Smuggling Grace

Last week, I drove down from Durham, North Carolina, to spend a short bit of time in Charleston, South Carolina. It was gorgeous. And much was on display to make it so. I took a sunset cruise on a catamaran out on the ocean. I watched cormorants and pelicans fly through the air and dive deep into the water to catch fish. About halfway through the cruise, the sky turned yellow, orange, and red.

Likewise, beautiful flowers adorned the city, and as I turned corners, I saw gorgeous old buildings in the French Quarter with lovely windows and porches.

But alongside all of this, I was reminded that Charleston has a brutal, traumatic history as well. And though some of these chapters feel like a long time ago, they really weren’t. Their effects remain.

I visited some of this history purposefully, but sometimes, I just stumbled upon it. On the same cruise, I could see Fort Sumter in the water. No one acknowledged it. But that is where the Civil War began. Most painfully, I walked to a museum that stands on the location where enslaved people were auctioned and sold over many years. It’s hard to fathom how dehumanizing and terrifying that must have been. Families were sold apart here. Children were sold away from their families like property, right here.

I have a beloved mentor whose grandfather once told him stories about his own grandparents. His grandfather’s grandparents had been enslaved. That’s how short that history is. A grandfather could speak about his own grandparents and share their lived histories.

It’s not surprising, then, that this traumatic history is still acting upon us, particularly upon those who continue to be marginalized by its legacy.

Not long ago. But never too late to act.

—Renee Roederer

From Durham, North Carolina:

–Photos by Renee Roederer

Yesterday, I shared that I love Wendell Berry’s poem Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front. I’m going to share it below, but today, I’m also thinking about its last line:

Practice Resurrection.

I like that vision. Resurrection in its many forms is never expected, at least not plotted out or fully anticipated. When new life finds us — new vision, new direction, new possibilities, new aliveness — it’s a gift, not something we created through strategic planning.

But at the same time, it is something we can live, cultivate, and participate in. In the present moment. Intentionally.

Where have you seen this lately? Where do you want to see it?

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
By Wendell Berry (1934-2026)

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.

When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.

Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.

Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.

Listen to carrion — put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.

Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.

As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go.

Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

Greetings from North Carolina.

Last night was so lovely. After a very hot day, which required me to drink an absurd amount of water (you really have to keep up with it here!), I gathered with the Farm Church community and sat outside in our garden.

Farm Church has a plot of land on a corner lot at Watts & Green in Durham. Together, we grow about 3,000 pounds of food per year and give it away to address food insecurity. This community of beloved people has continued to call me back for frequent visits over the last decade. And from my home in Michigan, I lead the Farm Church weekly newsletter.

After doing some work in the garden, raking mulch and harvesting peppers, we sat outside together with cicadas sounding around us. It felt appropriate to pay attention to the surrounding nature because we spent time honoring the life and writings of Wendell Berry, who died this week.

He was the “Mad Farmer” behind his poem Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front — my favorite of his writings. It’s interesting that I should call this my favorite, of course, as if I know even a small percentage of his immense volume of work. But I do love it. He spent 92 years listening, reflecting, and leaving beautiful words for us.

Last night, my friend Cole said, “We have so many of his writings to engage throughout our lifetimes.”

We’re not all writers or farmers or conservationists. But we are who we are, and we all will leave something. Sometimes, we just stumble into doing that. But other times, we are intentional, and it leaves a gift.

So how do you want to do that? What matters most to you? Maybe one of the greatest gifts is the occasion to do this together in community.

I’ll close with another Wendell Berry poem. Last night, we made it into a song, singing alongside the cicadas and admiring the beauty of flickering candles.

To Know the Dark
By Wendell Berry
To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.



—Renee Roederer

What is your biggest question right now?

You may have asked it explicitly — to yourself or in conversation with others. But maybe it’s a silent question that’s guiding your life, even if you haven’t said it aloud or even fully articulated it to yourself.

Is it the kind of question that’s keeping you up at night? Or stirring anxiety?

Or is it a question that is possibility-making?

Either way, it’s probably functioning inside you and your world, even if it doesn’t have a complete answer.

All questions are allowed. But if yours has an anxious framing, is there any way to ask another question around it — maybe even a bigger one — that opens up possibilities? For you? For others?

—Renee Roederer

So… what happened to Mary Magdalene?

This post is not one of conspiracy theories. It’s also not another volume of The Da Vinci Code. But it is a post about my biggest question after reading The Gospels of Mary: The Secret Tradition of Mary Magdalene. A mentor friend gave me this book because I was writing a chapter centering on Mary Magdalene in my own unfolding book.

This book contains many Gnostic writings that mention, and at times center, Mary Magdalene — The Gospel of Mary, The Gospel of Thomas, The Gospel of Philip, The Dialogue of the Savior, Pistis Sophia, and The Manichaean Psalms of Heracleides. It has been fascinating to read these.

I don’t know that Mary Magdalene was Jesus’ wife, as Dan Brown claims in The Da Vinci Code. But it is clear that she was very close to Jesus. And she is pivotal to all the resurrection accounts in the canonical Gospels of the New Testament.

So… what happened to her?

What I mean is that she’s never mentioned in any of the other New Testament writings — not the Acts of the Apostles, not any of the epistles. This seems surprising.

Years ago, I listened to one of the most invigorating sermons I’ve ever heard. It was by Diana Butler Bass, and it was part lecture and part sermon. It’s called All the Marys, and it’s worth the length of the listen or read.

She tells the story of Elizabeth (Libbie) Schrader, a scholar who began this research as a master’s student at General Theological Seminary and later earned her PhD at Duke University. Schrader discovered something fascinating in an early manuscript of the Gospel of John: in the pivotal story about Lazarus, Mary, and Martha, there are textual changes involving the names Mary and Martha. Many times, “Mary” is changed to “Martha.” Her research raises the possibility that an earlier version of the story featured one sister named Mary rather than two sisters, Mary and Martha. Schrader has also explored whether that Mary could have been Mary Magdalene.

Why did this happen?

I don’t have the answers to any of this. I’m just sharing that I’ve found all of it so fascinating.

Mary Magdalene is quite the figure.

And if all of this isn’t really a part of your world personally, I hope you’re asking big questions that intrigue you.

—Renee Roederer

This is a long video, but I think it’s worth the watch. Someone sent it to me recently and said, “I love his voice.” And now that I’ve listened, I can say, “Me, too.”

But this scratched an itch, both intellectually and ethically, that I didn’t even know I had.

Hanan Browning starts by referencing a previous video in which he made the argument that one day, archaeologists will dig through the materials we leave behind and conclude that Santa is an American god. But in this video, he takes the idea further.

“I’ve got news for you: Santa is one of our gods.”

He adds, “Religions don’t always require belief; they require that you participate.”

And then here’s the part that has really stuck with me: He argues that Santa is a god for whom we’ll allow people to suspend belief as they age, but we’ll encourage — if not require — them to keep the practices.

He says that modern Christianity in the United States is functioning in the opposite way. Among many, it is intolerable for a Christian to suspend belief — or, I’d add, to change how they believe — but among many, it has become completely acceptable to abandon the practices.

Obviously, that’s not true for every person or every circle of Christians. But if you abandon the practices — and I’d add, the ethics — how aligned are you with the religion you claim?

From Tulsa, Oklahoma:

–Photos by Renee Roederer