December 5

The carceral state compromises the meaning that comes from a season of waiting. “Hard time,” or incarceration, mostly bolstered by the War on Drugs, forces the religious imagination of many to a posture passive waiting. The incarnation, though, invites us to an active waiting. Where God’s kin are dislocated, cut-off, and disappeared, shoots appear and branches that bear fruit come from beneath the Earth.

Each of us are riddled with potential; a potential that was given to us at the beginning of creation. This is not a productive potential that prioritizes the ideals of the market, though, that loves us for and awaits what we can produce. This is a potential that guides us toward our innate belovedness. A belovedness that transcends relationship to substance use, housing status, (in)justice system involvement. A belovedness and Gospel hope that assures us that when empire attempts to cut us dead, shoots and branches will always emerge.

If we are all beloved, riddled with potential, materializing from decay – there is no functional purpose for structures of incarceration. What would happen if we saw each other as stumps with shoots and branches emerging? What would happen to the carceral system if churches organized to proclaim to the carceral system they are proximate to: it is those who are wearing jumpsuits who point us to freedom?

Prayer

Word-becoming-Flesh,
Stump-becoming-Branch,
keep revealing to us the ways that the cut-off rise up as bearers of new life. 
In this season of freedom dreaming,
root our visions in the wisdom of those who know liberation best,
in their longing for life without bars,
for feet without chains.
With this yearning, we wait and pray and act. 
Amen.

Freedom Song

Music: There Is No Perfect Offering, composer unknown
Offered by: Lynice Pinkard and Erica Powell Wrencher