Smuggling Grace

Whether religiously affiliated or not, many people are familiar with the story of The Feeding of the 5,000. It’s a well-known narrative in the Bible, where Jesus multiplies a small amount of bread and fish to feed a crowd of 5,000 people. It has also been portrayed in art. Today, I want to explore two ways of viewing and interpreting this story, and I hope you find encouragement in it.

Here’s the basic story:

Many people had been following Jesus on foot as he traveled throughout the towns of Galilee, teaching along the way. One day, about 5,000 people gathered, and the disciples suggested sending them home, concerned that they needed food and rest. But Jesus said, “You give them something to eat.”

Um… how?

He asked how much food they had, and they responded with five loaves and two fish.

That’s when Jesus took action. He instructed the people to sit in groups, and they sat down in groups of hundreds and fifties. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, blessed the loaves, broke them, and gave them to his disciples to distribute. He also divided the two fish among them all. Everyone ate and was filled, and they collected twelve baskets full of broken pieces and fish. The number of people who had eaten the loaves was about five thousand men. (Mark 6:40-44)

What happened here?

Interpretation #1:

One interpretation is that Jesus performed a miracle of creation. He took a meager amount of food and made enough to feed 5,000 people with leftovers. And Mark, the gospel writer, harkens back to the first sentence of what he wrote: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” Jesus is in alignment with the Creator.

And there’s also another possibility.

Interpretation #2

Notice that the story doesn’t explicitly say Jesus created more bread and fish. He broke the food before them and set it in front of them. What happened in that space between blessing, breaking, setting before, dividing, and “And all ate and were filled“? I once heard theologian John Dominic Crossan suggest that Jesus was providing a teaching moment. He showed this small amount of food and began dividing it as if he were going to split it among them all, and then they, sitting in groups, realized the lesson. Perhaps they too had a small amount to share. And so they took what they had brought — even if it was small — and also set it before one another for the sharing.

The miracle was that they shared what they had, and there was so much between them that there were baskets of leftovers.

Jesus revealed a miracle.

Perhaps one or both of these may speak to you in this time we are living. I want to leave you with two quotes.

One is a mantra I tell myself:
There is abundance in the community, and the community is my partner.

The other is something I recently heard Bernie Sanders say:
“What we can do, we must do.”

— Renee Roederer

Have you ever wondered, “Do the things I’m doing really matter? Do they make any difference?”

The answer is a resounding yes.

On average, each person affects 8,000 people every day.

I learned this from an insightful book called Connected: The Surprising Power of Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives by Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler. In the book, the authors share fascinating research on how our social networks connect us and influence our lives. Their conclusion is striking. Our actions, thoughts, and emotions impact others every single day. That’s where this number comes from: on average, we affect about 8,000 people daily.

How did they arrive at this number?

Christakis and Fowler discovered that, on average, each person knows twenty people well enough to invite them to dinner. If those twenty people each know twenty people in the same way, and those people know another twenty, we get a total of 20 x 20 x 20 = 8,000 people.

We are all connected in a vast web of relationships. Their research shows that we influence and are influenced by our friends’ friends’ friends. Even if we don’t directly know someone three degrees away, we are still part of that chain of influence. Our actions, thoughts, and emotions ripple through this network, impacting others in ways we may not even realize. That’s truly remarkable.

Christakis and Fowler explain that our feelings and emotions often spread to others, even without us realizing it. When we feel joy, stress, anxiety, or calm, we pass these emotions along. Sometimes, this happens in an instant—just by seeing someone’s facial expression. Our mirror neurons prompt us to mimic that expression and feel the same emotion. This happens with fear, but also with a smile. These emotions are contagious.

So, if we can unconsciously impact a network of 8,000 people, imagine what we could do if we acted with intention. How can we practice intentional reflection and empower ourselves to make a positive impact on our social network, especially through compassion, advocacy, and solidarity?

This leads us to important questions:

— How can we reflect on our own role in the world and empower ourselves to create positive change for those around us? Our choices, no matter how small, can influence others, especially when we consciously choose to spread support.

— And what is possible when we unite our efforts? What kind of positive contagions can we create when we act together in solidarity and support?

All of these actions contribute to a ripple effect of connection and transformation.

If you ever doubt the impact you’re having, remember that your actions matter. Everything you do makes an impact.

— Renee Roederer

A Poem on Hope
by Wendell Berry

It is hard to have hope. It is harder as you grow old,
for hope must not depend on feeling good
and there is the dream of loneliness at absolute midnight.
You also have withdrawn belief in the present reality
of the future, which surely will surprise us,
and hope is harder when it cannot come by prediction
any more than by wishing. But stop dithering.
The young ask the old to hope. What will you tell them?
Tell them at least what you say to yourself.

Because we have not made our lives to fit
our places, the forests are ruined, the fields eroded,
the streams polluted, the mountains overturned. Hope
then to belong to your place by your own knowledge
of what it is that no other place is, and by
your caring for it as you care for no other place, this
place that you belong to though it is not yours,
for it was from the beginning and will be to the end.

Belong to your place by knowledge of the others who are
your neighbors in it: the old man, sick and poor,
who comes like a heron to fish in the creek,
and the fish in the creek, and the heron who manlike
fishes for the fish in the creek, and the birds who sing
in the trees in the silence of the fisherman
and the heron, and the trees that keep the land
they stand upon as we too must keep it, or die.

This knowledge cannot be taken from you by power
or by wealth. It will stop your ears to the powerful
when they ask for your faith, and to the wealthy
when they ask for your land and your work.
Answer with knowledge of the others who are here
and how to be here with them. By this knowledge
make the sense you need to make. By it stand
in the dignity of good sense, whatever may follow.

Speak to your fellow humans as your place
has taught you to speak, as it has spoken to you.
Speak its dialect as your old compatriots spoke it
before they had heard a radio. Speak
publicly what cannot be taught or learned in public.

Listen privately, silently to the voices that rise up
from the pages of books and from your own heart.
Be still and listen to the voices that belong
to the streambanks and the trees and the open fields.
There are songs and sayings that belong to this place,
by which it speaks for itself and no other.

Found your hope, then, on the ground under your feet.
Your hope of Heaven, let it rest on the ground
underfoot. Be it lighted by the light that falls
freely upon it after the darkness of the nights
and the darkness of our ignorance and madness.
Let it be lighted also by the light that is within you,
which is the light of imagination. By it you see
the likeness of people in other places to yourself
in your place. It lights invariably the need for care
toward other people, other creatures, in other places
as you would ask them for care toward your place and you.

No place at last is better than the world. The world
is no better than its places. Its places at last
are no better than their people while their people
continue in them. When the people make
dark the light within them, the world darkens.

— Wendell Berry

I was recently in a Zoom meeting with a group of people when one person shared a story. I don’t remember exactly what prompted it, but it came up naturally in the conversation. One of the group members began recounting her personal experiences in her neighborhood.

She had lived in the same place for more than forty years, deeply rooted in the community. Neighbors often greeted one another on their porches in the summer and helped shovel each other’s sidewalks in the winter. They’d catch up about sports or what was going on in their lives when they met at the end of their driveways to get the mail.

But these relationships ran deeper. She saw children grow up who once played in the yards or rode their bikes around the block. Sometimes, neighbors gathered for dinners or went to baseball games together. Eventually, her next-door neighbor, Martha (a changed name), became ill and needed in-home care. So, Martha sold her house and moved in with the person who was telling the story on the Zoom screen.

“You’ll take me to the Tigers games, right?” Martha would ask, knowing full well that her neighbor never missed a Detroit Tigers game. “Well, of course!” my friend replied.

As she shared this story, she said, “Sometimes people would tell us, ‘You’re so good to do this.’ And we’d say, ‘No, we’re not! This is what you do!’ This is how we’re supposed to take care of each other.” She said it with such conviction, truly believing this was simply the natural way to be. We’re supposed to care for each other.

Now, deep down, I do believe that welcoming a neighbor into your home for medical care is a big commitment. This is a kind and loving gift. But what struck me most about this story was the way my friend exclaimed, “This is what you do!” with such emphasis.

When we witness so many systemic failures and hear dehumanizing speech, it’s important to take heart and remember that people like this still exist. There are extraordinary individuals in our communities, and across the world, who live with a sense of duty and care. They don’t think of their commitments as extraordinary. They just know they are right. “This is what you do!”

So, take heart. These people are among us. And you probably have ways of being one, too.

— Renee Roederer

— Photos by Renee Roederer

Among many important functions, the Department of Education protects the civil rights of students with disabilities. This week, I’m thinking of many students, families, teachers, and administrators as particular leaders of the executive and legislative branches advocate for the closure of the Department of Education.

On top of this, 17 states have filed a lawsuit, titled Texas v. Becerra, which could undo Section 504 of the landmark Rehabilitation Act of 1973. This law ensures that students with disabilities can have accommodations in the classroom.

Below, we have a photo of the memo that was sent to agency employees on the second full day of the Trump Presidency. You can find this text in written form here.

— Renee Roederer

Additionally, February is Black History Month, and this is an excellent time to celebrate and learn from Black disability activists and advocates who have shaped our communities, nation, and world.

“Barbara Jordan was a famous advocate for voting rights, immigration reform, minimum wage laws, and civil rights. She was the first African American woman from a southern state in congress in 1973. She is most famously remembered for her role in the Watergate hearings and for delivering the keynote at the 1976 Democratic national convention, being the first Black woman to do so. She continued her advocacy through education as a professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Throughout the later years of her life she used a wheelchair due to of Multiple Sclerosis.”

You can learn more here:
https://disabilityrightsflorida.org/blog/entry/impactful_black_disability_advocates_and_advocates?fbclid=IwY2xjawIa-kxleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHe4wTOP7undYe-kNFuFVCgRQszoOFeCb1_MGdmbAqZPo1ZL3cJOoMYiv7Q_aem_WgWIcE1jRNX4QgapodNp9w

If this is helpful to anyone else, I’d like to share this recommendation:

Every day,

1) I have a period in the morning when I engage news very intentionally. I listen to a daily news podcast, and then I read a daily news email.

And

2) Then I’m done for the whole day. These two sources in the morning provide excellent journalistic coverage, and they give me a broad sense of what’s going on.

Part of the day, I engage news intentionally. The other part of the day, I don’t engage it at all, also intentionally. Both are very deliberate.

I don’t run away from what’s happening. The rest of the day, as needed, I engage around these needs relationally in actual community. We can spend huge portions of our day being interrupted by news alerts or doomscrolling on social media. And then, maybe we see more headlines, and maybe we see whole feeds of fears, but now, this has zapped us of energy. Now we are even more exhausted and on edge for our own mental health, and we may struggle to provide care and take substantial action.

This is not about putting our heads in the sand. It is about being strategic. It is about preserving our energy as best we can for what is most important to us, whether that helps us function well in the day, or take action on important values.

It’s okay to engage news reports. It’s okay to step away from the news reports. This is what is saving me right now: I recommend doing both, but not letting those efforts co-mingle.

— Renee Roederer

Love relentlessly.
—Diana Butler Bass

Love relentlessly, she said,
and I want to slip these two words
into every cell in my body, not the sound
of the words, but the truth of them,
the vital, essential need for them,
until relentless love becomes
a cytoplasmic imperative,
the basic building block for every action.
Because anger makes a body clench.
Because fear invokes cowering, shrinking, shock.
I know the impulse to run, to turn fist, to hurt back.
I know, too, the warmth of cell-deep love—
how it spreads through the body like ocean wave,
how it doesn’t erase anger and fear,
rather seeds itself somehow inside it,
so even as I contract love bids me to open
wide as a leaf that unfurls in spring
until fear is not all I feel.
Love relentlessly.
Even saying the words aloud invites
both softness and ferocity into the chest,
makes the heart throb with simultaneous
urgency and willingness. A radical pulsing
of love, pounding love, thumping love,
a rebellion of generous love,
tenacious love, a love so foundational
every step of what’s next begins
and continues as an uprising,
upwelling, ongoing, infusion
of love, tide of love, honest love.

— Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

You can learn more about Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer and read more of her poetry here.

—

Additionally, February is Black History Month, and this is an excellent time to celebrate and learn from Black disability activists and advocates who have shaped our communities, nation, and world.

“Claudia Gordon is the first Deaf Black woman lawyer in the United States. She is a trailblazer, advocate, and leader dedicated to assisting those with disabilities and other marginalized communities. She is the former Senior Policy Advisor for the department of Homeland Security, former vice president for the National Black Deaf advocates, and former White House Public Engagement Advisor. In this last role, she was President Obama’s key advisor on issues relating to people with disabilities. She continues her advocacy in the US Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs.”

You can learn more here:
https://disabilityrightsflorida.org/blog/entry/impactful_black_disability_advocates_and_advocates?fbclid=IwY2xjawIY5IpleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHeE0HNT7m5-V0hMihgkjk7mJf84XKyhy0LE05JRZ4lZi-vDNvgjj6OOBjw_aem_CjIF1A50pd9Cy2glsTYlCw

I have an “everything’s okay, so now it’s funny,” kind of story to tell.

But before I tell you that, I have to tell you a prerequisite detail, which also happens to be an “everything’s okay, so now it’s funny” detail. This is a things-have-turned-out-alright, Russian doll situation, if you will.

So here’s the prerequisite detail:
Donald J. Trump gave me a hamstring injury.

Yep. All the way from Pennsylvania Avenue.

There have been many cascading concerns for people in our country, and I’ve been aware and keeping an eye on these. Though I am telling you a humorous set of details, these are no laughing matter. I just want to give us some comic relief.

The day I was most stressed personally was a couple of Tuesdays ago when we were on a countdown waiting for federal loans and grants to freeze. That day, all my leg muscles majorly tensed up. A day or so later, everything got better except a hamstring muscle. I must have strained it on that day. And it hurt!

That’s the prerequisite detail. And that pain lasted for about a week. Ouch.

I already had a doctor’s appointment lined up, so I told the PA about this. She prescribed me a topical gel for pain, and I was thankful for that. This gel is typically prescribed for people who have arthritis, but for me, it would aid my Presidential Pain Predicament.

So now we have reached the larger “everything’s okay, so now it’s funny” story.

Over the weekend, I was getting ready to meet with some friends. I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth. I grabbed the tube of toothpaste, applied said toothpaste, and started brushing my teeth with generous circles. It didn’t take long for me to notice, though I had definitely shmooshed some serious gel in my mouth. I STARTED BRUSHING MY TEETH WITH ARTHRITIC TOOTHPASTE, i.e. not at all toothpaste, but pain gel for a hamstring injury caused by the resident of Pennsylvania Avenue.

I spit it out of my mouth and rinsed thoroughly. It also tasted terrible. To my defense, that tube is very toothpaste-shaped, and the gel is even very toothpaste white. But it smelled like adhesive and didn’t taste so good.

So why was I late to meet with my friends?

I had to call poison control. And they told me I was alright.

I wasn’t very late. I just… had a wild story to tell.

And now I’ve told you, too.

— Renee Roederer