Smuggling Grace

I’m sure we’ve all had bouts of sleeplessness, whether it’s a season of insomnia, an illness, or feeding a newborn.

If we’ve had any sleepless nights since 1997, others have chosen, quite willfully, to be awake with us and pray on our behalf. They don’t know our names, but they choose to be in solidarity.

The Norbertine Canonesses are an order of Roman Catholic nuns in the Tehachapi Mountains of California. Every day, they wake at midnight to remember those who are struggling to sleep and to pray for them.

They think about people struggling with substance abuse. They imagine those who are homeless and don’t have an adequate bed or a safe place to be. They remember victims of domestic violence. They pray for people experiencing mental illness, situational anxiety, challenges in relationships, grief, or confusion about life’s direction. They especially remember new parents.

I think all of this is really lovely.

Some of us may value prayer, and others of us may not resonate with it. But one thing is true: alongside their prayers, these women want people to know that they aren’t alone in those moments of distress. I find that to be very touching.

So if you want, think about a difficult moment of sleeplessness you’ve had recently or sometime over the last few years.

In that specific moment, some women in California were remembering you.

—Renee Roederer

I learned about this community of nuns in The New York Times: These Nuns Wake Up at Midnight to Pray for New Moms

Over the weekend, I stood in a circle of neighbors, and together we read aloud “Let America Be America Again” by Langston Hughes. An interfaith organization had invited us to gather, connect, and reflect with one another as we marked the 250th anniversary of the United States.

This poem was written in 1935, nearly a century ago. And yet it feels just as relevant today.

I invite you to listen as well.

David and Amy completely changed my world.

When I was in my late teens and early twenties, a couple from the congregation where I grew up created a relationship of deep belonging with me and made me part of their family.

We can’t always choose the families into which we are born — though we do have opportunities to choose them in their own right — but we can also build families purely through choice. That’s what happened when David and Amy made space for me in their lives.

They are central characters in one of the chapters of the book I’m writing. But in many ways, the major themes of the whole book begin with their influence. It’s all about kinship and the many ways we choose one another.

Had he lived to see it, David would be 90 years old today. I’m grateful to reflect on that and on the many ways I still carry parts of his life in mine.

Now that I’ve lived more decades than those early years, I also know what it is like to choose young people and bring them into my family. I’ve done that too. I’ve always known how much David and Amy gave me. But now, as I’ve gotten older and had parallel experiences, I think I have a deeper awareness of what I gave them as well.

And that brings me to a thought I hadn’t considered until recently.

David was the same age I am now when I was born. We wouldn’t meet until I was nearly an adult. And that reminds me that maybe — likely — I haven’t even met some people who will someday be central to my life. I love this vision of choice. I love that there are loves before us and loves behind us.

How lucky we are to share some time with one another.

—Renee Roederer

When we click on a YouTube video, no one enjoys watching the advertisements that come before it. Most of the time, I simply treat them as an inconvenience.

Lately, though, I’ve been getting advertisements from a company called Patriot Mobile. The ad talks about how important it is to find companies that promote your values.

What values? I wondered. I think the algorithm probably pegged the wrong person.

When I visited their website, I found this description: “America’s only Christian conservative wireless provider. Reliable nationwide coverage on your choice of three major networks, all while supporting our mission.”

And what is their mission? They describe four pillars: the First Amendment; the Second Amendment; the sanctity of life; and military, veterans, and first responders. They use the existing cell towers of the major wireless carriers. But by switching your service to Patriot Mobile, you’re also supporting organizations connected to those four pillars.

Let me just say that I personally find it a little dystopian to hear the phrase, “America’s only Christian conservative wireless provider.”

Is Christianity a brand now?

And if it is, who gets included? Who gets excluded? What are we promoting? The website also features well-known conservative commentators and political strategists, making it clear that this is about much more than cell phone service.

It’s one thing to say you care about religious freedom, but for whom? What about people who aren’t conservative Christians? What about people who practice other religions? Or no religion at all?

And for the record, I don’t think any faith community should have its own… wireless provider.

What an age we are living in.

I also wish corporations weren’t pouring money into politics. (And that certainly isn’t limited to conservatives.)

One final confession: when I visited the Patriot Mobile website to write this post, I opened it in an incognito window. I don’t need to encourage the algorithm any more.

—Renee Roederer

–Photos by Renee Roederer

A little being is so complex.

It’s amazing what we take for granted. When we lose something that’s important to our daily lives, including things that have typically gone rather unnoticed, we have a newfound appreciation for them when they return.

To give an example, this time last week, we had two days with horrific smoke from Canadian wildfires. It was completely surreal to have to stay inside during that time, and it felt unsettling not to have clean air. We’ve had days since then when the AQI was moderate or unhealthy for sensitive groups, but over the last few days we’ve been back in the category called Good, and it feels absolutely amazing. I don’t want to take clean air for granted.

At the same time, there’s something I’ve been lacking that I haven’t received back quite yet.

Two weeks ago, I injured my hamstring, and it’s still a struggle. Walking is totally fine, but sitting is extremely painful at times, especially for prolonged periods. Driving is the worst. I can manage short distances and short amounts of time, but otherwise I’m in quite a bit of pain.

So I’ve spent a lot of time lately standing or sitting sideways on the couch instead of sitting with both feet on the floor. I just can’t quite do that yet.

I miss my bike, and that’s obvious to me. But I never thought I’d miss sitting in chairs.

Right now, I do.

I have some appointments to help with this, and I hope it doesn’t persist for too long. But when it does improve, I think I’ll take seriously the gift of being able to sit comfortably.

Do you have anything like this lately in your own life?

—Renee Roederer

Dr. Izaskun Jiménez-Serra, the lead radio astronomer on a recent study, and additional scientists on her team have definitively discovered a sugar in interstellar space. This is so exciting, and it unlocks new questions as well.

Jiménez-Serra and her team found erythrulose, a type of sugar made of four carbon atoms, eight hydrogen atoms, and four oxygen atoms. More specifically, this is the same sugar that is found in raspberries.

Now, you might wonder how someone could find a sugar in space?

Dr. Jiménez-Serra and her team used radio telescopes to detect characteristic radio signals from molecules in the interstellar medium — the enormous clouds of gas and dust between solar systems in the Milky Way. As molecules rotate, they emit or absorb radio waves at specific frequencies. After collecting those signals, the team compared them with laboratory measurements of known molecules right here on earth. It turned out there was a clear match — erythrulose.

Sugars are among the essential building blocks of life. Scientists have previously discovered sugars on asteroids, and some have wondered whether certain sugars became part of our own planet when asteroids collided with Earth. But that still leaves a question: How did those asteroids acquire sugars in the first place?

This is the first time erythrulose has been detected in the interstellar medium itself.

Could this be a nursery for some of life’s building blocks? It invites all kinds of wonder.

—Renee Roederer

I was driving up onto the highway yesterday, coming up one of those sharply curving entrance ramps that climbs uphill before merging into traffic.

As I reached the top, I suddenly slowed down. No one was behind me. And I wasn’t on the highway quite yet.

But before me, a mama duck and four tiny ducklings were crossing the lane. I think they actually walked underneath my car after I stopped.

My first thought was, How did you all get up here? Had they somehow crossed the highway’s three lanes of traffic? They had come from that direction. Had they wandered all this way and simply ended up on the entrance ramp? I have no idea.

What I do know is that they were precious. And what I do know is that they were in a precarious position.

I wish I’d been able to get a photo, though that’s certainly not a good idea on an entrance ramp. But I hope they quacked all about it later, telling their buddies over dinner.

—Renee Roederer

When I left the house today, I didn’t intend to take myself on a nearly all-day, treat-yourself date. But that’s what I did. And it was unbelievably refreshing.

If you’ve read my blog for a little while, it’s probably no surprise that I like adventure, whether that’s taking trips or simply snapping photos of beautiful things that I find.

But right alongside that trait, I’m also outrageously disciplined.

I have a list of tasks that I do every single day, and I’m very motivated by streaks where there are no days missing. To give you the most extreme example, I have a streak on Duolingo that is 1,295 days long. I haven’t missed a single day in that span of time.

I also write or edit a portion of my book every single day, and I haven’t missed a day since January 1, 2025. It might only be a tiny bit each day, but it adds up over time.

I write a blog post every single day, too, and this year I haven’t repeated any posts from the past. Every one has been new.

So, as you can see, I’m very dedicated to goals when I set out to accomplish them.

I remember being a teenager, and in a church context, people would sometimes do an exercise with a jar, rocks, and sand. If you filled the jar with sand first, the rocks wouldn’t fit. But if you put the rocks in first, the sand would settle around them, and somehow everything fit. It was an object lesson about priorities.

Sometimes I hyper-prioritize my task lists, especially when you add in the professional work that I do. I love my job, but it can be demanding sometimes.

Today, though, I put some creature comforts first.

And just like the sand in that illustration, all my work and all the tasks on my list still fit around them.

I took a couple of walks. I went down to an area on the Huron River where there are gentle rapids and put my feet in the water. I took myself out for a late-afternoon happy hour. I spent much of the day outside. I turned on my hotspot and did my work from there.

It was so satisfying.

I knew we don’t have this level of flexibility every day. I didn’t have any meetings today, and that made it possible. But there are times when it might be worth shifting things around and prioritizing people, places, or simple joys.

The rest can still fit.

—Renee Roederer