Daily, I share beautiful things, but not everything in our world is beautiful.
Daily, I share beautiful things to remind us that this world is worth our delight and our care, but not all people are delighted in and cared for.
Daily, I share beautiful things to remind each of us that we matter deeply, thoroughly, and resoundingly, but some have asked for bread and are continually handed a snake or a stone.
Yesterday, a massacre has taken place in Northern Gaza, captured on video, with children, mothers, fathers, and friends burned alive. It would be just as devastating and horrific if it weren’t caught on camera. Yet it was, and the suffering is immense. In some sense, it is unspeakable beyond words, and yet words must be spoken and cries for protection must be heard.
Meanwhile, in all our own cities and towns, neighbors connected to the whole region — people from Palestine and Israel and Lebanon — fear for the safety of their loved ones as violence increases and intensifies there, and as anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia keep growing right here. It’s all on the rise, and it’s all so real. There is work to do, and there are relationships to care for right here, too. Every here. Every place.
Every cry of “Doesn’t my family matter to you?” is raw, and real, and right.
And so may we wake up to those cries and the needs for protection. And may we work for peace.
— Renee Roederer
Smuggling Grace 