There is no biography written about the person who has transformed my discernment and sense of myself. She was not famous, had very little formal education, and until her death she drank terrible instant coffee and made hard, crispy cookies. As grandmother’s go, mine wasn’t the sweet fairy tale you imagine. She was often cranky and short-fused. She was in almost constant pain; the sun gave her migraines, a trait I partially inherited.

She once told me she would give me LEGOs for Christmas, brought over a wrapped box that made LEGO-sounding noises when you shook it, and when I opened it…. It was an anatomy kit.

She was a self-taught expert in the Civil War, and I somehow convinced my fourth and fifth grade teachers that she should come lecture at our elementary schools. I have no idea how she kept our attention, but I remember sitting in awe as she faithfully recounted battles and explained racism to our little ears and brains.

She and I would sit at her kitchen table as I got into middle school. She’d chain smoke and I’d suggest that if I’d been a white women in the South during slavery, I’d be nice to my slaves. I remember her looking at me and saying, “no, you’d be awful to them because you would have been socialized to be racist.”

I was in college interning at a domestic violence shelter when my grandmother got sick. We wrote each other letters about the women I was meeting and about how I was learning more about theory behind just why people are socialized to be racist.

I finished college a semester early so I could be one of my grandmother’s caregivers. I was turning in seminary applications in between medicine routines and visits from her friends. One day her pastor came to visit—her pastor who didn’t believe that women should be ordained. The first time I met him, he asked what I would do now that I was done with college. My grandmother looked at me, looked at him and said “she’ll be the best pastor!” and then lit the fuse on a very long and unhelpful argument on women’s ordination. Later, on a return trip, the pastor asked me who I was voting for in the primaries for president. I looked at him, looked at my grandmother and said, “John McCain.” And he said, “I would have thought you’d be like your grandmother and support Hillary.” And later my grandmother said, “You better not vote for McCain.” And I said, “You better not make me talk to that guy again.”

She loved me fiercely, argued for me in the inevitable fights I got into with my parents, believed that I could go on adventures and survive with my own fierceness. A week before she died, I curled up on her hospital bed with contraband M&Ms, and she said, “you know, we become what we are called. And you are beloved.”
​
She died ten years ago. Sometimes I hear her voice urging me into new adventures or to ask harder questions about race and sociology. But mostly I look around the places I call home and remember that I have always been beloved.

I have worn the same cross around my neck since I was confirmed in the PCUSA in eighth grade—now eighteen years ago. My parents gave the cross to me, a simple silver shape with a fish stamped into it. It came to symbolize to me the waters of baptism.

Over the years I’ve added to the necklace. A charm with anam cara on it from my sister-friend/my partner’s chosen sister--heart. A Huguenot cross from my twin sister, a bird soaring gracefully from the bottom—air. A glass teardrop with dried flowers pressed inside from my partner—earth. A compass from my partner’s boss—pointing me home. A red wooden bead from one of my close friends—fire.

I’d often hang onto these pieces when I needed to think or when I needed to find my grounding, and more frequently in these last months of living bicoastally and in a constant state of discernment and transition.

This morning I felt a weird sensation on my skin and I found the wooden bead pressed between my chest and my bra strap. Somewhere along my journey to class in NYC the whole necklace fell off and fire was all that was left.

At first I was devastated and fought back tears as I retraced my steps through the seminary building. Already my heart is grieving that first cross, wondering how to tell my parents it’s gone. How will I get grounded again? How can I replace these pieces?

Ah—but yesterday was the tenth anniversary of my grandmother’s death. I miss her and think about her most days. She loved me unconditionally and pushed me in ways I’ll never be able to articulate. She saw things in me that continue to buoy me—and I know that I am stubborn and smart and fierce because of her. When she died, it felt like the pieces of my heart might never be knit back together. She was my grounding; she is the one who taught me that we call people into who they are.

Now I’m just openly weeping in the seminary café—but now just in gratitude for the life of this woman who loved me. I am in no way surprised that fire is what is left—not with her looking out for me.

So, I have a choice. I can grieve all the pieces (and I will) and then I can choose what will ground me in the next stage of my life. Who will I call myself?
​
There’s a charm that my sisters and I each have, with the word “fearless” stamped into it. I think it will be the first to join fire on this new necklace. But first, I’m going to let the space on my chest breathe.

A Sermon for Pescadero Community Church on August 13, 2017. 
​
“Go out and stand on the mountain before the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by." Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.
When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then there came a voice to him that said, "What are you doing here, Elijah?"
 
Let me tell you a couple of things about Elijah.
                Elijah is called to be a prophet to God’s people—to remind them that they belong to God and God belongs to them. The nation of Israel is divided, and the people have ignored the commandments of God.
In the stories about him in the Bible, Elijah runs 100 miles to escape Queen Jezebel who gets angry with him after he kills her prophets. That story goes that he’d been asked by God to go tell the Queen that she and her priests have led the Israelites astray and to prove that her priests are false. That’s the story in the Bible where the priests of Queen Jezebel and Elijah have a show down to prove who is the most powerful.
                Several times in his life story, he gets so overwhelmed by his calling as a prophet that he asks God to just kill him—it’s too hard. God asks him to do things like yell at the queen or say that the government is corrupt. He’s had to stay with foreigners and perform miracles, including the first instance of raising someone from the dead. When the people meet Jesus in the stories of the New Testament, they think he is Elijah returned.
 But here in this story of Elijah, we meet Elijah in this text at Horeb, in a cave on Mt. Sinai, the same place where Moses heard God and received the Ten Commandments.
 
Let me tell you a couple of things about the people of Israel at this point in history when this story from 1 Kings was told.
                They are a people in exile, a people who have been led by corrupt leaders who destroyed the kingdom of Israel. The Kingdom is now divided into North and South and the North is being ruled by a king who does not follow the laws given to the Israelites by God.
                They are a people who have learned to question authority, because their history is full of kings who have been corrupt or unethical or who have made laws and decrees that favor one kind of people over others.
                They are a people who have been on their own journeys- traveling to a land that was promised to them and then taken to Egypt as slaves and then out of Egypt by Moses and then wandering for forty years. They are perpetual immigrants in a strange land, trying to decide what parts of their identity to hang on to and what to let go of.
                In the Bible, whenever the people of Israel are wandering and a little confused about who they are, God sends prophets to teach the people and help them come back to the teachings that they have been given by the prophets and Moses. Many of the prophets are written as angry and frustrated because the people are written as confused and forgetful—and I always feel a little better about my faith journey when I realize that my questions and doubts and confusion are just the same as what the questions and doubts and confusions have been for the people who try to follow God for generations.

                But I also get their wandering and wondering about their identities. Many of you know that I now live part of the time in California and part of the time in New Jersey as I’m working on a PhD in religion. I’ve never felt more out of place living in New Jersey—I’m older than a lot of my colleagues… I’m one of the only religious members of my cohort (though no one is particularly hostile to faith)… and I often take notes in class by drawing. I’m also the student in many classes who argues when other students focus on just white theologians… and I got some strong glares at a conference when I told a panel on agriculture and religion that they really missed the mark by not even mentioning farmworkers. I’m making a lot of friends! But really, being in a new place with new people has helped me understand what’s most important to me, and has helped me see who I’m called to be. And to be fair, I’m not this ornery on my own—I have good mentors and friends at school who support and guide me when I have doubts about whether I should even be in New Jersey. It has, indeed, felt like a calling to be there, however, even as I try to find God there. It’s harder to hear and see God in New Jersey when I’ve gotten used to feeling God at the ocean or in the woods or on a trail.
                This summer I went to Nicaragua and Peru for six weeks as a sort of pilgrimage. I studied Spanish and did a lot of painting and learned a lot about Andean cosmology and climate change. But I also spent a lot of time running, covering 110 miles in the month of July and those miles felt like wandering. Those hours running in the mountains were good opportunities to think about what I’d learned during the day but also to think about how God is calling me in my life—how I’m being changed by the world around me—how what I know about God is being informed by other people. And it was time for me to listen to whatever God was calling me to next. I didn’t ever hear a voice out of the silence, and there were moments when I wished for something flashy and loud like a windstorm. But instead I listened to the silence of rural Peru and stopped to look at the river and tried to remember who I am.
               I’ve been thinking about those moments a lot this week as I’ve been watching the events unfold in Charlottesville, NC. I wasn’t listening when there was a call for 1000 clergy to come to hold vigil during the time when members of the Alt Right and the KKK were gathering to protest the removal of a General Robert E. Lee statue from a park. I wasn’t really paying attention when the KKK-related protesters surrounded a church full of those clergy in a prayer service—didn’t really hear that they came with torches and angry shouts and death threats. Instead I’d been paying attention to our family who had come to visit and to the small world around me which I love so much. But I started to listen when a car plowed through the people who gathered to face off against the group of white supremacists. I started to hear the words of my friends and colleagues who stood in those lines who said that to not actively denounce white supremacy in our country would be to denounce Jesus the Christ and his teachings of love, acceptance, healing and justice. And then I heard the President of the United States refuse to denounce white supremacy and heard colleagues say that we who are white must put our bodies and safety on the line for antiracism because people of color have been taking the brunt of race-based violence for centuries.
                It feels a little like we in the United States are a people who are wandering and who have forgotten who we’re meant to be. If we identify as Christians, as people of God, we must claim who we are going to be in our country. What do we hear when we listen?
                I wonder if the windstorm, earthquake, and fire were meant to try to distract Elijah with flashiness—would Elijah assume that God would appear in whatever was loudest or scariest? Instead, God comes in the silence, like a calm that cuts through the noise.
                Elijah meets God in a place where God has appeared before and God does not ask for anything new. God simply says to Elijah, “what are you doing here?” And then God sends Elijah back to do the work he’s been called to do—to love the people and to call the people to love God. It is a simple—and hard—task, one that is at the heart of the work of a prophet.
                And what will we hear today? As we listen to the outcry about Charlottesville, will we be distracted by calls to militarization or flashy explanations about how racism is just a problem in the South? Or will we be distracted by people who call themselves Christians but say that racism has a place in the church or in the world? Or will we be moved by our calling to love all people, but especially people on the margins, across boundaries and borders, across race and gender and sexual orientation, welcoming the stranger and working for justice—hard tasks but simple because these are the tasks we’ve always had.  
                What are we doing here, church, to be God’s people?
 
 ***
Litany against white supremacy
By Elizabeth Rawlings and Jennie Chrien
 
Gracious and loving God,
In the beginning, you created humanity and declared us very good
We were made in Africa, came out of Egypt.
Our beginnings, all of our beginnings, are rooted in dark skin.
We are all siblings. We are all related.
We are all your children.
 
We are all siblings, we are all related, we are all your children.
 
Violence entered creation through Cain and Abel.
Born of jealousy, rooted in fear of scarcity,
Brother turned against brother
The soil soaked with blood, Cain asked, “Am I my brother’s keeper?
 
We are all siblings, we are all related, we are all your children.
 
When your people cried out in slavery,
You heard them. You did not ignore their suffering.
You raised up leaders who would speak truth to power
And lead your people into freedom.
Let us hear your voice; grant us the courage to answer your call.
Guide us towards justice and freedom for all people.
 
 We are all siblings, we are all related, we are all your children.
Through the prophets you told us the worship you want is for us
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke;
Yet we continue to serve our own interest,
To oppress our workers, to crush our siblings by the neck because we are afraid.
Because they don’t look like us, act like us, talk like us.
Yet, they are us. And we are them.
 
 We are all siblings, we are all related, we are all your children.
 
In great love you sent to us Jesus, your Son,
Born in poverty, living under the rule of a foreign empire,
Brown-skinned, dark-haired, middle-Eastern.
They called him Yeshua, your Son,
Who welcomed the unwelcome, accepted the unacceptable--
The foreigners, the radicals, the illiterate, the poor,
The agents of empire and the ones who sought to overthrow it,
The men and women who were deemed unclean because of their maladies.
 
We are all siblings, we are all related, we are all your children.
 
The faith of Christ spread from region to region, culture to culture.
You delight in the many voices, many languages, raised to you.
You teach us that in Christ, “There is no Jew or Greek, there is no slave or free, there is no male and female.”
 
In Christ, we are all one.
Not in spite of our differences, but in them.
Black, brown, and white; female, non-binary, and male; citizen and immigrant,
In Christ we are all one.
 
We are all siblings, we are all related, we are all your children.
 
Each week, we confess our sin to you and to one another.
We know that we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves.
We are captive to the sin of white supremacy,
Which values some lives more than others,
Which believes some skin tones are more perfect than others,
Which commits violence against those who are different.
We confess our complicity in this sin.
We humbly repent.
We ask for the strength to face our sin, to dismantle it, and to be made anew
We trust in your compassion and rely on your mercy
Praying that you will give us your wisdom and guide us in your way of peace,
That you will renew us as you renew all of creation
In accordance with your will.
 
We ask this, we pray this, as your children, all siblings, all related, all beloved children of God.
 
Amen.

It started on Easter. My partner and I went to celebrate the miraculous resurrection of Jesus with a local church in the morning, and in the afternoon, we released the ashes of our recently deceased sweet cat into the ocean.
I watched the waves carry her out into the open, and it felt like we’d done the impossible, letting go.
I remembered my years as a pastor preaching and teaching on Easter, claiming that this pivotal day in our Christian calendar is God’s promise that the impossibility of life is conquering death
–that death does not have the final say. The impossible is possible.
As Christians, we’re called to believe the impossible. I began to wonder if we’re also called to live the impossible.  What might it be like to do impossible things between Easter and Pentecost? How would I change?
I started out wanting to do an impossible thing every day.
I had hard conversations with people… entering into dialogues which were vulnerable and honest. I tried to be unafraid. I worried that I would come across as angry or negative, instead of clear. After a couple of these conversations, I realized that these hard conversations weren’t impossible, just hard.
In the meantime, I deepened relationships with several colleagues and friends over conversations and explorations that we otherwise wouldn’t have had together. (Also, I learned to say “you are driving me crazy” in a life-giving way, and I learned to stand up for myself more than once.)
And after a couple more, they just felt real.

I pushed myself physically too, looking for joy while I run… and being more mindful about who I am in the world, and coming up with impossible goals for exercise. The more I ran, the more joy I found. And one week I took 100k steps in five days. The second time I did that particular impossible thing, it was easier, and I realized that I was conditioning myself—that the more I did the impossible, the easier it became.

I began to think I was in training for a big impossible thing. And it became less important that I did an impossible thing every day… and more important that I keep an eye out for the opportunity to try.
As my impossible muscles stretched and moved, I thought about perspective and power and possibility. When I was in Washington, DC, it was painfully obvious that a lot of what I do on a regular basis (fly across the country, for example) is impossible for so many people.  I felt like my brain was being trained to think outside of my own experience… to re-think exactly what I mean by the impossible.
And I wondered if God is God and I am not, who am I to do the impossible?
Still, I thought a little about my capacity to do the impossible. And there were still things I couldn’t do (like yell at a white male staffer in DC who was totally rude to my African American BFF or plan to bring my sister-by-choice to the San Diego Zoo to see the pandas because it could jeopardize her immigration papers). But my power and privilege changes my sense of  those limitations and my capacity to exercise my ability to do the impossible.

Later I discovered what I thought was going to be the biggest impossible thing. In April, I accepted a spot in a PhD program Drew University, which means I’ll leave a job I love working with people I love. To do this, I’ll move across the country, away from my partner and start something new. It felt scary but also exciting… and like I was crossing the finish line at my first half marathon. And just like a marathon finish—it feels a little less impossible now that it’s done.

Weeks later, after a few more hard conversations and refusing to work on my days off, on one of my long runs, I began to think.
I realized that more than a decade I’ve spent trying to forgive one person in my life and the last two years trying to forgive another two people--
I spent a few miles thinking about how my inability to forgive that old hurt had let the new hurt emerge. But that old hurt was huge—it changed the course of my life and changed almost all the relationships in my life at the time. That old hurt welled up in me, with anger and fear and hopelessness.
And at point on that run, I said to myself, “I think forgiving this person is impossible.”
I stopped midstride.
Impossible was the point of this season of my life.
I started to think about what it would mean to forgive and what and who I really needed to forgive. And I began to think about where that forgiveness needed to take place.
And so I found myself back at the ocean.

On the way home from that trip to the sea, I thought about how far I’d come since Easter. I thought about how little I understood about the impossibility of Easter before I tried to do the impossible.
And then suddenly, from the shadows of some memory, came a passage from “Through the Looking Glass” by Lewis Carrol:
“Alice laughed: “There’s no use trying,” she said; “one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen.
“When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
Believing in and practicing the impossible takes practice. When we try the impossible little things, we prepare ourselves for the great big impossible things we can’t imagine. And I can’t wait for that next impossible thing.

Originally published at reneeroederer.com/2016/06/09/choosing-the-impossible/

in february, our youngest cat started losing weight--several pounds over two weeks. we took her into the vet, where we found out she had a mass effect. gently, our vet told us that there was nothing to be done and we could decide to let her go that night or the next morning.

we brought her home, hugged her, held her with our other furry girls, took her outside. we told each other stories--about how evie climbed in trees and bit us and would do just about anything to sit in nathan's lap.

and the next day we hugged her some more and blessed her with oil. nathan held her as they sedated her, and together we wept as we let her go. our hearts broke.

and now, weeks later: easter.

after worship at the local episcopal church, where we celebrated the impossible victory over death of Jesus Christ, we went for a walk. stories of when evie climbed into the rafters of our garage and when she sat in the back window of our old neon and when she first came to live with us--they welled up in us.

we carried evie's ashes to the ocean, and found the best rocks to sit on. we lit a candle. i tried to pray, letting the tears slip from my eyes. and then we tipped the bag of our little evie's ashes into the water, letting the waves take her into the wider world she always longed to explore.

it's mohaupt tradition to sing "swing low, sweet chariot" when we let our furry ones go, and the melody followed her and the waves.

and then she was gone.

life hands us lots of hard impossible things: loving this little one and letting her go, finally, on this day which is supposed to celebrate that life has the final say.

and perhaps letting her go into the ocean was about letting life win and knowing that she's never completely gone. impossibly.

Every year
everything
I have ever learned  

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side  

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world  

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it  

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
(mary oliver)

my heart has been full the last few weeks--brimming over the gratitude and pain and grief and joy. aching from discernment and eased by a commitment to simply look at this moment in this place and see it fully.

much of these emotions are born from approaching the one year anniversary of when i left church as the place of my ministry, when i listened to the voices within and without, and hung on to the love of those who said it was time to move to a new and different thing.

in that year, i have been given the gift of so many who have loved me into a new place and a new self, a self that trusts wherever God is calling me and a self that seeks the good in all things.

but also in that year, i've sought to distance myself from my body--the home of my soul--and i want to reclaim its goodness and strength.

so this is a love letter to the whole self that i'm living into, the self i want to embrace--with love and gratitude and hope for another year.

dear one:

to my hair, whose strands I sheared off to start anew, strands that change color from blonde to brown to red, like a living mood ring. i miss reaching my hand to my back and holding to your ends, miss the long braid over my shoulder. but i love the curl in the growing layers and the patience you've grown in me as i wait for your full length to return.

to my nose and lips and cheeks, with your scars and bumps hidden by freckles and the wrinkles that have begun to emerge this year, you have been a mark of resistance with your nosering, a mark of hope with your smile, a mark of joy with your laughter. do not be afraid.

to my eyes, rung by these great green glasses, you see what so many others do not and you let the images of others exist in your soul, changed by the beauty and pain of others, the injustice of life and the inexplicable places of grace.

to my brain and head and heart, you three have wrestled this year with possibility and change and hope and grief. you've asked hard questions and looked to the heavens. you seek the hope of the universe with untameable curiosity and optimism. do not let this fire burn out.

to my hands, especially the crooked one which will never again be the same--you give life to creativity, covered in paint or crayon or dirt, holding on to the hands of those who are lonely, feeding those who are hungry, carrying little ones and slapping encouraging high fives. you hold me up in handstands, reminding me to claim joy and new perspective. my right hand, your weakness reminds me to be humble and to ask for help. thank you.

to my breasts and my belly, you have been the places i've neglected, places of trouble and places of hope, you remind me to feed others and to claim my place in this world.

to my legs, these legs that have given me shame when i try to buy pants--you have carried me over hundreds of miles and your strength outpaces the ability of my mind. you carried me to new places, over finish lines and into the ocean. you hold me up and remind me that the arthritis in my hips are just a force to contain.

to my feet--oh feet. thank you. you weird and wonderful collections of bone and sinew and muscle. your toes with their missing nails and cracked paint and words of love: you feet. my feet.

do not be afraid.

My mom and I recently led a workshop on raising the next generation of environmentalists and in preparation for that presentation, I realized that much of my childhood had prepared me to go to seminary and study earth care and God. 

When I was in seminary, I got to study with a variety of professors and mentors who let me love God and creation in my studies. My mom worried about whether I'd ever find a job that let me linger on the parts of life I love the most: earth, people, God. 

But it was all preparation. It was my own personal advent.

This summer and fall, I convinced one of those professors, Ted Hiebert to help me think about an Advent Resource for our community on the South Coast, the community that I now serve. My colleagues and supervisors at Puente have helped me dream about what speaks to and about our work. I'm reminded that my mom never had to worry. 

It's October, still too early in our ordinary time to really prepare ourselves for the extraordinary event that will come in a couple of months, when God breaks into our world and welcomes us with love. 

But here is my own love letter back to the community and to those who have prepared me: Waiting for the Extraordinary.

I went back to the ocean today
With my books and my papers
I went to the rocks by the ocean
But the weather changed quickly

Oh the ocean said, “what are you trying to find
I don’t care, I’m not kind?”

You don’t know how precious you are
Walking around with your little shoes dangling
I am the one who lives with the ocean
It’s where we came from, you know
And sometimes I just want to go back
-Dar Williams, “The Ocean”

I hear two things from my bedroom window: the foghorn from the harbor and the waves of the ocean. I can hear other things too – cars and dogs and children and music – but there is the constant hum of the ocean and the regular call of the horn.

I live on the California coast, just over the hill from Silicon Valley, the center of the tech world, absurd housing costs, ambition, innovation, and work. I started my career as a Christian clergyperson in a congregation just blocks from where Hewlett Packard began, surrounded by tiny houses worth millions of dollars and high school students suicidal because of the social pressures to be perfect and successful. For most of us in the Valley, there is so much pressure not to fail, to be the best. This culture is a microcosm of our larger United States culture that insists if we dream big and work hard enough, we can “have it all.”

I served a congregation here for almost three years and struggled to hold the consistent grace of the ocean in tension with the insane demand of the Valley. I met with congregation members who struggled to keep up with that world, and I wanted to lead them over the hill to sit at the ocean, to find calm, and let the horn from the harbor be their pulse. The world tells them that they need to be better, but the ocean does not care what degrees you have, if your kids got into Harvard, what car you drive, or what app you’ve created.

Instead, the ocean curves toward the shore, wave after wave. Sometimes the waves are big and billowing, and sometimes they are small and flat. But, they keep coming.

Last week, I was sitting in front of the water, and the ocean kept coming, affecting everything it touched. The beach in front of me was covered in kelp and rippled sand from countless waves. The rocks I was sitting among had become home to ice plants and algae. The line where the sea level reached, depending on the time of day, was obvious.

There were surfers on the water. They lingered in the shallow waters watching the waves, waiting for whatever sign surfers wait for to know the next wave is the one. Then they slithered onto their boards, paddled out into the waves, hopped up and let the waves carry them back. And then they went back out again.

I was perched on a rock and tried to capture the grace of the ocean in crayon, letting the movement of the waves direct my stroke on the page. Watching the surfers, I marveled at how their bodies weathered the relentless waves, how the waves curled around them: water and people and earth. I wondered at how the surfers could just keep climbing back up onto their boards. I couldn’t easily explain those connections, so I trusted my hands to do that work, arching color across the page in wax.



I’m originally from the Midwest, and when I left it for my first call in Palo Alto, I was sure that I would miss the flat farmland and white oaks and the riverbanks of Northern Illinois. Three years later, I’m not quite used to this landscape. This view – this never-ending water running into sky – I’ve never gotten used to it. The waves keep coming, never exactly the same, but never completely different. Water is water. The waves remind me of God’s grace because the waves come no matter what. This big blue body of life is just pulled inward, kissing the sand.

Grace, in my Protestant tradition, is a gift from God that we cannot earn – it is a gift that makes a bridge between God, people, and creation, and it is so hard to understand. We can’t actually be perfect, try as we might, even if we are trying to reach out to God. We’ve tried, in the doctrines and confessions of my tradition, to describe it as whatever it is that draws us to God. And so I’ve begun to try to understand grace – and God – through the ocean.

Whenever I sit on the shore, letting the sound of the waves hold me there, I’m reminded of how much we do not know about the ocean. Explorers across the ages have traveled across the seas and into the deepest parts of the waters – and there’s still so much more to know about the ecosystems and species of the oceans. The oceans have called others to dream bigger dreams and to live larger lives than they could imagine. Sometimes that’s scary (hurricanes and sharks and the unknown), and sometimes it’s exhilarating. And yet it calls, bringing those adventurers and surfers from what they already know to something more.

Grace is like that, unknowable and yet recognizable, a little scary because we cannot define it or understand it in an objective way, and scary too because of how we in many Christian traditions try to describe it: God’s ceaseless love for creation even though we fail to care for each other in the ways that we are supposed to.

And that is grace: big, beautiful, perfect grace. Grace that comes washing over us whether we know the right words, have the right car, or do the right things. Grace that leaves our skin sandy, hair salty, and face wet – relentlessly calling like the horn in the harbor, beckoning us from our own little bedrooms and out into the world, to climb back into life and living, even if we fail to meet that world’s expectations.

originally posted at http://nomosjournal.org/columns/cultivating-a-co-creator/blue-with-grace/

Matthew 22:36-40 (CEB)

36 “Teacher, what is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

37 He replied, “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being,[a] and with all your mind. 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39  And the second is like it: You must love your neighbor as you love yourself.[b] 40  All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands.”

++
I’m very much a young woman from the Midwest.

I love flat farmland and white oaks and the riverbanks of Northern Illinois. I love the autumn leaves and the way Lake Michigan freezes over. I think trees should lose their leaves in beautiful dances to the ground, and I think that the savannahs along the Rock River are breathtaking.

I don’t understand earthquakes and I miss thunderstorms.

When I left the Midwest, when I said yes to my first call in a congregation in Palo Alto, CA, my thesis advisor Ted Hiebert told me that I should never take the redwoods for granted. I wondered how anyone could look at those beautiful giants not be overwhelmed.

Three years later, I’m not quite used to this landscape. On the drive from Palo Alto to Pescadero where I now work, I spend the last twenty minutes by the ocean.

Almost without fail, I lose my breath coming over the last ridge before I turn inland again.

I’m somehow used to the redwoods, but this view—this never-ending water running into sky—I never get used to it. The waves keep coming, never exactly the same, but never completely different. They remind me of God, and they remind me of this call to love creation that I can’t refuse—because how can you not love the ocean?

This love for our world and for each other marks us as Christians and as a species on this planet—we are connected and so we have to act out of that connectedness in love.

It seems so easy and straightforward

--but it is hard.

NASA released an article this week about how the global concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere – the primary driver of recent climate change – has reached 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time in recorded history. They included quotes from some of their leading scientists about what this milestone means to them.

            Have you seen it?       

It is not surprising that we’ve reached 400ppm—the world is responding to how we’ve failed to love the earth.

Nature is crying out as we frack more of the earth, as we pollute more air and water, as we create more waste, as we drive more and share less.

Climate is changing and thus cultivating agriculture is more difficult.

                        Water is scarcer.

More people go hungry and illness spreads more easily in denser populations as people seek refuge in new locations—and these hungry and homeless people have been people of color and people who are poor first.

It’s all connected.

That is a scary reality that we’ve created for ourselves.

                                    It cannot be undone—not in our life times.

            It’s bad and it’s a terrible way to love our neighbors.

Anyway, we know all this. I know all this.

And still, when I read, NASA’s piece with some of its scientists’ reflections on climate change, I froze.

Listen:

We are a society that has inadvertently chosen the double-black diamond run without having learned to ski first. It will be a bumpy ride.[1]

and

As a college professor who lectures on climate change, I will have to find a way to look into those 70 sets of eyes that have learned all semester long to trust me and somehow explain to those students, my students how much we as people have altered our environment, and that they will end up facing the consequences of our inability to act.[2]

These aren’t scientists just speaking from the science—they’re speaking from their hearts.

As a species we’ve done so little to stop the change in earth’s climate that we’ve created.

Some of us in the world just don’t care, or don’t believe the science or have other, more immediate needs like struggling to pay rent or protecting our children.

But there are others of us who know and believe the science and have the time to respond and haven’t.

We’ve gotten stuck in place, feeling helpless and unable to respond to climate change—overwhelmed by the facts and figures that point to the end of everything we know about creation and life in it.

We look to the impending end of everything and everyone that we know and love and we become paralyzed.

This is not the first time members of our species have faced the real possibility of our end or worried about future generations—parents have clung to their babies and children in real fear when we’ve faced colonization, Cold War, Nuclear Weapons,etc etc.  

And this is different only in that all creation faces this reality together and there is no way out—it’s already in motion.

Facing head on the reality of climate change means facing a self-created trauma.

            Psychologists define trauma as something that is inflicted on someone that can be perceived as a threat and cannot be resisted.[3] One of the effects that trauma causes is a “paralyzing lack of agency.”[4]

                        There is too much to do, too much to lose.

And so we do nothing.

But this is where I think Christianity is necessary for the climate change movement.

We bring two powerful assumptions to the conversation.

The first is this: Our world is so broken.

We cannot deny that our human actions—and mostly the actions of industrialized countries—have created a new world. Environmental activist Bill McKibben says that we’ve changed creation so much that we need a new name for our planet Earth. While the world that the Genesis stories of creation tell us are made out of God’s love, McKibben says that this new planet “represents the deepest of human failures.”

Our Reformed Tradition sort of prepares us for this brokenness, right? Calvin reminds us of our “total depravity”—we’ve always been broken—and says that this brokenness is why we need God’s grace to save us through Jesus.

So it’s nothing new that we can’t save the world ourselves.

It’s our faith that holds us when we live in fear and helps us work in hope, as we face a world we must live on ‘lightly, carefully, gracefully.”[5]

Because our faith has a second assumption: God loves this world—and us.

            “in the very moment we are marked as sinful by the world, God marks us as loved, as recipients of forgiveness.

Marked in this way, we are freed to act not as perfect creatures, but

as fallen people who are nonetheless called to persistently seek ways to embody

God’s will for the flourishing of all creation.”[6]

            That is, after all, what the greatest and second greatest commandments call us to, right?

Love God.

You must love your neighbor as you love yourself. 

All the Law and the Prophets and the world depend on these two commands.

Love one another—love one another in caring for each other and for the earth because we are each of us connected to other people and all creation.

Love one another because it is the only way to us heal from the trauma.

When we love one another, we remember that the earth isn’t the only climate we can change—when we love each other, we change the climate of our hearts, so that we—together—face the new world with hope, not fear.

            And in hope we can move into action.

We can reduce our carbon footprints--

We can reduce the amount of water we use--

We can tread lightly on the planet when we travel--

We can tread lightly on our food systems and eat less meat and buy locally grown foods--

We can work for political change on all levels of our government---

We can work for change within our denomination, particularly in the process to divest from fossil fuel companies.

Each of these actions are necessary in our work to make a better world.

I want to focus for just a moment on the movement to divest from fossil fuels. At its heart, the movement centers around the commitment that if it is morally wrong to hurt the planet, it is wrong to profit from that climate change. Since Bill McKibben and students from Middlebury College first began the divestment from fossil fuel campaign in 2011, millions of people around the world have joined the movement.

Jesus was a powerful community organizer, because he understood that the powers and principalities of his time were no match for the work of love in the world. Social movements continue to be a viable way to change things because they recognize our interconnectedness.

            When we stand—together—and take our money away from fossil fuel investments, we tell those companies that they no longer have the singular right to our world.

Love can change things.


Because “the power of our love is what the resource companies… inevitably underestimate precisely because no amount of money can extinguish it. When what is being fought for is an identity, a culture, a beloved place that people are determined to pass on to their grandchildren, there is nothing companies can offer as a bargaining chip.”[7] What grace reminds us is that we are not on our own. That when we love each other, we discover that we are loved—as God has loved us. Love one another—the world depends on it.

That is some powerful love, church, and that love and grace can cover our fears and trauma, and strengthen us for the work ahead. Amen.


[1] Dr. Gavin Schmidt, Climatologist and climate modeler at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies
[2] Laura Faye Tenenbaum, Oceanography Professor, Glendale Community College; Communications Specialist for NASA's Global Climate Change Website
[3] Jones. Trauma and Grace. 13.
[4] Ibid., 15.
[5] McKibben’s Eaarth, 153-ff
[6] Jones. Trauma and Grace. 37
[7] Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything, 342