Smuggling Grace

I waited so long for love
and suddenly, here it is
standing in the garden, hands full
of heirlooms hot from the sun.

Soon we’ll make a supper of them.
Salted slabs between slices of bread.
Your beard silvers. My hips ripen.
The mail piles up.

Phone calls go unanswered. Forgive us.
Our mouths are full of tomatoes.
We are so busy
being small and hungry and alive.

A young friend of mine was trying to find a direction. It was 2020, so truth be told, we were all trying to find a direction. She kept trying various activities, and then she stumbled into an art class over Zoom.

Why not? She thought it would just be something to do. We were all looking for things to do in the During Times.

But it absolutely stuck. She had stumbled upon a great passion. When she showed up on a Zoom screen, she had no idea she was initiating a major life direction. She’s been making art ever since, and her work has been featured in shows and sold in galleries. In fact, one of her paintings hangs in my dining room. It turns out that a room in my house is also connected to a particular Zoom class she just decided to try.

But isn’t life like that sometimes?

We keep showing up, trying things, throwing pieces of spaghetti at the wall, and eventually some of them stick. In fact, they can open up worlds—possibilities, roles, relationships, growth.

So if you’re feeling stuck, keep trying. Keep showing up.

— Renee Roederer

“Ohhhh, we’re 1/3 there! Ohhhhh, livin’ on a prayer!”
(That’s not how that goes?)

I’m continuing to work daily on drafting my book — Beheld: A Spirituality of Kinship.
4 chapters complete. 8 to go.

One day at a time…

—Renee Roederer

I arrived home, looked to the right, and noticed a spider building a web in my yard. I had caught the process mid-creation. For a moment, I watched as the spider worked, creating a masterpiece.

“How do you do that so perfectly?” I said aloud.

We often make assumptions about human intelligence compared to other living beings. But clearly, there are many kinds of intelligence and a multitude of opportunities to marvel.

—Renee Roederer

A therapist once shared with me,

“I never challenge a client or bring up a deeply-held, difficult topic until I can tell that the person is really close to saying it themselves.”

A professor once shared with me and my classmates,

“When I was training to be a pastoral counselor, I worked with a supervisor and talked my sessions over with him. Once, I had a client who was deeply in denial. It was so obvious. One week, as I was planning for our session, I came up with a process to really tell her the truth and point all that denial out to her. But my supervisor stopped me. He said, ‘You know, the reason people have defense mechanisms is… they have things they need defending from.'”

These are wise forms of care.

— Renee Roederer

— Photos by Renee Roederer

Here’s a great podcast episode, released by Radiolab.

Description:
Until recently, scientists assumed humans were the only species in which females went through menopause, and lived a substantial part of their lives after they were no longer able to reproduce. And they had no idea why that happens, and why evolution wouldn’t push females to keep reproducing right up to the end of their lives. But after a close look at some whale poop, and a deep dive into chimp life, we find several new ways of thinking about menopause and the real purpose of this all too often overlooked second act of life.  

This is an intriguing episode: The Menopause Mystery

Maybe we’re in them now. Or if some of them have changed, or even gone by, maybe we can reclaim parts of them. Maybe we can make them feel present again.

I’ve been thinking about a particularly vital social role — one that can shift the atmosphere of a room, change the dynamics of a community, and ripple through the broader culture we share.

We know how hard it can be to go against the grain and name a truth that’s uncomfortable, especially when social forces are at play that prefer to deny that truth or look away entirely. Naming these truths is a brave and necessary role. But it’s not the only one.

You probably don’t have to reach far to think of examples:

Naming a painful family dynamic.
Naming systemic racism.
Naming active harm and the need to protect marginalized people, especially when those very people have been politicized, diminished, or distorted in the public sphere.

It’s not difficult to see that these truths need to be spoken. But it is difficult to be the one who says them out loud. That moment carries risk — sometimes social ostracism, sometimes punitive consequences. And that’s why there’s another role that’s just as crucial: the role of the one who seconds the truth.

The one who says, “Yes. I see that too.”
The one who gives their weight to the boat being rocked.
The one who helps shift the equilibrium so that more people can rise and speak.

Years ago, a friend shared an image with me from family systems theory. Imagine a group of people in a small fishing boat. One person stands up, perhaps to draw attention to something important. But by standing, they throw off the balance of the boat. In that moment, everyone else has a choice. They can try to pull that person down in an effort to restore the old equilibrium, or they can shift their own weight — literally moving their bodies and changing their positions — to create a new equilibrium.

There is power in standing with the person who stood up. There is power in backing a community that says “no more.” There is power in seconding the cry of the harmed and the marginalized, and making space for others to speak too.

This week, I found myself thinking about Jesus’ story of the Good Samaritan. It begins when someone asks, “What is the greatest commandment?” Jesus answers: Love God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. Then the man follows up, “And who is my neighbor?”

Jesus tells a parable with a surprising twist. The hero is a Samaritan, a person who, in the eyes of Jesus’ audience, was socially maligned and religiously distrusted. Jesus doesn’t just tell us to be kind; he challenges the very systems of who gets to be considered good, worthy, and neighborly. He lifts up the one who had been vilified.

In telling this story, Jesus isn’t only standing up. I wonder if he may also be seconding something he saw recently — Samaritan who had acted in love, or perhaps someone who had recently defended a Samaritan and faced backlash for it. Maybe Jesus is making space for more people to say, “We’ve maligned Samaritans in harmful ways, and that has to change.”

Sometimes the first person to speak pays a cost. But those who follow — those who second and third the truth — can turn one voice into many. They can spark a domino effect that allows communities to change their posture, to shift their weight in the boat, and to make a new kind of balance possible.

We need those people.
We can be those people.
We can allow the boat to rock.

— Renee Roederer