I know someone who broke her tibia. I think it’s been as painful as it sounds. But from there, she had surgery and is currently in a rehab center for about a month.
Apparently, it’s the place to be.
On their own, without any staff involvement, the people in this center are setting up playdates for themselves. They’re meeting up in common areas, playing games, laughing hard, coloring — you name it.
My friend’s young grandson visited, and he asked, “Grandma, can I stay the night here tonight?”
She said no. That’s not allowed, unfortunately.
But even the youths want to be in the rehab center where all the friendship happens.
I share this simply to say that we are social beings. Like sunflowers that grow in the direction of the sun, we really need each other. And it’s pretty clear that these kinds of connections — this growing toward one another — can happen in just about any setting.
I don’t want anyone to break their tibia to have this experience, but I’m amazed at how community forms, how we can find each other, and how we can invite each other in if we open ourselves to it.
A section of the 9/11 Memorial lists those who lost their lives in the World Trade Center attacks, in New York, N.Y., Nov. 12, 2012.Public domain photograph from defenseimagery.mil.
Tomorrow is the 25th anniversary of 9/11.
If I still myself and think back on that day, it’s not hard to remember the details — both insignificant and deeply significant — as well as the visceral reactions I was feeling.
I did not have any close friends or family in New York City at that time, so I didn’t live with the turmoil of longing for a phone call from someone who might be safe, at risk, or already lost. Years later, I came to know people who did wait for those phone calls in grating anxiety, made all the worse because cell service throughout the city was so disrupted.
For me, I remember that my first big exam in college was canceled and feeling guilty that I was relieved about it. I wasn’t sure I was prepared. I remember us gathering in that classroom and, instead of taking a test, watching the news in horror.
I remember walking back to my dorm room and regressing to watching old televangelists I had grown up with — not because my theology and worldview mirrored theirs precisely, but because somehow, in their fundamentalism, having a clearly demarcated line between what was wrong and what was right gave me comfort.
A few weeks later, in horror of their commentary, I stopped watching because I realized that my right and wrong no longer aligned with theirs.
Mostly, it was because of the way they were talking about Muslim people.
In the area where I grew up 25 years ago, there was less diversity and less interaction between cultures. I didn’t have any Muslim friends or family either. But I knew that the ways Muslim people were being stereotyped and collectively assumed to be dangerous were wrong.
And so, 25 years later, I’m thinking about that piece once more.
Today, I do have beloved Muslim friends, and I have met many people in Muslim communities who have talked about what the aftermath of 9/11 was like, when so many people in the United States made sweeping assumptions about Muslim people and began to enact forms of collective punishment through marginalization, exclusion, and violence.
I have seen that personally, and I have certainly encountered it in our news cycle over the course of 25 years.
And it’s not over.
Just this week, Rudy Giuliani, who was mayor of New York City on that fateful day in 2001, said that he did not believe Mayor Zohran Mamdani should attend the commemorations for those who lost their lives on 9/11. Mamdani is now the mayor of New York City. He is also the city’s first Muslim mayor. Giuliani went so far as to compare him with the 9/11 attackers.
These beliefs, attitudes, and forms of violence persist.
And so, when we cross the threshold into tomorrow’s anniversary, as we rightly remember nearly 3,000 lives lost, I also want to remember Muslim communities in the United States and around the world who were collectively blamed for the horrific actions of a few 25 years ago.
Remembrance should make us more careful about whom we blame, whom we fear, and whom we exclude.
Wendell Berry books, interspersed between large candles. Photo: Renee Roederer.
Gathered around a loaf of bread and a chalice of grape juice, my friend Cole said these words at Farm Church:
“As we share this bread and this cup, it may feel like a feast. For some of us, it may also feel like a snack. And we remember all that is Sacred. For some of us, we may find ourselves feeling a sense of the Sacred beyond us. For some of us, we may find ourselves connecting to the Sacred that is within us. For all of us, we will experience the Sacredness between us. As we eat this bread and drink from this cup, we are each other’s.”
I loved those words, and I thought I would share them. I hope you experience these kinds of movements, expressions, and feelings in your meals this week.
A sunset over the Atlantic Ocean; Charleston, SC; Photo: Renee Roederer
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.
Wikimedia Commons: Wendell Berry stands before the solar panels on his farm in Henry County, KY. Photo by Guy Mendes.
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.
Wendell Berry books, interspersed between large candles
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.
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?
Smuggling Grace 