Author: gracesmuggler

While walking around, I watched the crows embark from their nightly roost. I enjoyed how they took up the whole space of the sky. There were so many of them, cawing, leaving collectively and moving collectively to wherever they were going.

I immediately thought of this wonderful quote from adrienne maree brown, the author of Emergent Strategy, a phenomenal, imaginative book about collective change. On page 13, she writes,

“There are examples of emergence everywhere.

“Birds don’t make a plan to migrate, raising resources to fund their way, packing for scarce times, mapping out their pit stops. They feel a call in their bodies that they must go, and they follow it, responding to each other, each bringing their adaptations.

“There is an art to flocking: staying separate enough not to crowd each other, aligned enough to maintain a shared direction, and cohesive enough to always move towards each other. (Responding to destiny together). Destiny is a calling that creates a beautify journey.

“Emergence is beyond what the sum of its parts could even imagine.

“A group of caterpillars or nymphs might not see flight in their future, but it’s inevitable.

“It’s destiny.”

As I continued to walk outside, I saw cars moving around town, driven by their people, and I wondered, do we feel connected to one another? I saw students walking around, listening to music on their own phones as I also do so often, and I wondered, do we feel connected to one another?

I thought about several community efforts to keep people safe in winter weather. Some truly work to survive in weather like this. I wonder, do we feel connected to one another?

It’s good to keep pondering and strengthening those connections. The crows were a good reminder.

–Renee Roederer

Just some lovely photos of a sunset and a moonrise.

I love the colors in the sky.

You make each day a special day. You know how, by just your being you. There’s only one person in this whole world like you.

He said this daily with emphasis and intention. Occasionally, he said it with playfulness. He always meant it, and young children across the United States internalized this message inside themselves. They came to believe it. Very likely, many came to memorize it, and in anticipation, they said it along with him, either aloud or inside their own minds.

You make each day a special day. You know how, by just your being you. There’s only one person in this whole world like you.

This was a litany of sorts. A daily recitation.

We might also call it liturgy.

Liturgy literally means, “Work of the people” — sacred words voiced, shared, and enacted. Perhaps in these days, we need to voice, share, and enact the convictions behind this daily statement.

You make each day a special day. You know how, by just your being you. There’s only one person in this whole world like you.

And maybe part of our work as a people is to internalize these words inside ourselves as well.

After all, I notice one intriguing word in this daily liturgy. It’s the word your. Fred Rogers could have easily said, “You make each day special. You know how, by just being you.” But instead, he added the word your. “You know how, by just your being you.” His phrasing is actually a bit more clunky than it has to be.

But it’s also important. We are invited to know our specialness, worth, and value as ours. We are encouraged to be in relationship with ourselves — “being you” — knowing that even in our days of doubt, we are worth loving. We can live in conversation with this truth, recognizing when we are living in alignment with its values and when we have temporarily acted outside of them. We can always return.

And this isn’t ego, a way of setting ourselves against others or above others. It is a truth we live in relationship with others. So we hear and speak it again in relationship:

You make each day a special day. You know how, by just your being you. There’s only one person in this whole world like you.

And we come to make it ours.

–Renee Roederer

Hi. I’m a Christian, and I’m a socialist.

I don’t speak for all Christians, and I don’t speak for all socialists. I’m more committed to being a Christian than being a socialist. The first invites me to love my neighbor. And politically, I find resonance with socialism.

This isn’t about partisanship. I believe in holding all parties accountable. I’m more concerned with particular values and how expansive we can be in caring for people collectively. I don’t always practice those values well myself, and I believe that people should hold me accountable too.

I like the vision of democratic socialism — moving away concentrating power in only a few people, or a small wealthy class, or one central leader who has enormous, sole power to determine the future or control/dole out most of the resources.

I don’t want us to be less democratic than we are. I want us to be more democratic than we’ve ever been.

I want workers to determine the vision for their labor and to be paid well.

I want people to have universal access to health care as a human right.

I want the public to have access to natural resources, rather than privatizing what is necessary for living.

I want the determination for the future to be more collective. I’m not talking about uniformity. And I’m especially not talking about a culture of uniformity-or-else.

I mean an ethic of care for the whole of society.

I mean loving our neighbors as ourselves.

–Renee Roederer

Speak words into the air.
Launch them into being.
Create entire worlds of meaning
from
sound,
voice,
intention.

Expand the universe of thought and possibility,
Propel it forward with sacred truth.
From your mind and heart, begin to introduce
your being,
your worth,
your value.

I AM,
I AM,
I AM.

We are the Word’s cultivation,
formed,
shaped,
nurtured.

We are the world’s culmination,
unearthed,
revealed,
valued.

So
Speak words of form,
We are born!
Sound words of grace,
We are free!
Shout words of love,
We are known!

And from
your very breath,
your very being,
let air become sound,
let sound become word,
let word become truth, for
you are transforming,
you are becoming,
YOU ARE.
You.
Are.

–Renee Roederer

This poem was originally inspired by a beautiful video of a father sharing morning affirmations with his three year old child. Click here to watch the video.

I was also so touched by Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman’s poem, The Hill We Climb, shared at the Inauguration of President Joe Biden. She spoke it so powerfully!

I had my first viral tweet. It was a super niche joke that I didn’t expect to go viral, but it turns out that audiences who get niche jokes also like to share them a lot. Here it is:

Remember when Q was just shared source material between Matthew and Luke?

— Renee Roederer (@renee_roederer) January 18, 2021

Fun Facts: There are four gospels in the New Testament — Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Matthew, Mark, and Luke have lots of similarities. John tells some of the same stories, but overall, it’s very different. So it seems Matthew, Mark, and Luke have some common sources.

Most scholars think the Gospel of Mark was written first because Matthew and Luke say a lot of the same things as Mark verbatim. It seems that both of those gospels used Mark as a source.

But also, Matthew and Luke have material in common nearly verbatim that is not in the Gospel of Mark. So… it seems that the authors of Matthew and Luke used another source as well. And that one is lost to history.

Scholars call that source material Q, which is German for Quelle, meaning ‘source.’

So the joke is… remember when Q wasn’t QAnon but just shared source material between Matthew and Luke?

See — niche-y, nerdy!

This older Q includes the material that becomes the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew and the Sermon on the Plain in Luke. The QAnon crowd would do better to listen to the ethics of that Q, as would we all.

–Renee Roederer

Detroit Disability Power is a non-partisan organizing collective that advocates for people with disabilities through the intersectional framework of Disability Justice. Over the weekend, I attended their virtual event in honor of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. This event included music, poetry, and workshops.

Detroit Disability Power places high value on accessibility and adds time and space to ensure that everyone is fully included. When we all arrived on the shared Zoom, there were many more participants than expected (a great outcome) so it was taking longer to make sure everyone could be assigned to the correct breakout rooms for their workshops.

One of the leaders apologized for the extra time this was taking, and right then, someone said in the chat,

“This is a gracious space.”

And I loved that.

Yes, it was a gracious space. It’s okay to take time. Inclusion is worth it. And this is certainly needed when an event has many more participants than expected.

I found myself thinking about the power of a gentle word. Sometimes, we can say a soft, true statement, and it puts everyone at ease.

“This is a gracious space.”

That’s a gentle word.

–Renee Roederer

Image Description: The word ‘Racism’ is written in black letters, a red circle is around it with a slash coming through it to cross it out.

I’ve been reflecting on a quote from Angela Davis:

“In a racist society, it is not enough to be non-racist — we must be anti-racist.”

Racism is pervasive, but it is in some ways taboo, even as it is expressed systemically and increasingly overtly. And white people (I’m among them) often spend a lot of time trying to prove to ourselves and others that we are non-racist — not like “those people.”

But at the very same time, we may be doing very little to challenge, disrupt, and change this reality. We paste quotes of MLK over our social-media sites in times that are especially difficult but then become uncomfortable, radio silent, or actively resistant when people challenge, protest, and disrupt the systems of white supremacy — both within and beyond the legacy of MLK.

“In a racist society, it is not enough to be non-racist — we must be anti-racist.”
– Angela Y. Davis

–Renee Roederer

As I was finishing some things around the house last evening, I glanced outside the window and noticed colors of blue and pink swirling about in the sunset. I snapped both of these photos and smiled. Three minutes later, the sun was still setting, but the sky was solid gray.

Even in this topsy-turvy time, beautiful surprises still find us.

Image description: A person is running, and the surroundings are blurry and distorted. Public domain image.

All people in this world have needs that are particular to themselves.
Every person.

And

All people and all communities have unique and particular strengths to share.
Every person, every community.

I’m not sure if we can ever truly run from need, because need is one of the most honest and real things about us all. But we definitely try. There may be a number of reasons for this. Among them, we’ve internalized lot of cultural narratives about individualism, self-sufficiency, and the belief that we must produce and earn love and belonging. (Psst, those are myths. Dangerous myths).

But those cultural narratives take form in our thoughts and feelings…

“I’m a burden.”

“I’m too much.”

“I don’t want to over-ask.”

“I don’t want to trouble.”

“They’re going to get tired of me.”

Soon we’re speaking narratives about ourselves, and we run from our need and from one another.

But here is something that is truer than true. I will even speak it as testimony because I keep discovering it to be so: Interdependence is an immeasurable gift.

These days, I’m acutely aware of my need of it, and how sacred it is to receive community care.

This pushes up against so many dominant, American cultural narratives.

I am community-dependent.
We are community-dependent.

These days, I keep saying these sentences to myself, because they are freeing, necessary, and beautiful.

Truly, interdependence is an immeasurable gift.

–Renee Roederer