Smuggling Grace

I facilitate several groups in my work role at the Epilepsy Foundation of Michigan, and this is one of my favorite aspects of the job. Each group has its own character, and I enjoy the ways they collectively create the experience. Four groups meet over Zoom, and one meets over a conference call. This last group enjoys connecting over the phone. It was the first group we ever organized, and it has our largest participation. Though a conference call may seem behind the times for this era, they enjoy it like this, and they make it a deep and meaningful opportunity for connection. In fact, this group calls itself a chosen family, and its members show up in each others lives in beautiful ways, including rhythms of calling each other to check-in throughout the week.

All of this is lovely. And as I shared, full of character: There’s a fun, silly practice that this group does week to week, and I’ve been pondering this sweet, simple act of care. When people are signing into the conference call, I can see who is in process of joining on the computer screen. Their name emerges on the screen about five seconds before we hear the beep announcing their arrival. In that time, I’ll tell the people already on the line, “Here comes [Name].”

And we wait in silence.

BEEP.

“Hi, [Name]!” says everyone in unison and with gusto.

We call it surprise-partying.

Depending on when they emerge, [Name] gets somewhere between 5-15 people greeting them playfully and enthusiastically.

And this is a small thing, but in this era in which we live, it can feel so lovely to be greeted with joy in a way that genuinely conveys, “Everyone is glad that you are here.”

Each group has character, and I love this one.

–Renee Roederer

This is my personal phrase lately:
“Receive from everything, share from everything.”

It’s also how I’m trying to live in these days.

There are times of upheaval, both personal and collective, when we rightfully ask ourselves, “What should I do? How should I act? How are my neighbors and my community calling to me? What do I need? What do my loved ones need? What do my neighbors need?”

We might ask these questions out of urgency. We might ask these questions out of anxiety. We might find ourselves zooming out of the moment, getting perspective, yes, but also distance, asking these questions hypothetically within the big picture rather than dealing with the reality of the day-to-day picture.

Within it all, my personal phrase is,
“Receive from everything, share from everything.”

The truth of the matter is… change happens in the day to day, mundane aspects of life, and above all, change happens through a web of relationships. There are times, absolutely, when our daily, mundane lives need to be disrupted with cries for large-scale change.

We activate change, however, in the daily mundane aspects of life and above all, through our relationships. We need to build change, not hypothetically in some conceptual big picture, but in the communities we are already in, allowing those very communities to expand, transform, and transform us.

Receive from everything, right where we are —
receive care, receive messages, receive love, receive challenge, receive questions, receive resources, receive conflict, receive imagination, receive lament, receive hope, receive connection, receive relationship.

Share from everything, right where we are–
participate in being a catalyzer,
share care, share messages, share love, share challenge, share questions, share resources, share conflict, share imagination, share lament, share hope, share connection, share relationship.

We can participate in building change when we act, when we share, in our daily, mundane lives through the web of our relationships.

Let life catalyze us.
Participate in catalyzing change.

“Receive from everything, share from everything.”

–Renee Roederer

@jacobcollier

One of my all-time favourites.

♬ original sound – Jacob Collier

@jacobcollier

Thank you @GRAMMY U for having me! And cheers to my legendary friend @Jessiereyez 🙂

♬ original sound – Jacob Collier

Who are the people who influenced the people who influenced you?

We might call them the GrandInfluencers. I like to think of this question and these people from time to time.

We are connected more broadly and expansively than we are always aware. Whether we know their names or not, there are people who have had a major impact upon the shape and direction our lives because they had a major role in shaping the people who most influenced and inspired us.

I found myself reflecting on this several years ago when I heard Bryan Stevenson speak in Ann Arbor. Bryan Stevenson was presented with the Wallenberg Medal at the University of Michigan for his vision and service, and afterward, he gave the Wallenberg Lecture.

Bryan Stevenson is the founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative, an organization committed to ending mass incarceration in the United States, protecting human rights and dignity, and challenging racial and economic inequities. Within the large, crucial vision of this work, Stevenson has spent decades entering personal relationships with the people he represents in court. They have impacted his life, as he has impacted theirs.

His lecture was filled with stories of human connection as he challenged us to do justice in our neighborhoods, nation, and world and to change our narratives about race and poverty.

He opened the lecture first with a story about his Grandmother. He grew up calling her Mama. When Stevenson was a child, she would give him enormous hugs, and when she finished, she would ask, “Okay, can you still feel me hugging you?” If he said no, she would do it all over again. This became one of their playful rituals, and Stevenson came to know that he was loved and absolutely cherished.

As she was dying, her last words to him were, “Can you still feel me hugging you?”

Beautiful. It’s clear that he does.

She shaped so much of his vision and calling. She was the daughter of enslaved people, and she taught him about the terror and trauma of slavery. She also filled him with a sense of love and worth. Stevenson has been addressing slavery in its many forms throughout his life, protecting human lives, standing up to false narratives, and telling the truth — both about our national history and about human dignity.

In many ways, this started with his Grandmother. Unknown to many future clients, she impacted their lives — and in many cases, affected their freedom — through the formation of Bryan Stevenson.

And Stevenson told us stories about some of these clients. Unknown by name to us, they have impacted the formation of Bryan Stevenson as well, and their stories are now challenging the narratives and power structures of mass incarceration.

We are connected more broadly and expansively than we are always aware.

Who influenced the people who influenced you? Who are your GrandInfluencers?

We honor them with our lives by being ourselves. And though we cannot always predict the direction entirely, when we demonstrate love to others and are present in formational ways, we will embolden and empower people we will never meet.

–Renee Roederer

Sometimes when I’m gathered with a group of people, either in a physical space or on a Zoom screen, I’m aware that the influence of additional people is present during that time. Embedded in everyone’s relationships, there are hidden conflicts, attachments, and places of grief that influence that time. But most often, I like to think about the meaningful, formational influences that are present.

There are people who have participated in fashioning who we are along with our values, hopes, and even mannerisms or ways of phrasing our words. Their influence is in that space too because these people are part of who we are. They have “particularized us;” that is, they have made us more specifically who and how we are. When we are present, their influence is present too.

And this means when we are connected to people in a physical space or on a Zoom screen, we have the occasion to interface with the influences of others too. We are impacted meaningfully by people we cannot see and in most cases by people we have not known ourselves.

When we are aware of people beyond us, we feel more connected, and often, we can be inspired. Consider this post an invitation to reflect intentionally about whose influence is also in the room. And if we know people well enough, we might even ask.

–Renee Roederer

-Photos by Renee Roederer

“I don’t know what you all want trans people to do. I remember growing up in elementary school and having that one kid in class whose body didn’t seem to match his behavior in our eyes, and how they were never spared a single second of humiliation, threats, bullying. Even teachers wouldn’t stand up for them when they saw this stuff happening. If another kid stood up for them, they were bullied too…

“So what do you all want to see trans people do? Because to see someone bullied, harassed, and threatened — told that they were too feminine, they’d never be a man — only to transition and be told they could never be a woman, makes it seem like you don’t want them to be.

“I understand the whole concept makes you uncomfortable. I was socialized in the same world you were. But there are people who are going through some thing that you don’t understand. And I don’t understand it either, but it’s not for me to understand. It’s enough for me to know that people have been subject to harm their entire lives just for trying to be the most authentic version of themselves in ways that I’ve taken for granted by entire life. So it’s not too much for me to stand in solidarity with them or applaud them when they break barriers, because it’s taken an immense amount of courage just to be here.” — Jamyle Cannon

@jamylecannon

Folks showed themselves after Kim Petras won a Grammy. I didn’t want to give them a microphone by sharing the comment I was responding to, but decided to make it clear that trans lives matter to me.

♬ original sound – Jamyle

The bills targeting trans youth, their parents, and drag are an emergency.

If you’ve read the stories — the ones people claim to revere —

It’s so easy to imagine Jesus eating with the Drag Queens.

It’s so easy to imagine Jesus saying,
“Let the Trans Youth come to me.”

It’s so easy to imagine him telling us,
“Don’t throw those stones.”

It’s so easy to imagine him telling us,
“Love your neighbor as yourself.”

It’s so easy to imagine him telling us,
“What you do these, you do to me.”

–Renee Roederer

@erininthemorn

3 terrible florida bills… bathroom ban, birth certificates, and custody #trans #transgender #lgbtq #transrights

♬ original sound – ErinInTheMorning

What is that sacred in-between? That space right before death where powerful things seem to happen?

The truth is, I don’t know.

Is it a new reality coming into being? Is it simply (but still, amazingly!) the human brain giving a euphoric experience at the end of life? Is it a liminality between what has been and what will be? Is it an expansion of time — either in reality, or perhaps, in a beautiful illusion during a near-death state?

I don’t know. All I know is that I find it to be comforting.

I mean this: Sometimes, when people near death, they rally quite unexpectedly and receive a burst of strength that seems unexpected. Some appear to experience joy. Or in a last bit of consciousness in their bodies, some experience the presence of people who have died before them.

Before she died, my grandmother Ruby was unconscious and on a ventilator. After the ventilator was removed, she died pretty quickly. But right at the end, she suddenly opened up her eyes, looked up and smiled, and a couple tears dripped down her cheek.

I don’t know what that is, but I find that to be comforting.

I’ve also known of situations where people have spent whole days moving back and forth between conversation with people who are in the room and the next moment, announcing they could see someone from the earlier part of their life. It seemed that everyone was present at once.

I don’t know what that is, but I find that to be comforting.

In pondering this, I don’t mean to put a silver lining on death. I know these kinds of things can be hard to celebrate when loss is recent and grief is acute. But at the same time, it’s all such a mystery, and perhaps these kinds of moments can give some solace too.

–Renee Roederer