Smuggling Grace

Remember the During Times? During the most acute periods of the pandemic, we often spoke longingly of the Before Times, missing the days before we had to isolate and make cautious choices with every step. Today, COVID is still very real, and it’s not a small thing if you have it. But after vaccinations and re-openings, we’re in a different era. We may not think often about the During Times, nor invite ourselves to remember them. Who wants to do that?

My During Times were remarkably difficult. There are some things I value about that time. For instance, I learned how to genuinely enjoy my own company, a lesson that’s stuck with me. I still love traveling alone, and that independence brings me joy. But mostly, I was profoundly isolated. For 15 months, I saw about ten human beings, ever. Not ten people repeatedly — ten instances of human contact, total, and each time, at a big distance.

Simply put, I had no one to be in a bubble with me. The irony wasn’t lost on me. Day after day, I was doing a job building community for others, while I—an extrovert to the core—was entirely by myself. Every second of every day, for 1.25 years.

That’s the context. But this blog post isn’t about all that. It’s about a lasagna.

One day, one of the community members from the Epilepsy Foundation of Michigan decided to give me a great gift. Her husband is a fantastic cook, and he made a big tray of lasagna. She wanted them to drive an hour to bring it to me. We had talked countless times on the phone, but we had never met in person.

So, she brought her husband and her dog, and they drove all the way to my house. We stood outside, I gave the dog some well-earned pets, and I thanked her for this gesture—for seeing me, for caring about me—the Community Care Director. It made me feel so loved.

Later, when I warmed up that lasagna, it wasn’t just a meal. It was connection. It was being seen and valued. And yes, it was delicious.

Why do I tell this story? Because in a world with so many system-wide challenges, it’s easy to feel small. But don’t ever think for a second that you can’t seriously change someone’s life with your care, your hospitality, your kindness, and your connection.

You are more empowered than you know.

— Renee Roederer

— Photos by Renee Roederer

Inch Wide, Mile Deep

I recently had the wonderful occasion to attend the Fall Gathering of the Interfaith Round Table of Washtenaw County (IRT), which included speeches, music, rituals, and interfaith prayers. Christine Modey is the Chair of the Board of Directors for IRT, and I loved what she shared to open the experience and frame the time together. I asked her if I could share her remarks here, and gratefully, she sent them along.

Welcome, and thank you all for being here. Thanks, especially, to Theresa and the Unitarian Universalist Congregation for hosting us in your beautiful space again this year.

Thanks to the board and program committee of the Interfaith Round Table, and to everyone who is offering their gifts to this fall gathering, including our guest speaker Bob Brutell from the InterFaith Leadership Council of Metropolitan Detroit. We are so glad you’re here.

My name is Christine Modey, and I’m currently serving as the chair of the Interfaith Round Table of Washtenaw County.

One of the things I’ve been thinking about since starting interfaith work and joining the Interfaith Round Table is the question of what interfaith needs to do and be at this moment, in our place.

I don’t know the answer to this question.

I do know that the world has changed, since our founding in 1994. Since 9/11. Since 2016. Since Nov. 5.

The only thing certain is change. And so it’s right to keep asking ourselves what our community needs, what word we need to speak to each other, what next elegant step only we can take together?

An image that returns to my mind, again and again, is a bowl, maybe a basket.

Interfaith dialogue and interfaith relationship is a container for difference, not the eraser of difference. It refuses to reduce the irreducible. It doesn’t coerce artificial agreement. It doesn’t configure interfaith encounter into lowest common denominator spirituality.

Interfaith is spiky. Challenging. Demanding.

In a polarized world that asks us to declare our loyalties and shut “the Other” out, interfaith invites us into the same container, with those with whom we disagree, with those whose Truth is not our truth. Interfaith exists in the tension between competing truths.

Contained by our shared commitment to listen and understand our neighbors, interfaith demands mutual respect, trust, vulnerability, intellectual humility, and love. It demands recognition of the dignity and freedom of each person.

Interfaith invites us to hear one another’s songs, to lift up one another’s prayers, and–knowing the deepest longings of one another’s hearts–to act.

— Christine Modey

Christine Modey directs the Michigan Community Scholars Program at the University of Michigan. From 2015 to 2020, she also directed the Peer Writing Consultant Program at the Sweetland Center for Writing at the University of Michigan and taught courses in the theory and practice of peer writing tutoring, new media writing for nonprofit organizations, and first year composition. She has published articles about university-secondary school writing center partnerships, data visualization and corpus analysis of writing center session notes, and nineteenth-century literature, and has an abiding interest in networks, collaboration, and community building. She is the co-editor with David Schoem and Edward St. John of Teaching the Whole Student: Engaged Learning with Heart, Mind, and Spirit. She holds degrees in chemistry and English from Hope College (B.A.) and in English and American Literature from the University of Delaware (M.A., Ph.D.).

I saw this quote from Shannon Craigo-Snell, and it may be helpful to take in:

“One of the tenets of resisting injustice is ‘do not acquiesce in advance.’ I am telling myself that a corollary is ‘do not despair in advance.’ Prepare, yes. Protect, yes. Grieve, yes. But not despair.”

There’s some definite wisdom there.

Last night, I was in a room where it happens. I won’t say the room where it happens, because I believe there are many such rooms. But the Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice (ICPJ) held its annual Harvest Dinner with a couple hundred people, and it was truly a room like that. With a great deal of connection and cross-pollination, relationships were forged and deepened. Multiple times, people said, “Look around this room,” inviting us to take in the scene. It was filled with community members who are change agents, activists, creatives, and people who love deeply. We had music and speeches that drew us together. We shared opportunities to applaud honorees who were presented with awards for their vision and work in our county.

Desirae Simmons, one of ICPJ’s Co-Directors, began her address by saying, “Gathering together is a radical act.” I appreciated that statement, and it felt undeniably true.

I also heard some additional quotes that will stay with me:

Shihab Jackson, recipient of the Anti-Racist Advocate Award, shared that our county includes 12% Black residents, but 40% of the county’s population experiencing homelessness are Black. Jackson then said, “Every trauma inflicted on our community deserves an equal and opposite level of joy.” We were invited into advocacy and joy together.

A Brighter Way is an organization that uplifts the experiences and leadership of people who have been formerly incarcerated. Through mentoring, they help each other to “find a brighter way and thrive.” Adam Grant, the Executive Director, said, “I believe justice is giving people what they need to be whole, not giving them what they ‘deserve’ because they haven’t been so.” He also added, “I don’t care what you’ve done; I care what you want to do. We’re not inviting people into avoidance. We’re inviting them into aspiration.” And then: “So many people have prayed for us. But don’t only do that in privacy, on the inside. Don’t only pray in the bedrooms. Pray for us in the boardrooms. That’s how we build change.” In great love for one another, the team of leaders at A Brighter Way lifted each other up with gratitude and with tears. Many of us in the room had those tears too.

Gathering together is truly a radical act. These gatherings create rooms where it happens.

— Renee Roederer

There is a phenomenon that sometimes occurs in care work, and it is a beautiful thing to witness. When we create a space where people feel truly safe and seen, they begin to share what is most important to them, the essence of who they are called to be, and the purposes that bring meaning to their lives.

It feels sacred to serve as a mirror in these moments. People start to voice their own affirmations, naming who they are, what they need, and what they are capable of doing. What is remarkable is that you do not need to tell them; you simply make room, and they find the words themselves. Basically, talking to you, they give themselves a pep talk. You get to bear witness, wholeheartedly agreeing as they lead the way.

And it is so special because as they speak these words, something shifts. The energy of those words moves through their bodies, aligning them with the very things they are naming. It is an experience of deep truth-telling, and it is powerful to be present for it.

I always feel immense gratitude when I witness one of these personal litanies of meaning. Moments like these remind me of the transformative power of being known, and the way our own words can help us see ourselves more fully.

— Renee Roederer

— Photos by Renee Roederer