Smuggling Grace

“Well, that made me feel feelings,” a friend of mine used to say whenever he found something to be especially stirring.

There’s a piece of music often paired with internet memes and reels, usually connected to something meaningful or awe-inspiring. It’s just a tiny snippet of a song that is actually brief in and of itself. But whenever I hear it, I always feel feelings.

“What is this piece?” I wondered earlier this week. I looked up the full piece of music. It’s titled Agape, and it’s part of the soundtrack of the 2018 film If Beale Street Could Talk, based on the 1974 James Baldwin novel of the same name.

The piece is composed by Nicholas Britell. I encourage you to take some time to listen to this today, and perhaps with some headphones or earbuds.

I listened to it on repeat on a drive to Lansing and cried, thinking of a lot of good memories — and with gratitude, feeling feelings.

I was walking around a small town in Michigan when I looked down and saw a resilient, heart-shaped cluster of flowers growing from a crack in the sidewalk. Lovely. I sent a photo to a few people whom I consider especially resilient.

When was the last time you told yourself — or perhaps someone else — one of your stories of resilience? Something difficult you moved through? Something you survived? Or perhaps a story that was passed down through your family?

What if you made space for a little resilient storytelling this week, even if only for yourself?

—Renee Roederer

This is Artemis, this season’s baby yard bunny.

Every year, except for last year (sadness, the streak was broken!) a baby bunny has grown up in my yard during the spring and summer seasons. Cottontail rabbits are pretty territorial, so likely many of them, if not most of them, are related. Generations of yard bunnies. I’m pretty lucky.

Though the crew of Artemis II ventured farther away from Earth than any human beings in history, this tiny Artemis stays close to my home. Though I’m sure she thinks of it as her home, and that’s fine with me.

I enjoy watching her hop around and eat blades of grass that I assume are going to be too big for her. But they never are.

Every year, I find myself thinking about how these little ones only know my yard, or perhaps a few neighboring yards. They have no idea that I take photos of them and post about them. And then that makes me think about how small my world — our world —really is.

Think of all the things we don’t know! We don’t even know what we don’t know.

The universe, and perhaps even a multiverse (wild!) is utterly beyond our comprehension. Though I’m glad we keep exploring.

Yard bunnies are amazing, delightful, and humbling.

—Renee Roederer

Every time I drove around a slight bend or down a hill, I waited for it to come into view. And finally it did — the Mackinac Bridge.

It has such a signature look, and I smiled wide when I first saw it. Then I continued to approach until I arrived at the toll booth and joined the other cars around me in crossing the Strait of Mackinac. (Did you know that Lake Michigan and Lake Huron are technically one gigantic lake? The strait is where they meet.)

There’s gorgeous blue water in every direction. It’s immense. The towers of the bridge loom large above it all. As I drove across, I rolled down my windows and turned my music up.

I also slowed down. And I felt completely comfortable doing this because everyone slows down. Everyone creates a leisurely experience for themselves, which, of course, creates it for everyone else. Everyone supports one another in making this choice. There is simply too much beauty to rush past.

As I continued driving, I found myself thinking about that. It feels like the opposite of how so much of the world works. We don’t often slow down collectively. Sure, there’s that strange week between Christmas and New Year’s when nobody quite knows what day it is. And if we’re fortunate — I am grateful to experience this — we have people in our workplaces, communities, and families who encourage us to rest and move at a more sustainable pace.

But there are also demands, aren’t there? Sometimes they come from hierarchies and systems. Sometimes they come from our own sense of responsibility. We care deeply about what we’re doing. We don’t want to let anyone down. And so we don’t always allow ourselves to slow down.

But maybe we could. And by that, I mean we.

Maybe slowing down needs to be collective. Or at the very least, it needs to function like a contagion Because when one person slows down — still moving forward, but at a reasonable pace, while also taking in joy and beauty — it creates the conditions for others to do the same.

—Renee Roederer

—Renee Roederer

Very coordinated!

Dear Friends,

Once a year, I like to write a brief note of gratitude and invitation.

First, thank you.

Whether you’ve been reading for years or only recently stumbled across this little corner of the internet, thank you for spending some of your attention here. Attention is one of the most valuable gifts we can offer one another, and I never take yours for granted.

One of the great joys of writing has been discovering that these reflections often become conversations. Sometimes those conversations happen in the comments. Sometimes they happen in emails or messages. Sometimes they happen months later over coffee, on a walk, or in a completely unexpected place. I am grateful for all of it.

Over the years, several people have asked whether I would ever move this blog to a paid platform like Substack. The answer is no. I want these reflections, stories, questions, and occasional rabbit trails to remain available to anyone who finds them.

That said, a number of people have also asked how they can support the writing. So once a year, I open a small window for those who would like to do so.

If these posts have encouraged you, challenged you, made you laugh, helped you notice something differently, or simply become a meaningful part of your routine, and if you’re in a position to contribute, you can do so below. Thank you.

Support Smuggling Grace

As it happens, this is also a season when my house is in the midst of a significant glow-up. There are repairs to make, projects to tackle, and a long list of things that have been waiting patiently for attention. For so many exciting reasons, I can’t wait to see that vision become a reality. So if you’ve been looking for a way to support the writing, you can help me make this house a greater place of hospitality — something that is very important to me.

Please know that there is absolutely no expectation. The writing will continue either way. Your presence here is gift enough!

Thank you for being part of this ongoing conversation. It continues to be one of the great gifts of my life.

With gratitude,
Renee

I highly recommend this podcast episode below because it is so relatable.

We are often in a position where a huge percentage of our time is structured. We may feel like we have little to no free time at all. This is detrimental to our mental and physical health. And it turns out it is not especially good for our relationships or our values, either. (For instance, one study found that when people experience “time famine,” they are much less likely to help other people.)

So how do we make this better? How do we increase our sense of time affluence? And how do we take advantage of time confetti — those free, unstructured moments that suddenly open up — to create time windfalls: moments of rest, downtime, relationship-building, and the things we most want to do, if only we felt like we had the time?

I was thinking recently about a hilarious quote from one of my mentors:

Decades ago, when he was just starting out in his career, he took a job where he was considered the “assistant.” The problem is that he was the assistant to too many people. Everyone constantly wanted his time, and he was pulled in every direction, unable to fulfill what was clearly impossible for one person to do.

One day, during a meeting, he became so frustrated and flustered that he blurted out,

“Well, why doesn’t someone just bring in a big tub of water right now, so I can prove once and for all that I can neither walk on it nor turn it into wine!”

That has stayed with me, and it still makes me laugh.

Here’s hoping that you’re centered and in one piece.

—Renee Roederer

Last Sunday, Rebecca Solnit published an essay on her newsletter Meditations in an Emergency called, “In the Dark Times, Will There Also Be Singing?”

She writes about how diligent and hypervigilant many of us have had to become over the last decade, and especially over the last few years. We scroll through our phones, trying to understand crises unfolding around us and among us, hoping that knowledge might provide some sense of control. After all, how can we act? How can we shift? And how can we help bring about change if we don’t even know what is happening?

Some people are hypervigilant because threats and policies are directed at them personally. Others may be less directly vulnerable but still find themselves on edge, waiting for the next shoe to drop or scanning for the right moment to take action.

Then Solnit raises some important questions: If none of this were happening in our country, what would we be doing instead? What has been lost? And what might currently be getting lost because so much of our attention needs to be here?

What a tragic thing to consider.

At one point she writes, “…I miss where my attention might have gone.”

But she doesn’t leave us there.

In the very same essay, she reminds us that we can also be playing. And creating. And making art. And blasting music. And marveling at nature. And laughing with friends. And thoroughly savoring the taste of food and drink.

No doubt, our neighbors deserve dignity, protection, and solidarity from us. And at the same time, we all deserve opportunities to create and experience the things that make life lovely, connective, meaningful, and transformative. We benefit from one another when we do this.

So if the times were different, where would your attention be going? … Do you miss it?

Where might it go now?

—Renee Roederer