A gift of God
May sear unready fingers.
– Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
Welcome to the 2025 Abolition Advent Calendar
In her world-changing book, Parable of the Sower, visionary and science fiction author, Octavia Butler imagines a post-apocalyptic earth filled with authoritarianism, violence, and unbridled exploitation. Yet, Butler’s story follows a 15-year-old girl, Lauren Olamina, and her crew of other refugees as they learn to trust their interconnectedness and practice liberating ways of being together despite the dire circumstances. Reaching back to wisdom from the past and making a way forward rooted in the values of collective liberation, this make-shift community leans into the hope that change brings and finds new dreams for a future of freedom and flourishing for all creation.
As we approach the season of Advent this year, many of us find ourselves vacillating between feelings of helplessness and hopelessness, faced with rapidly changing political and social landscapes not unlike the ones Octavia Butler imagined. Yet, Advent’s stories of awaking and preparing, waiting and longing, expecting and dreaming offer us visions to move us, values to ground us, and practices to empower us to bring love to birth in this world. So, this year’s Abolition Advent Calendar invites us to reach back to the wisdom of our scriptural and abolitionist pasts and make a way out of no way into hope.
This year our Abolition Advent Calendar will put in conversation quotes from Parable of the Sower, Advent scripture readings, and visionary practices drawn from Andrea Ritchie’s book Practicing New Worlds: Abolition and Emergent Strategies. We will also intersperse between scripture reflections the stories of past and present abolitionists to help us discover the wisdom they hold for freedom’s journey through each of us.
Our hope is to offer theological and scriptural musings that help enliven our imaginations of a future beyond “enslaving paradigms” and call us to abolitionist practices, as we deepen our denomination-wide understanding of abolition as part of our efforts to move toward racial justice.
Daily Reflections posted below beginning November 30th!
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