Smuggling Grace

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.

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.



—Renee Roederer

What is your biggest question right now?

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?

—Renee Roederer

So… what happened to Mary Magdalene?

This post is not one of conspiracy theories. It’s also not another volume of The Da Vinci Code. But it is a post about my biggest question after reading The Gospels of Mary: The Secret Tradition of Mary Magdalene. A mentor friend gave me this book because I was writing a chapter centering on Mary Magdalene in my own unfolding book.

This book contains many Gnostic writings that mention, and at times center, Mary Magdalene — The Gospel of Mary, The Gospel of Thomas, The Gospel of Philip, The Dialogue of the Savior, Pistis Sophia, and The Manichaean Psalms of Heracleides. It has been fascinating to read these.

I don’t know that Mary Magdalene was Jesus’ wife, as Dan Brown claims in The Da Vinci Code. But it is clear that she was very close to Jesus. And she is pivotal to all the resurrection accounts in the canonical Gospels of the New Testament.

So… what happened to her?

What I mean is that she’s never mentioned in any of the other New Testament writings — not the Acts of the Apostles, not any of the epistles. This seems surprising.

Years ago, I listened to one of the most invigorating sermons I’ve ever heard. It was by Diana Butler Bass, and it was part lecture and part sermon. It’s called All the Marys, and it’s worth the length of the listen or read.

She tells the story of Elizabeth (Libbie) Schrader, a scholar who began this research as a master’s student at General Theological Seminary and later earned her PhD at Duke University. Schrader discovered something fascinating in an early manuscript of the Gospel of John: in the pivotal story about Lazarus, Mary, and Martha, there are textual changes involving the names Mary and Martha. Many times, “Mary” is changed to “Martha.” Her research raises the possibility that an earlier version of the story featured one sister named Mary rather than two sisters, Mary and Martha. Schrader has also explored whether that Mary could have been Mary Magdalene.

Why did this happen?

I don’t have the answers to any of this. I’m just sharing that I’ve found all of it so fascinating.

Mary Magdalene is quite the figure.

And if all of this isn’t really a part of your world personally, I hope you’re asking big questions that intrigue you.

—Renee Roederer

This is a long video, but I think it’s worth the watch. Someone sent it to me recently and said, “I love his voice.” And now that I’ve listened, I can say, “Me, too.”

But this scratched an itch, both intellectually and ethically, that I didn’t even know I had.

Hanan Browning starts by referencing a previous video in which he made the argument that one day, archaeologists will dig through the materials we leave behind and conclude that Santa is an American god. But in this video, he takes the idea further.

“I’ve got news for you: Santa is one of our gods.”

He adds, “Religions don’t always require belief; they require that you participate.”

And then here’s the part that has really stuck with me: He argues that Santa is a god for whom we’ll allow people to suspend belief as they age, but we’ll encourage — if not require — them to keep the practices.

He says that modern Christianity in the United States is functioning in the opposite way. Among many, it is intolerable for a Christian to suspend belief — or, I’d add, to change how they believe — but among many, it has become completely acceptable to abandon the practices.

Obviously, that’s not true for every person or every circle of Christians. But if you abandon the practices — and I’d add, the ethics — how aligned are you with the religion you claim?

From Tulsa, Oklahoma:

–Photos by Renee Roederer

I’ve been at the Public Health Institute in Tulsa this week, hosted by the Epilepsy Foundation of America. Since we’re only together for a few days, we’ve jam-packed our time with a lot of learning, as well as a few opportunities to be social. I remember feeling a bit sad that I wouldn’t have much time to explore the city itself.

Tulsa has some important history.

In the early 1920s, it was home to Black Wall Street, a thriving, self-sustaining Black district filled with businesses, hotels, movie theaters, and luxury shops.

But this was burned to the ground during a devastating act of racial terror between May 31 and June 1, 1921. After false accusations about an encounter between a Black man and a white woman, a white mob descended upon Black Wall Street, looting and burning homes and businesses across roughly 35 blocks and leaving as many as 300 people dead.

This is known as the Tulsa Race Massacre.

For decades, much of this history was erased from larger public awareness and left out of schools and history books, though it continued to live in people’s memories. In more recent decades, survivors, descendants, Black residents, historians, and others in Tulsa have worked to ensure that this history is remembered and honored — including telling its story on the 100th anniversary in 2021.

Yesterday, I stepped outside Langston University, where we are holding our conference. Langston is Oklahoma’s only HBCU and the only HBCU west of the Mississippi River in the United States.

I decided to take a short walk around the surrounding neighborhood. That’s when I saw this photo on the side of Paradise Baptist Church. It shows the aftermath of the massacre, after city blocks had been decimated by fire. I am grateful I stumbled into this.

As I was returning, a woman from the custodial staff saw me and said, “Are you enjoying taking a stroll around Greenwood?”

“I am,” I said.

And I realized that I was on the very land where this had taken place. Greenwood is the neighborhood that was home to Black Wall Street.

I should know more of this history. And I could have — and likely should have — looked it up on a map before coming. But still, I stumbled into it, and I’m glad to honor it in my own way.

I recognize that I am a visitor here, and my knowledge is incomplete. But this history lives in the bones and veins and voices and fears and hopes of descendants who still live here — people whose parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents lived through the most terrorizing night of their lives, along with the fear of not knowing how much more would or could follow.

And if we know this history — or we stumble into it — we should be motivated to right the wrongs and work for equity on the very land that has known the opposite.

—Renee Roederer

I join everyone in being sad about the passing of Dolly Parton. What a legacy. As many have noted, nearly everyone — no matter their geography, political persuasions, or even musical taste — thinks highly of her.

Upon her death, I’m also remembering a podcast I listened to several years ago. In fact, I’d even say it was one of the most well-done podcasts I’ve ever heard. It was intellectually stimulating and relational. It’s Jad Abumrad’s Dolly Parton’s America. Jad Abumrad is the creator of the tremendous podcast Radiolab. This series about Dolly Parton was a stand-alone podcast, and through it, Abumrad tells a great deal of U.S. history through the lens of Dolly’s upbringing, music, philanthropy, and influence.

His father immigrated to the U.S. from Lebanon, and Jad also grew up in Tennessee. Many years later, his father became Dolly Parton’s doctor. In addition to connecting with her, Jad was able to find linkages between her upbringing and his family’s upbringing in Lebanon. And he tells so much history of the U.S. — including many stories I had never heard before.

So I recommend this highly: Introducing Dolly Parton’s America.

If you listen, let me know what you think.

—Renee Roederer

Last week, I bumbled into a conference center, carrying a Rubbermaid tub of materials. Soon, I found my table, put out our purple tablecloth, and placed a variety of flyers about the programs and services of the Epilepsy Foundation of Michigan.

I was an exhibitor, among other exhibitors, at a conference with a fun name: It’s called NAPNAP.

That stands for the National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners.

I enjoyed being there. And despite the name of the conference, there was no napping. (Though I could have used that because I woke up very early for this.) Still, no regrets.

A few of the people who walked up to my table asked about the conference we hold in November, which happens to be in the exact same building. We also have exhibitors and community partners at that conference. This time, I was on the other side of that experience.

And that brought back a memory:

Back in 2019, I was going through a lot of transitions in my life. I had just accepted my 10-hour-per-week contract role at the Epilepsy Foundation of Michigan, and I remember attending our signature conference for the very first time. Frankly, I had no idea that eventually I would be in charge of the agenda for that very conference.

But I remember that once the staff had arrived and set up the space, exhibitors started to arrive as well. They were setting up their tables, and I had a moment when I walked into the big plenary space among their tables and a thought emerged in my mind, seemingly unbidden.

You could have a whole other career if you want to, I thought.

Or at least I wondered, Could I?

I had worked in the church for many years, and sadly, I left my last position after resigning under duress. There were some difficult things going on at that time in the congregation’s life, and most people there knew nothing about what was happening. Eventually, I would heal that storyline and continue to have such beautiful relationships with people in that community.

But once I stepped out of practicing ministry in the way I had in the past, I didn’t feel like I could go back in, at least not in the same way.

On that day in 2019, when I walked into that plenary space, I thought, What if I could have a second career, working in this organization and the larger Epilespy Foundation network?

It was just a simple thought. A curiosity. A desire that I was at least open to.

And now here I am, beginning my eighth year.

I’ve just arrived in Tulsa for our national conference. This network is filled with my colleagues and friends, and we’re doing great things together. I’m so proud of the people I get to know and learn from, and I’m so grateful to be in their company.

So when I was an exhibitor last week, all of this came to mind again.

This, too, feels full circle. I’m so grateful.

You just never know how one door can lead to a whole new chapter.

—Renee Roederer