plate of bread is on my dining room table. The set was created by Karla Johnston-Krase, and it has beautiful colors of red, orange, yellow, and brown.

If you would have asked me last year, or frankly, at any point in my life, if I would have foreseen occasions when I might break bread, pour wine, and practice communion over a video conferencing platform called Zoom, the scenario would have never crossed my mind.

But I did do this for the first time with a church community today, and it invigorated me. There’s something kind of odd about everyone being in their own separate places, providing whatever bread, juice, or wine they have to the moment. And yet, that feels beautiful too, like little loaves and fish multiplied into a feast of meaning (fish metaphorically, of course, unless someone brought some without me knowing!)

Over the last couple of years, my communion prayers have become remarkably mystic in their language and imagery. Wherever we are, we are connected… frankly, to everything. All the lives and loves that have preceded us… all eras of time… all of the earth… all the cosmos… all sacred meaning… all the ways that God, The Sacred, has shown up and will show up. And all of this becomes revealed in incarnation… Jesus journeying with us and accompanying the many outcasts of every time, revealing a love that threatens power… the time and place of this specific meal… this bread and this cup… this gathered community.

This Zoomunity for Sacred Zoomunion.

Okay, that’s silly, but is that not incarnational too? So specific to this time, these needs, and these people before us?

All I know is that when we shared visions, words, and dreams like this today, I felt fully alive. And I felt a lot of love made real.

And I thought about something that David Nelson Roth used to say. He is my most formative predecessor, a Balcony Person among that Great Cloud of Witnesses that surrounds us in such a meal.

He, too, a pastor, said this,

“Sometimes people think we gather together for worship to escape the real world. But this is the real world.”

Together, in this communal setting, we are invited to ponder what is most real, most true, and most sacred — what undergirds our living and calls it to traverse pathways we haven’t fully realized.

This Love.

This Love is the real world, inviting our living in its direction.

— Renee Roederer

This question keeps swirling around in my mind and heart.

When I think about the vision of my Christian tradition and my own mystic, spiritual leanings, I love the multifaceted concept of time and the ways that time impacts reality and how we make meaning.

So what’s Kairos?

In the Greek New Testament, there are two words for time, and they have different meanings (I’m going somewhere we this).

— One is ‘chronos.’ This is the linear way of thinking of time, and it’s the way we most conceive of time as well. We find ourselves in a specific moment, surrounded by a sequence of minutes, hours, days, years, and more.

— Then, there’s ‘kairos.’ This is a beautiful concept. Kairos is fulfillment-time breaking into our everyday, mundane lives. If we were to think about what is most true, most beautiful, most abundant, most hopeful, most connectional and most fulfilling — the ways things should be — that is Kairos time. And there are moments when we marvel at how things have come together or how they reveal what is most full and beautiful. In this framework, the most sacred possibility is a unit of time that breaks into our chronos, everyday linear living. It is a moment in which fulfillment manifests itself.

But what’s the opposite of Kairos?

Because do we feel that sometimes?

I do.
I feel it right now in these days that I am living.
I feel it right now these days that we are living.

If Kairos is the realest-real, the truest-true, and the-way-things-should-be made manifest,

…aren’t there also moments when the non-real, the falsest-false, and the-way-things-shouldn’t-be are made manifest? Do these not also take form? Do these not also break into our chronos, everyday linear living?

Of course they do.

Falsehood made manifest.

Non-reality (false narratives, untruths, distortions) taking shape and entering our daily reality to harmful effect.

Is this a form of time?

Untruth and what-shouldn’t-be manifested to real effect, shaping our everyday existence.

How do we grieve the times when what-shouldn’t-be breaks into our reality and… is?

–Renee Roederer