Smuggling Grace

Sometimes, we long for something very specific. Maybe it’s an experience, a hope, something material, or something relational. We picture it clearly, envisioning exactly how it will look or unfold. But if it doesn’t arrive in the way we imagine, or on the timetable we most desire, can feel like a profound loss. Deflation sets in. Sometimes, we even feel powerless.

But here’s a different way to think about it: What values are drawing us to that specific thing? What are the deeper needs or desires connected to it?

Once we name those values, we might find that there are probably like numerous ways to cultivate them in our lives. Maybe we’re longing for connection, creativity, security, or joy. The thing we’re imagining might feel like the perfect vessel, but it’s not the only one.

And who knows? That specific experience, hope, or relationship might still emerge, exactly as we envisioned. But even if it doesn’t, our emotions won’t feel as contingent on that one outcome. We’ll have already found other paths to the values that matter most.

There are many routes to the values. It’s worth exploring where they might lead.

— Renee Roederer

We often frame our lives as a series of steps leading to something else—the next season, the next opportunity, the next chapter. This forward-thinking posture is natural, but it risks eclipsing the fullness of where we already are.

What if we challenged ourselves to see certain moments not as launching pads for what’s next, but as culmination points? These are moments when we can pause to recognize the people and experiences that have brought a particular moment into being.

This year, I want to notice these culmination points. I hope to pause, notice how moments have emerged, and honor the gratitude for the people and experiences within them.

— Renee Roederer

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.

— Mary Oliver

Happy New Year.

You’re worth it.

I love singing “O Come All Ye Faithful” on Christmas Eve. Though I suppose it could be sung again any time during the 12-Day season of Christmas, I typically only sing this once per year. It’s wonderful when an organ is leading it loudly in concert with all the voices, or as I experienced this year, alongside a brass ensemble, too.

I did not get to sing the line that typically makes me laugh though. It’s just an absurd line. We didn’t sing that verse.

The verse in question begins with,
God of God, Light of Light…

And then we get to the line in question:
Lo, he abhors not the virgin’s womb!

What a weird thing to say. I mean, we could say anything about this newborn baby, or make great meaning about the Christ, but instead, we have this bizarre exclamation:

Well, would ya look at that! Can you believe this tiny baby actually does not detest with perfect hatred the uterus of his virgin mother?!? How amazing is it that he does not abhor it? Not even one little bit!

Just a wildly weird thing to say. Also, is he supposed to abhor it? Is there like a de facto abhoring that most people would have, but he’s just rising above it? Or are we saying, well, you’d think he’d abhor that womb, but I think that crying baby would rather be back in there!

Who knows.

Instead, like this quote better. Cole Arthur Riley writes,

“For me, the story of God becoming body is only matched by God’s submission to the body of a woman. That the creator of the cosmos would choose to rely on an embodied creation. To be grown, fed, delivered—God put faith in a body. In Mary’s muscles and hormones, bowels and breasts. And when Christ’s body is broken and blood shed, we should hold in mystery that first a woman’s body was broken, her blood shed, in order to deliver the hope of the world into the world.  

“We are remarkably material beings. When we speak of bearing the image of God, I believe no small part of that is a physical bearing. You may have heard it said, ‘You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.’ I’m not sure exactly where this notion came from, but the sentiment survives. Many of us, in pursuit of the spiritual, become woefully neglectful of the physical. We concern ourselves with a doctrine of salvation that is oriented around one underlying hope: heaven. And our concepts of heaven are often disembodied—a spiritual goal to transcend the material world eternally…. 

Our tales of Christian escapism lead us to the place where the physical is damned and the immaterial is gloried. Where the only holy things are invisible. How could you expect me to believe this when I’ve met a God who drank from the breast of his creation? [1] 

Yes, that’s much better.

— Renee Roederer

[1] Cole Arthur Riley, This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us (New York: Convergent, 2022), 57, 58. 

“What are you waiting for? Today is the day.

“To write the novel. To forgive your mother. To embrace your sister. To pick up your paintbrush. To set down your grudge. To love the skin you are in. To light the world with your light.”

— Regina Brett

Thanks to my friend MaryBeth for sharing this over the weekend. I thought I’d share it here as well.

— Photos by Renee Roederer

U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón wrote an original poem dedicated to NASA’s Europa Clipper mission to Jupiter’s moon Europa, which is believed to harbor a vast ocean beneath its icy surface.

Narrated by Limón herself, the poem is entitled “In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa” and it connects two water worlds — Earth, yearning to reach out and understand what makes a world habitable, and Europa, waiting with secrets yet to be explored. The poem will be engraved on a plaque carried aboard the Europa Clipper spacecraft.

Merry Christmas! It is 12 days long after all. Welcome to Day 2.

Here’s one of my favorite Christmas bops. Enjoy!