Smuggling Grace

This is what they see on Tatooine.

It goes without saying that the beginning of ideas, initiatives, or stories often shapes the end. But there are also times when the end shapes the beginning. And the middle does, too.

I’ve been working on a book – very slowly but very diligently – since the beginning of 2025. Sometimes I only write three sentences in a day. But all of that has added up, and I’ve now written eight of what will eventually be twelve chapters.

Not surprisingly, those first eight chapters have changed what I initially envisioned for chapters nine through twelve. But also, the unwritten chapters are now shaping the written ones, too. Rather than pushing ahead and finishing the book, I realized this was actually a good time to go back and revise those first eight chapters in light of where I now want to go. I’ve been doing that, and it’s been deeply satisfying.

I suspect there are many experiences in life where the beginning, middle, and end are all shaping one another, often without our even realizing it. A book just makes that process easier to see.

It would be wonderful to finish it this year so that I can publish it next year. Stay tuned for Beheld: A Spirituality of Kinship.

Do you have anything like that in your own life – where you can see all the parts influencing one another?

It’s a fun thing to notice.

—Renee Roederer

–Photos by Renee Roederer

Billy Joel’s 1976 “Prelude/Angry Young Man” came on in my car a few days ago. I had not heard it before. Still resonates?

4041.2 Miles Total

In September 2023, I bought an e-bike, and I named her Zelda Zoomie. Since that time, I’ve been biking to every street in Ann Arbor in alphabetical order. I just finished the G Streets. Every time I complete a letter, I write a reflection on place.

“You tend to have future thinking,” someone once told me. He meant it as a compliment, but he was also encouraging me to become more rooted in the present moment. That was good advice.

He wasn’t wrong in that observation. I do think about future outcomes often, and I tend to engage the present moment as a springboard toward what is possible. In life chapters that are overwhelming, that can take the form of anxiety. But most of the time, when I’m grounded, I am often thinking about what can be built — what can be created based on what’s happening, who is present, and what visions seem to be emerging.

While that is more typical for me, over these last few years, I’ve tried to challenge myself to think in the opposite direction: How many past moments have led to this present moment? How many paths are meeting up right here? How does this moment represent a variety of culminations?

That’s always true, too.

And so with that in mind, as I’ve biked around streets beginning with G, I keep thinking about all the culminations that Ann Arbor has brought into my life. All these past moments — 13 years of them — have brought me to a place of identity, and I’ve discovered that most clearly in the connections with people who have shaped me. There are innumerable culminations.

A mentor of mine sometimes says this about his own mentors: “There is no me without [insert person’s name].” In other words, he would not be the version of himself that he is without the care and influence of people who have names, faces, and histories. So if I am thinking about time, and I am thinking about people, I also have to think about place.

There is no me without Ann Arbor.

A zillion moments — gifted with, by, and for people — have led me somewhere. And culminations are interesting because they don’t always land you in the place you planned.

I initially moved to Michigan for a job I wasn’t able to stay in. (Thankfully, in the end, I kept those relationships, too.) And I now have a vocational life I never expected to have. Twists and turns led me to the Epilepsy Foundation of Michigan. I didn’t expect nonprofit work to be a new career. I didn’t expect that alongside the work I get to do, it would heal my own younger heart and provide me with a community that has revolutionized my life. A gorgeous culmination.

I didn’t even expect to have a bike and be pedaling around so much beauty. Or have the friends that I have. Or know people who inspire me with their activism. Or savor meals and treasure the summers I get to eat them outside. Or have bunnies in my backyard.

And my Ann Arbor life hasn’t all been puppies and roses. Barriers, unexpected turns, and far too many “unprecedented” and “out of an abundance of caution” moments in this era could have undone me. While living here, I can name four different experiences that would each have been the most painful season of my adult life had any one of them happened on its own.

And you know what? That’s about place, too. Culmination, too. Formation, too.

There is no me without Ann Arbor.

And while I do keep thinking about futures and what is possible – my friend was right; I do like thinking that way – I’m also grateful to reverse that process and think about how the present became possible because of the past.

I’ll close with one of my favorite quotes. It’s from Frederick Buechner in his book Wishful Thinking: A Seekers ABC. He says,

“In the entire history of the universe, let alone in your own history, there has never been another day just like today, and there will never be another just like it again. Today is the point to which all your yesterdays have been leading since the hour of your birth. It is the point from which all your tomorrows will proceed until the hour of your death. If you were aware of how precious today is, you could hardly live through it. Unless you are aware of how precious it is, you can hardly be said to be living at all.”

Time. Relationships. Place.

Grateful for them all.

—Renee Roederer

On July 4, a friend shared several quotations from Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States. Roosevelt was a complex historical figure with accomplishments, shortcomings, and controversies of his own. Even so, I found these particular words worth reflecting on.

How do you receive them?

“It is better for the Government to help a poor man to make a living for his family than to help a rich man make more profit for his company.”¹

“The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts… To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”²

“Viewed purely in the abstract, I think there can be no question that women should have equal rights with men.” … “Especially as regards the laws relating to marriage there should be the most absolute equality between the two sexes. I do not think the woman should assume the man’s name.”³

—–
¹ An Autobiography, Chapter X, “The Presidency.”

² “Sedition, a Free Press, and Personal Rule,” Kansas City Star, May 7, 1918.

³ “The Practicability of Equalizing Men and Women before the Law,” Harvard senior thesis, 1880.

—Renee Roederer

Interesting!

Back in March, I wrote about a chiropractic center that often has anti-medication slogans on its marquee. At the time, I shared a picture of that marquee. It read,

“Pain and sickness are not a drug deficiency.”

My response is, “And what if they are?” For many people, that is the case.

They have changed their sign in a few different directions. But this sentence is back this week. Seeing that sign again recently reminded me of a memory from high school.

For about a year, I babysat intermittently for a family in my neighborhood. One day, after I had spent time with the children, I got a call from their Mom. She had found a pill in the house and wondered whether it belonged to me.

It was an Advil. Nothing especially significant. And granted, I shouldn’t have left medication lying around. I think it had simply fallen out of the bottle.

But what really stayed with me wasn’t the pill itself. It was how quickly her mind spiraled over the possibility that I was someone who took medication. She even voiced the quiet part out loud: “Oh, I was worried that you take medication.”

There wasn’t much curiosity or empathy about whether I might have needed it. There wasn’t gratitude that I had access to something that allowed me to feel better. Instead, there seemed to be concern that perhaps I had some kind of health condition.

I had always cared well for her children. Nothing about that had changed. I remember simply telling her that I had a headache.

That moment never sat quite right with me. Even then, I was beginning to sense that many people have this kind of relationship with medication and the people who need it.

But the truth is that sometimes medication is exactly what people need. It’s exactly what allows people to be present and active in ways they might not otherwise be — whether that’s babysitting children or participating fully in the many ordinary moments of life. Curiosity and compassion have always seemed like a better place to begin.

—Renee Roederer

I came home from a recent trip and was surprised and sad to find a hole in my deck. It’s just one board, so I thought, Okay… someone can probably repair that.

Well, I have a pretty good idea how that happened now, because a groundhog played peekaboo with me today.

It’s a literal game of whack-a-mole over here.