A Different Story

BY ANNIE HAYES | November 20, 2023
Sunday’s Readings

Recently, I got to visit an urban farm in the heart of Oakland, CA, whose mission is to create intentional community at the intersection of faith-based, social-justice based, and Earth-based nonviolent activism.

Canticle Farm embodies a fierce commitment to love the stranger and to heal traumas that have originated across differences, especially those of race, class, gender, religion, and age. When I was there, I saw how they’ve purchased various plots on their city block and turned them into homes for those who would otherwise struggle to find safe housing. I got to see how they take food from their garden directly off the vines and trees and into the baskets to be offered at their food distribution table. I witnessed how the heart of their work is their refusal to participate in the systems of violence and oppression that have so characterized our world.

In many ways, they could be described as the third servant in our Gospel story from Sunday. This servant refuses to play the game of exploitative economics and amass more wealth for his master off the backs of the poor. He deliberately chooses not to pass on the trauma of poverty and oppression. Instead, he, like my friends at Canticle Farm, decides to write a different story… a story of life.

We’re not all called to start urban farms in the middle of a giant metropolis, but we are called to weave God’s story of life and love into the stories that touch us daily. And in those moments when re-writing the narrative is risky and costly, when choosing life-giving ways over death-dealing systems may lead to being “cast into the outer darkness,” may we remember that Jesus walked this way before, and we are not alone.

For Reflection: 

• How are you called to weave God’s story of life into the world that touches you?