Smuggling Grace

What if you could be gathered together in one place with a version of yourself from every year of your life? Like, from baby to current age of adulthood?

What if every age of yourself was present toward all the others, gathered together like a family reunion of sorts? What would that be like?

-Would certain ages pair together for care?

-Would certain ages avoid each other?

-Would certain ages wander off somewhere and find some space to tell the truth, or maybe do some reconciliation work?

-Would certain ages impart wisdom to the other ages?

What might the current you want to say to your younger selves? Truth be told, our younger selves are always present in some way, embedded into the rest of our lives. We can access the various parts of ourselves, and in a sense, even be in relationship with ourselves.

I suppose this is one form of resurrection.

–Renee Roederer

On Sunday, I celebrated Easter in Ann Arbor with folks at the Episcopal Church of the Incarnation. I had already heard a lot of wonderful things about this place because a number of my friends are a part of this community. For that reason, I walked in the doors with a bit of knowledge, but there was still much for me to experience and learn. For instance, I discovered the story of this unique building.

Upon entering the Episcopal Church of the Incarnation, I imagine most people become immediately curious about the architecture. It is very unique. Soon after I entered the space, I was grateful when someone told me the story about how this building came to be. It’s not a story I would have expected.

The building started with this piece in the photo above – the structure with the arch on top. An African-American professor named David Byrd had been teaching a construction class with his students, and this was one of their projects.

But once they were finished with it, they thought, why stop here? They began to ponder creating a building around this structure. While considering this, David Byrd had a experience of calling: He discerned that they should build a church.

And this is where a construction project became an even greater vision. He recalled these words of scripture, first found in the Hebrew Bible and then applied to Jesus in the New Testament,

The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone;
God has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes.

David Byrd, teacher and visionary, wanted to create a church that would house people who have been rejected, so that they could be at home, held in community, and empowered. For this reason, he and his students traveled around Washtenaw County and collected building materials that had been tossed aside and thrown away. From these, he built a home for anyone who feels rejected, a home for a community that is called to stand with those who are rejected.

This is powerful.

It also feels fitting. People from this community are now some of the leaders of the local chapter of the upcoming Poor People’s Campaign. If you have not yet heard about this, you surely will soon. There is a national movement underway to resurrect the Poor People’s Campaign, initiated by Martin Luther King Jr. He and others were working on this campaign in 1968, when it was sadly disrupted due to his assassination — 50 years ago this very day.

Martin Luther King Jr. was certainly a stone rejected. His legacy remains marvelous in our eyes, but his legacy is one that needs to be lived in our own lives, our own time, and our own particularity.

I am curious how a community built with this vision might participate in creating a social structure that resurrects this needed legacy in new ways.

–Renee Roederer

Well, I’m sad to say that our Michigan Wolverines did not win the NCAA Championship last night. Villanova was really phenomenal out there, so a big shout-out to their athleticism and drive.  But I’m very proud of this Michigan team too. I imagine it’s painful and difficult for these players to get so close and then lose. My thoughts are with them today.

Last night, as I watched, I found myself pondering what it’s like to follow along when the energy is moving in the direction you desire, and then what it feels like when that energy shifts. In other words, I found myself thinking about momentum.

It’s an easy thing to ponder because momentum can be felt physically, even in the role of a spectator. When the Wolverines started last night’s game, they came out with such sharp, forceful, confident energy. They were ahead for the first long segment of the game. But then, when Villanova took the lead, that lead continued to grow throughout much of the game. As I simply sat there and watched, I felt my own body shift from energetic and confident to lethargic and sad.

Then as I went to bed, I found myself pondering that experience more. We often have moments where our energy shifts physically, just by the act of observing. I think about the news cycle, for instance. How often does our energy shift based on what we read and see? And how is that connected to hopefulness? When the news includes wave after wave of challenge, we might begin to despair and believe that very little can be changed. But when we see, for instance, the teenagers of Parkland connecting with other teenagers across the nation, we might feel hope and believe that change could actually be possible. It’s interesting to ponder these kinds of shifts.

And then, there are two other kinds of experiences as well:

There are are moments when we move from being spectators to being actors, working intentionally in the directions we hope. The momentum can shift many times, and our own energies along with it, but we stay committed, not because of the momentum of the moment, but because we believe in the work and vision.

-And-

There are rare but very real moments when we see some challenging writing on the wall, and surprisingly. . . we come completely alive in the inevitability of losing. We know we’re going to take a risk, and it’s definitely going to cost us. But it’s worth it. Truth-telling can be like that. (God bless whistle blowers). Or we come to recognize our finitude, perhaps, very concretely – we age, we receive a diagnosis, we lose a dream, we lose a person — and shockingly, we come alive with more vitality, recognizing what a gift life can be.

This is a resurrection kind of momentum. How completely counter-intuitive, shocking, surprising, and life-giving it is.

–Renee Roederer

Happy Easter!

It’s a season, so I can still say that.

People often make New Year’s resolutions, and of course, some make intentional choices and changes for Lent. But how about initiating something intentional during the Easter season too — a new practice, a new question, a new wondering, a new framework?

Perhaps it’s surprising that we don’t often think about Easter as a season in this way. After all, it is about new life, so there are some good possibilities there! Easter is a season that is 50 days long. From now to May 20 (Pentecost), how might we practice what is calling us into new life?

I’m going to try something, and I’m curious to see where it will take me:

For the next 50 days, I’m going to spend less time on social media — not 0, but much less — and instead, I’m going to prioritize having more purposeful, intentional, in-real-life conversations.

I started this yesterday, and it was wonderful. I called a bunch of former students yesterday to wish them a Happy Easter and hear how they are doing. I’m grateful for opportunities to keep in touch via texts and messenger apps, but some aspects of conversation are just more possible with actual voice.

You can go deeper in conversation and talk about more meaningful things, of course. But you can also hear and laugh about more mundane things, and this is somehow extra rich also — the funny mix-up that happened that morning, the realization that a return trip to the grocery store is in order, that today needs a good nap (yes, I woke someone up when I called).

All of this (well, minus waking someone up – sorry!) was really so wonderful.

I’m curious what kind of impact this might have over the next 50 days. What about you?

–Renee Roederer

For many years, I have shared a phrase with a dear person in my life. Perhaps we’ve been saying it back and forth to one another for an entire decade.

“The mystery of goodness,” we say.

We use this phrase in a variety of ways.

“I didn’t expect that at all. It was the mystery of goodness.”

“See, you’re worth it! The mystery of goodness.”

“Just try it. You’ll be surprised. It will show up. The mystery of goodness.”

Each time, our phrase has addressed the ways that life often hands us unexpected gifts of connection, meaning, and purpose.

Our phrase has not always been spoken in moments of joy and surprise, however. More often, we’ve spoken this phrase to one another when life experiences have been painful and hard – sometimes overwhelmingly so. Our phrase has never been a pithy saying between us. Instead, we allow it to speak to realities that are deep, grief-filled, and challenging. That’s because our phrase is not ultimately a phrase. It is a way of viewing the world.

We have dared to speak, and we have dared to believe – sometimes when it felt nearly impossible to do so – that despite the losses and injustices of the world, and despite the losses and injustices in our own lives, goodness comes. And in the end, it will prevail.

Love and life have the last word.
Goodness has the last word.
Connection, meaning, and purpose have the last word.

Despite the pain we feel and the pain we know,
Life turns on the mystery of goodness, and
We are loved into life.

Let me be clear here. This is not pithy. We are talking about something challenging. This way of viewing the world is the hard-wrought work of having hope when nearly all feels lost. At times, we all need to invite others to hold out this kind of hope for us because we cannot begin to believe it for ourselves. And it’s for good reason: In our lives and in the lives of our communities, we have experienced death, trauma, abuse, depression, war, racism, addiction, unemployment, divorce, poverty, and other forms of loss and injustice.

This is hard work. It is challenging at times to believe in the mystery of goodness. But we are all invited to hope even just a little more. We are invited to lean into that hope so much, in fact, that we help bring goodness into the world and into the lives of one another.

On this Easter morning, I find myself reflecting upon the mystery of goodness. While we can hope for love and life to prevail, we rarely anticipate what they will look like in the face of hatred and death. They always surprise us.

Yet the surprise comes. No one expected Jesus – tortured, ridiculed, and executed – to walk out of the grave with life in his lungs and in his steps, but that is the great Mystery of Goodness on Easter morning.

Can we allow ourselves to hope for one another?
Can we turn that hope toward others who cannot possibly see the light at the end of the tunnel for themselves and those they love?

This is not pithy.
It is a way of viewing the world, and
It is hard work.

And so,
To the friends who have lost multiple family members in one year,
To the friends who are in the throws of depression,
To the friends who are homeless and regularly skipping meals,
To the friends who are divorcing,
To the friends who are incarcerated,
To the friends facing terminal illnesses,

We do not diminish your pain.

We enter it, and with love,
We hope for you.
We hope the unexpected gifts of Easter.
We hope the Mystery of Goodness.

–Renee Roederer

Stephon Clark.

“We’re Geezer Millennials,” I said last night, pointing to Ian and me as we sat around a table with students.

This came up first when we were talking about age, and then later, when we were dating some old shows and video games — that is, if or when we knew about them as children. In all of this, when I used this silly, self-descriptive term, I was conveying that we are in fact, among the very oldest Millennials. My high school graduating class in 2000 helped give this generation its name: We initiated the bracketing.

I’m still relatively young, but I don’t consider myself to be a ‘young adult’ anymore. (Unless, perhaps, you’re in the Presbyterian world, where anyone under 50 is considered a young adult. The PC(USA) has its own version of dog years, but in reverse: Maybe every 7 years only equals 1?)

At age 36, I lapped adulthood this year.  This means I am also double the age of a college freshman.

And friends, I love all of this.

Last night, I told this table of people that hardly a day goes by when I don’t think about how much I love being in my mid-30s. This is true. This is one of the fullest, most meaningful eras of my life so far, and it is, in part, connected to age.

It’s this sense that if I’m fortunate to live a long time, I still have a lot ahead of me. But I have some significance behind me too. I have lived a lot. I even have some wisdom to share. (Still much to learn though!)

And I have the opportunity to keep doing what I’ve been doing now for more than a decade – cultivating intentional, nurturing space for young adults – but now, I get to do it with more age. This has always been a rich life-calling, but it just keeps getting richer.

And in all of this, a particular joy finds me on an everyday basis. This is my deepest joy as a Geezer Millennial: I know a large number of young adults who now live all over the place — people with whom I am inextricably linked in community and kinship; people who are doing amazing things with their lives —

They live in 3 nations,
and at least 14 states (hopefully, I didn’t miscount those)

I’ve known some of them for a couple of years,
and some for more than a decade (by the way, this is astonishing to me)

I’m in touch with them regularly. And every single day, at least one of them says something so loving, caring, compassionate, and affectionate to me; something so wise; something that teaches me about life; something that speaks to the particularity of their being and calling in the world.

Do you know how lucky I am to experience and hear these things every single day?

This is undoubtedly one of the reasons I love my mid-30s so much. I keep having this experience and marveling about how rich it is.

Ah, the daily joys of a Geezer Millennial. . . This keeps getting broader; this keeps growing deeper.

–Renee Roederer

Bob Ballard is an explorer with an insatiable desire to make discoveries in the depth of the ocean. With submersibles and a host of underwater technology, he has found many sites of significance. If you’ve ever heard his name before, it’s probably due to his most famous discovery: He is the person who found the Titanic on the ocean floor seventy-three years after it sank to the bottom.

Recently, Ian and I have been watching a series on Netflix called Alien Deep. In each episode, Bob Ballard and his crew set off to make discoveries of various kinds, either to find items in the dark ocean or to uncover new information about the earth itself.

Last night, we watched Bob Ballard and his team find ancient shipwrecks in the Mediterranean Sea. This was astounding. First, they discovered items from a Byzantine Era shipwreck in the 6th century CE. Then, they found a remarkably well preserved shipwreck from 4,000 years ago. The location, along with the depth and consistency of the water, was just right for preservation. The actual wood from the ship still remained! Incredible.

But the most astonishing discovery was that they found human bones within this shipwreck from 4,000 years ago. In all his years of exploring, Bob Ballard has never found remnants of a person. Here was the human connection. Here were the remains from a human person who had died — likely, a member the crew who has never been seen again until this moment.

This connects to one of the most powerful aspects of Bob Ballard’s work. He and his crew find ways to bridge time and bring dignity to the lives of real human beings — people who experienced terror and trauma in their last moments, whose bodies entered a frigid, dark, unseen place. By discovering their artifacts, and in this astonishing case, by discovering their very bones, Bob Ballard invites us to remember and contemplate their lives. This certainly does not redeem their tragedies, but perhaps in entering them, it ensures that these human beings are not forgotten.

Once when I was in seminary, author Timothy B. Tyson was a special guest lecturer. I remember him speaking the words of Ezekiel, recalling the vision of the valley of dry bones. “Can these bones live?” Ezekiel had asked his audience.

Timothy Tyson began to speak of the transatlantic slave trade and utter horrors of enslavement on those ships, bodies disregarded, chained, and stacked on top of one another. He reminded us that human beings with Black bodies were thrown overboard for uprising, or for sickness. In a haunting way, Timothy Tyson spoke of their bones too, their remains on the ocean floor: “Can these bones live?” he asked us, his audience.

Perhaps that question ought to linger.

Can these bones live?

We cannot redeem the tragedies of these bodies, these human lives either. But perhaps in entering their history and taking their legacy seriously, we will ensure they are not forgotten. And, perhaps with intention, we will cease reenacting such traumas generation after generation.

–Renee Roederer

A few days ago, I was present in the midst of a group conversation where multiple people said,

“You just don’t see that anymore.”

and

“I just don’t see many present examples right now.”

and

“It’s so rare to experience that these days.”

At one point, we were talking about forgiveness. At another point, we were talking about kindness. No one in this conversation had become cynical; instead, I believe I was hearing a yearning for expressions of care, both public and personal.

Along with this, I also recall how many people shared the trailer of the upcoming Fred Rogers documentary on Facebook recently. I saw that posted all over the place. (I also love it and can’t wait to see the film myself.) Right now, I think there is a longing to see and experience kindness on display, not just for the sake of it being on display, but for the inherent sake of kindness itself.

Or to use another word, we need gentleness. We need to practice it. We need to receive it. We need a gentler world.

This is different, of course, than needing a comfortable world. As a caveat, this is not an effort to decrease the tenacity and strength of voices crying out in anger and pain when they are experiencing violence and being marginalized (as if we could do this anyway). Sometimes, we make calls toward kindness and “civility” so we don’t have to be uncomfortable with the righteous anger and pain people are expressing. That’s just tone-policing and respectability politics, and it does more harm.

But I wonder what would happen if we responded with kindness and tenderness? I wonder what would happen if we responded not with defensiveness but gentleness?

I also wonder what would happen if we chose to practice more gentleness toward ourselves right now. This is a human need all the time. I think it is especially needed right now.

On these all of things, I’m just wondering aloud today. I would love to hear from you too.

What do you wonder?

What do you think?

What do you long for?

–Renee Roederer

Today’s piece is a re-post, a reminder that resistance and protest can be important actions of faithfulness.

A blessed Table Flipping Monday, y’all.

A couple of years ago, my friend and pastoral colleague Sarah Ross made a suggestion that the Monday of Holy Week ought to be considered Table Flipping Monday.  Of course, that’s a pretty humorous title, but Sarah also helped me think about this . . .

During the last week of his life, when Jesus arrived in Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover, the very first thing he did was walk into the center of communal, religious life and hold it accountable. He went into the Temple, the most holy place, and was horrified to discover that some were making unjust money as they oppressed the Jewish people in their religious devotion. He turned over the tables and chased out the money changers, quoting Jewish scripture, saying, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have made a den of robbers.’”

I want to be careful about how I talk about this story, in large part because throughout history, Holy Week has been an occasion when Christians have oppressed Jews and even caused violence. When I think about this day, I don’t aim to criticize the Temple or the religious heritage of which Jesus was fully a part.

Instead, I want to consider the ways in which my own religious tradition ought to be held accountable. That includes this painful history we have caused our Jewish siblings. And it includes a host of other abuses fully expressed in the present.

Religion can give life and meaning, and it can be twisted as a tool for oppression.

There are a multitude of ways in which tables ought to be flipped over. In fact, accountability and truth telling can be acts of spiritual devotion in and of themselves.

Jesus rages against the oppression and manipulation of others. Today, we need prophets and holy agitators to follow into this calling. I offer my gratitude today for people who hold my tradition and our actions to account.

One of Christianity’s foundational teachings involves a holy leveling – an inverted shift where the marginalized become the most empowered and the most powerful are brought into humility.

But too often, we fall far short of this vision. Today can serve as a day of confession.

May Jesus and a host of others flip the tables.

– Renee Roederer