Smuggling Grace

1) Whew, it takes a lot of work to step away… This isn’t a new thought, but it’s one that I’m living and thinking about all over again. This week, my whole life has transformed into a to-do list. (Not totally healthy).

“It shouldn’t be this hard take yourself off the grid temporarily,” I’ve thought many times. A lot goes into that preparation. And I’m also not going to be totally off of the grid. It’s not as if I’m packing a tent and rations or something. I’m just getting myself ready to disconnect from work and additional, typical rhythms to take some time off with lovely plans. (Very healthy).

2) Wow, a lot of life passes around and through us… This isn’t a new thought, but it’s one that I’m living and thinking about all over again. This week, my life has been connected to a lot of other lives and activities as I make these preparations.

I’m not so central. All of this stuff currently hustling and bustling through my lists, doesn’t live on a list. It’s just life. It’s people with names. It’s community. It keeps moving. I need not over-give or merely ration my time. I am a part.

Responsibility and life — two sides of the same coin.

— Renee Roederer

A colleague and I lead a monthly Zoom meeting called “Mindfulness Moments.” My role in this exercise is very easy — remarkably relaxing, in fact. My colleague, a tremendous therapist, leads us in a twenty minute mindfulness exercise. I get to start the Zoom meeting and take it all in. Then I lead us in a ten minute discussion.

Last night, during this mindfulness exercise, we did a body scan, checking in with parts of our body and inviting these parts of ourselves to experience relaxation.

“Now, rest your nose,” she said. Rather than feeling a change in my nose, I smiled. I don’t know that I’ve ever tried to relax my nose. I was surprised by the challenge. But you know what? I tried it, and it can be done.

A relaxed nose, like any relaxed part of ourselves, is pretty delightful.

So if you need some relaxation, rejuvenation, and repose, just remember a serene schnoz is a satisfied nose.

— Renee Roederer

Cosmos, by Krystyna Dabrowska (translated by Karen Kovacik)
Until recently the universe was expanding
with new suns, nebulas, constellations,
vibrating waves, the breath of galaxies.
Now it’s contracting to satellite
images depicting Earth:
not even the whole planet, just one country,
not even each region, just one city,
a single street, gray pavement. On it are strewn
“dark objects of similar size
to human bodies,” writes the New York Times.
Not buried for weeks,
their grave the satellite’s synthetic eye
and the black holes of our pupils,
surrounded by life.

My friend calls them “the Grief Ninjas.” I think it’s the perfect description.

She’s talking about those moments when you’re in the middle of a run-of-the-mill day or routine task, and all of the sudden, seemingly out of nowhere, feelings of grief come on very strongly. A wave of grief quickly emerges and interrupts whatever you’re doing.

Of course, the Grief Ninjas can also dance around with Love because that’s often how grief works. Grief is love that longs. Grief is love that misses or prepares itself for missing.

As Jamie Anderson says,

“Grief, I’ve learned is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.”

Those Grief Ninjas show up whenever they will.
So will Love.

— Renee Roederer

— Photos by Renee Roederer

I love this quote from Elizabeth Barrett Browning:

“Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God,
But only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.”

This weekend, I hope we’ll take off our shoes.

A treasured loved one introduced me to this quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

“If you board the wrong train, there’s no sense running along the corridor in the other direction.”

Sometimes, we need to get off of the train. It’s okay to change our minds. We can take in new information and act on it. It can be remarkably wise and courageous to step off and move in another direction.

We’ll never get to the destination we desire if we just keep running along the corridor in the other direction.

— Renee Roederer

These images of Simone Biles and Jordan Chiles honoring and playfully bowing to Rebeca Andrade on the Olympic podium speak volumes. 💜

Fun Fact: I have three Olympic gold medals.
🥇 🥇🥇

Not from the Olympics you’d think about most readily, of course. But from… the Choir Olympics!

I suppose it seems funny that there is such a thing — a Choir Olympics. I picture choristers trying to sing while jumping hurdles. But in actuality, this was an incredible event with 350 choirs from around the world that competed in different styles of music on a world stage.

In 2004, in ways that shocked us — we weren’t expecting this at all — my collegiate choir won the Choir Olympics in in multiple categories in Bremen, Germany. Each time, we were called to the front of a stage in a large auditorium, and we watched the flag rise with the national anthem.

This is one of the best, most surprising, and most adventurous memories of my life.

Very grateful! 🥇🥇🥇