Smuggling Grace

“If you could have dinner with anyone, dead or alive, who would you choose?”

When people are asked this question, many choose historical figures, and those are intriguing options. But for me, my number one pick would be my great-grandmother, Sylvia. She died two years before I was born, and she is the relative I most wish I knew now.

I know very little about her personality or what people thought of her. I also don’t know her hobbies or her likes and dislikes. I see that she was married multiple times, and her first husband was my great-grandfather. She may have loved him immensely, or he may have caused her great sorrow. Or both could be true at the same time.

Though much is unknown about her personally, I know she must have been immensely resilient. That’s because I know her story.

Without her, and without this story I’m about to tell you, I wouldn’t be here. In an obvious way, this is true about all of our relatives. But it’s also true because of the resilience and resolve she seemed to have in abundance. I wouldn’t be here if she hadn’t taken clandestine efforts to save her family and mine.

I am born of bathtub gin.

Here is how that took place:

In the aftermath of World War I, in the 1920s and the start of 1930s, my great-grandfather drank himself to death. This was the era of Prohibition. My grandmother, Sylvia’s daughter-in-law, told me that he would drink any alcohol he could get his hands on, even wood alcohol or ethanol. And so, tragically, and likely in a lot of pain (Maybe from the war? That’s my curiosity, but I don’t know), he died, not very long after Sylvia had given birth to her fifth baby.

And that fifth and youngest baby was my grandfather Jim. Suddenly, she had five mouths to feed and was newly a widow. Likely, the family was already poor, but in 1929, the very week Jim was born, the stock market crashed, too. The nation was plunged into the Great Depression.

I’ve heard this next part two different ways:

— At this point, recognizing she did not have the means to care well for her children, she placed them in a Catholic orphanage.

Or

–At this point, she began her secret business to care for her family, but she got caught, and her children were taken away and placed in a Catholic orphanage.

Whichever happened, I know what she did in the aftermath. My great-grandmother Sylvia became a moonshiner. She began to make bathtub gin and sell it illegally. She did this for years. And when she had enough money, she got her eldest child out of the orphanage. That child began to help her until they had enough money to get the second child out of the orphanage. And then they each helped, one by one, until she received all of her children back into her household.

Jim, my grandfather, lived in the orphanage the longest, until he was 7 years old. It was a remarkably difficult childhood. He told stories about how each Christmas, they brought toys down from the attic to give them as gifts to the kids. But then they would put them back in that attic, only to turn around and give them again the next Christmas. Once, he found a candy bar wrapper with the chocolate already eaten. He kept it just so he could smell it. These experiences must have been deeply traumatic for all of Sylvia’s children.

I would say that the death of their father and their difficult upbringing in a Catholic orphanage were the central generational traumas in my family. I can see unique ways that these have shaped us.

All that being said, alongside generational trauma, which we often inherit and work to heal, might we also inherit generational resilience? If so, do I receive that from Sylvia?

If that is true, it may help explain why many people have told me that I, too, am resilient.

I am born of bathtub gin.

Alongside the approximate 12.5% DNA I share with Sylvia, I hope that some of her resolve has come to me and my family, and perhaps through her, to people I know and love as well, even if they don’t share that DNA.

Last month, I visited my hometown, and at one point, I realized I was near the cemetery where she is buried. I had not seen her grave since I was a child. I think her son, Jim, pointed it out to me. I wasn’t exactly sure where her headstone was, but I remembered the vicinity. As I started wandering, I found it, nearly right away.

I stood over the place where her bones are in the earth, and I thanked her. From her, I’ve received life. From her, I’ve received steadfastness. From her, I’ve received a resolve to keep working toward the repair of relationships and communities, even when the path is slow and uncertain. To be clear, this is not a call to endure harm or remain within relationships or systems that cause it. But it is a call to discern carefully where repair and wholeness are possible — internally, for sure, and if conditions allow it, in relationship — and to express gratitude when it is.

I do not always know how to do this. But I want it, at least in part, because of her.

—Renee Roederer

Have you ever seen a murmuration of starlings as they fly through the sky? Here’s a great video of that phenomenon:

How do they do it? Why don’t they collide?

I love what adrienne maree brown writes in her book, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds:

“Starlings’ murmuration consists of a flock moving in sync with one another, engaging in clear, consistent communication and exhibiting collective leadership and deep, deep trust. Every individual bird focuses attention on their seven closest neighbors and thus manage a larger flock cohesiveness and synchronicity (and times upwards of over a million birds).”

The experiences underway in Minnesota have been traumatic, yet at the same time, many people have been moved by the ways that neighbors are caring for neighbors. People are showing up for the most vulnerable. And often, they are doing this by watching their own block or their own local school. They are present and protective of the people in their vicinity.

And then last week, I heard Jelani Cobb make connections between the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and current ICE raids. He is the Dean of the Columbia Journalism School, and when he teaches about the outpouring of people who resisted this act, many of his students assume that these were all abolitionists. In many cases, that was not true. But they couldn’t tolerate their neighbors being snatched away from their communities. “The fundamental civic unit in this country is neighbor.”

When we are in solidarity with our neighbors, our movements can make murmurations, too.

—Renee Roederer

I don’t need to remind you that if you watch the news, it’s going to feel like a dumpster fire.

But people are truly getting mobilized, and that is also something to behold. Rebecca Solnit, who often writes about movements and social change, shared that she told her friend, “I think we’re winning” though “it will be a long time before we can say we’ve won.”

And then Mark Provost write wrote this on Facebook:

“Friday’s protests were so widespread I had to cross check common city names to identify which state it was in. For example, there was a big march in Lafayette near Berkeley, California, as well as a protest in Lafayette, Indiana, home of Purdue University. Two nights prior, the community of Lafayette, Louisiana protested against local police cooperation with ICE.”

(P.S. Shoutout to my friend Ben who reads this blog from Lafayette, Indiana).

When we add our presence and skills together, people are more powerful than they know.

—Renee Roederer

As of today, we are more than halfway there.

Over the weekend, I learned about Imbolc. I had never heard of this holiday before, but it is an Irish tradition of honoring the halfway point between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox. Imbolc was yesterday, so as of today, we are closer to the first day of Spring than the first day of Winter.

My dear friend Cole introduced me and our shared community to this holiday, and they offered an opportunity to observe and reflect as well. Cole invited us to take note of the sunset every day from now until Spring. We are fortunate that we have this time marked on our phones down the minute. They suggested that we take a few minutes to look out a window at sunset and also ask ourselves some good questions:

What is changing? What does it feel like to connect with the lengthening days? What do we see melting or eventually budding? What is changing inside of ourselves? What forms of newness are being born right now — inside us, inside community?

With all of this in mind, I close with another question:

Would you like to observe this with me?

—Renee Roederer

Inside and Outside.

–Photos by Renee Roederer

What we know and what we don’t.

I have a dear friend who loves to mail cards and letters. I know this is a rare, connectional art, which makes it feel especially meaningful when her words arrive in my mailbox. Recently, she sent me a beautiful card and, referencing the winter season, she closed with this line:

“Remember to enjoy your hibernation.”

At first, though, I had to look twice. I thought the lowercase h was an uppercase L.

“Remember to enjoy your Libernation.”

That’s not a word, of course. But I smiled. It immediately made me think of the work of Tricia Hersey – poet, performance artist, and Nap Bishop. For years, she has written about how liberating rest can be. Our hibernating moments can free us by caring for our bodies, re-centering us, and making space for imagination and dreaming.

At the heart of Hersey’s work is the recognition that this is especially true for people who have experienced oppression, and for those whose ancestors have endured violence, forced labor, and exploitation. She wrote the book Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto, which I highly recommend, and she continues to explore these themes through The Nap Ministry and her work online.

These days, it’s right to think carefully about the actions we must discern and take. And we can invite our restful moments to shape us and this moment, too.

So I’m holding onto that misread blessing.

“Remember to enjoy your Libernation.”

–Renee Roederer

A story to serve as an analogy:

Earlier this year, while visiting Durham, North Carolina, I had the chance to stay in a tiny house. Not a small house – a tiny house: a self-contained residential unit of about 300–400 square feet.

And I fell in love with this cozy space.

Yes, it was small. But it was also deeply intentional. Everything had a place. Everything had a purpose. There was a kind of calm built into the space – a quiet coherence you could feel the moment you stepped inside. When you live in a place that small, you can only keep so much. What remains has to matter, whether functionally, aesthetically, or personally. There isn’t room for excess, or for things that don’t belong.

What surprised me most was how much that tiny house stayed with me after I left.

I don’t live in a large house, but it’s much bigger than that space. And still, I found myself thinking: what would it mean if every room in my home felt the way that tiny house felt?

So recently, I’ve been rearranging and reimagining my space. I’ve been more deliberate about what I bring into each room. Photos of people I love. Images from nature that steady me. Fewer things overall, and more intention behind the things that remain.

Here’s where I’m going with this: the feeling I experienced last spring didn’t disappear. It took shape. It transformed the rooms of my house.

And that’s what has stayed with me.

Communities can do that for people too. They can make us feel welcome. They can make us feel at ease. They can offer a sense of belonging that settles into our bodies and stays there long after we’ve left.

If a small, intentional space can reshape how we inhabit our own homes, what might be possible in the communities we build with one another?

What might take form – slowly, unexpectedly – if we created spaces of care and connection so thoughtfully that people carried them into places we could never predict?

—Renee Roederer

My birthday was weeks ago, but last weekend, a small circle of friends threw me the most hilarious birthday party. It was called the Reneesance Ball—i.e. Renaissance, pronounced in the European way that also happens to sound like my name.

Dressing up was optional, and some friends absolutely understood the assignment. There were paper planes, my favorite cocktail, but in the spirit of the era, we renamed them parchment carriages. Commitment matters.

As for me, I dressed as Elizabeth I. She reigned for the same number of years as my new age.

Ta da! Gloriana

But truly, get a silly circle of friends. They’re the best.

—Renee Roederer

I’d like to share a few paragraphs from Rebecca Solnit’s weekly newsletter, Meditations in an Emergency. This comes from her most recent post, “This Cold Winter, Love is a Superpower.”

In the wake of Alex Pretti’s killing, she writes:

Minneapolitans responded differently that evening, with candlelit memorials and songs. Veterans Administration intensive care nurse Alex Pretti’s name, true nature, and death at 37 will not be forgotten.

The powerful nationwide—and beyond—opposition to Trump and his authoritarian power grabs has come as a surprise to him and his gang. They believe devoutly in the power of violence and do not comprehend the power of nonviolence. They understand the power that the state has but do not understand the power that civil society has.

They understand their own motives—greed, a lust for power, an intolerance of difference—and are baffled or uncomprehending about generosity, about the desires for democracy and equality that are about wanting to share rather than hoard power, the tolerance and more than tolerance of difference. Tolerance is such a mediocre word; I recently saw Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi speak about her early days in the House—she entered Congress in 1987—when she would be told, “Oh, you tolerate gay people in San Francisco,” to which she says she would reply, “We don’t tolerate them; we take pride in them.”

On the other hand, “I think the single dumbest phrase in military history is ‘our diversity is our strength,’” said the dumbest and most unqualified Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, last February. Some of us take pride in the diversity of our cities and country; some of us care about people who are supposed to be divided from us by category but can be united with us by care.

For many in the Trump regime it seems incomprehensible—or a scam of sorts—that those not categorically under attack by ICE are so committed to solidarity with their neighbors who are, and thereby to universal human rights, to standing up on principle, and, since ICE’s murder of Renee Good, will risk their lives to do so.

They can’t understand love as a form of power.