Smuggling Grace

Some science on why we don’t remember our earliest years.

I have been in many worship services where my clergy colleagues set the table for communion, then look out at the people and say, “All is ready.”

Usually, words like these are followed by an invitation to be a part of this experience. I’m thinking about that phrase today. It’s a statement, but it’s a feeling, too.

It says, “We are ready for you.”

We curate moments like these all the time. Maybe it is preparing a meal at home for our kids or a group of friends. Maybe it is tending carefully to a hospital room, shaping a space so that someone can be received with care. Maybe it is setting a table, arranging a room, or making sure the small details are in place.

There is a quiet kind of work that goes into those moments. And then, at some point, there is a shift — from preparing to welcoming.

“All is ready.”

Tonight, the Epilepsy Foundation of Michigan, where I work, is hosting an Open House. We will open our office space, invite people to meet our team and one another, and share about our mission and vision.

We are getting ready this afternoon. And I am looking forward to that moment — which I will probably say inwardly —

“All is ready.”

And with it, space for connections to happen.

—Renee Roederer

I’ve been thinking lately about the word entrust.

Not just trust, but entrust.

Entrusting involves placing something in the hands of others, sharing responsibility, and believing that something meaningful can be held not by one person, but by many. I’ve been leaning into this lately, and I find myself searching for words to describe how liberating it can feel to trust a community — and to entrust a shared vision to that community.

This is remarkably countercultural. We are so often told, in subtle and explicit ways, that we should be able to do things on our own, that we should be self-sufficient, and that strength looks like independence. But that story has its limits. The truth is, most meaningful work — and most meaningful life — is not something we build alone.

This is not about being naive. After all, trust is earned and built slowly, through experience and relationship, through people showing us who they are over time.

But once it is there, something shifts. We can begin to move forward without having everything figured out. We can begin to act, not from a place of certainty, but from a sense of rootedness in relationships. We can bring forward ideas that are still forming. We can take steps without seeing the entire path. We won’t have all the answers, but we will know who we can help.

In the midst of a cancer diagnosis, I know someone who has shared this with me: “I would never wish this diagnosis on anyone, but I wish everyone knew what it felt like to have your community catch you.”

This kind of care is necessary and vital in times of crisis. But I wonder if it is also true when we are stretching toward something new, nurturing shared visions and possibilities, and bringing forward something imperfect, unfinished, still becoming.

Can a community catch us there, too? In the bright spots? In the joy? In the possibilities?

If so, I am still searching for words to describe that feeling.

—Renee Roederer

Yesterday, I wrote a bit about Hildegard von Bingen and shared a translation of one of her quotes. Today I’d like to share some of her music. I love it.

I want to say that Hildegard von Bingen was a “Renaissance woman.” Except she lived before the Renaissance (c. 1098–1179).

She was creative and prolific in so many ways. She founded monasteries. She composed music. She wrote about medicine. Some scholars consider her the founder of scientific natural history in Germany. And she was a mystic. She was filled with imagination.

I recently encountered this quote from her, and I appreciate it. I thought I would share it.

Humanity, take a good look at yourself.
Inside, you’ve got heaven and earth, and all of creation.
You’re a world — everything is hidden in you.

— Hildegard von Bingen

We can have great imagination, too.

—Renee Roederer

Last week, I came across an insightful Facebook post by Kristen Leigh Mitchell that has stayed with me.

She was reflecting on the Truth Social post in which the President threatened that “an whole civilization will die tonight,” with a deadline attached. That was then followed by the sudden relief of a ceasefire. Many of us felt that in our bodies. I certainly did. But what struck me most was the pattern she named in response to it.

She wrote, “The clinical term is trauma bonding.” And later, “The whole purpose of the method is to rewire your nervous system around fear, and then relief from fear.”

I have been thinking about that.

We often talk about trauma bonds in the context of romantic relationships — cycles where harm, fear, and instability are followed by moments of relief or reassurance. One of the dynamics at play in those cycles is something called intermittent reinforcement, which can create trauma bonds.

What that means, in simple terms, is that after harm has been happening for a period of time, there are moments — not consistently, but every once in a while — when there is a sudden sense of reassurance, support, or even care. Sometimes it can feel like a return to how things were at the very beginning, when everything felt good and connected. That relief can feel immense.

And that unpredictability matters.

Because over time, this process can actually wire our attachment more deeply. We begin to orient ourselves around those moments of relief. The nervous system starts to anticipate them, to long for them. And in a way, we can become attached not just to the person, but to the cycle itself — even if the same person who brings the relief is also the one who caused the harm. This can even become addictive, and every part of this dynamic makes it difficult to leave. Not impossible, but difficult.

Is this one of the reasons that the President has been able to say, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any votes, OK?” Perhaps some of these supporters are, in some ways, truly trauma bonded.

We are vulnerable to trauma bonds because they can show up in many places. We can experience them in romantic partnerships, families, workplaces, religious communities, and perhaps even in the broader systems of power at work right now. And sometimes, they can help explain why people remain deeply aligned with leaders or systems, even when their words or policies are causing harm — even to those same people. The pattern can be powerful enough to keep someone oriented toward the moments of relief, even when the larger cycle is costly.

Trauma bonds are not always easy to see from the inside.

I noticed something in myself this week. A kind of activation I have not felt in a while — the urge to check, to monitor, to brace for what might happen next. And then, when things softened even slightly, a release.

I am not a supporter, but I felt that cycle, too.

I came across a couple short videos from Thais Gibson that put language to this in a really accessible way — what trauma bonding is, and how it can show up across different kinds of relationships. I found them helpful in naming something that can otherwise feel hard to articulate.

What are trauma bonds?

What are the symptoms of trauma bonds?

If any of this feels familiar in any context — our nation, a community, or a specific dynamic — I think the invitation is not shame or judgment. It is noticing.

And perhaps, gently, the possibility of offering ourselves and our communities a different kind of care.

—Renee Roederer

–Photos by Renee Roederer

Everything is teeming with life.

New life and new possibility can be jolting, even when it’s exactly what we’ve been hoping for. Have you ever had moments like that? I think of relationships that are reconciling, difficult situations that suddenly resolve, or new opportunities finally appearing on the horizon after we’ve been tilling the soil for so long.

This has been on my mind as spring unfolds, and as I consider new questions and new experiences emerging in my own life.

I had never thought about this before, but Easter — not just a day, but a season — isn’t only an arrival of new life, but also a period of waiting. That’s what happens in the Easter story. People are jolted by life, and then they wait for fifty days before a transformative experience at Pentecost. In my own spiritual tradition, I’ve often thought of Advent or Lent as seasons of waiting. But Easter is as well.

So if you feel like you’re on the precipice of something important — a new possibility, a reorientation, a redeeming moment, or a consequential change — but you’re not fully there yet, it’s wise to wait with intention and let it continue to unfold, trusting that it’s finding its way to fullness.

You don’t have to rush what is still becoming.

—Renee Roederer

As I mentioned earlier this week, I spent four days at the Leadership Conference of the Epilepsy Foundation of America in Bloomington, Minnesota. That’s a small amount of time, but when I returned and was getting a ride home from the airport, I was surprised to see so many Bradford pear trees suddenly in bloom nearly everywhere I looked.

Where I live, we are entering a season when we can witness the changes of spring on the scale of a week, or even just a handful of days. Later, still on my way home, I stopped to get coffee and found myself standing outside, taking a few pictures of the blooms. A woman noticed what I was doing and said, “These all opened overnight. They weren’t like this yesterday.”

I know the scale of visual change is much greater at this time of year, but when it is not this obvious, I wonder how much we miss simply because we’re not paying attention. I suppose this is a reminder to keep looking.

—Renee Roederer