Earthfire Friday Nights
Every Friday night a small group of people, from many different backgrounds, sit down for an evening of discussion and intentional reflection.
We share a meal, our joys, our concerns, and our thoughts.
We discover new ways of thinking and old ways of being.
We learn as we do, amongst many other things, how to be a community.
The aim of the Earthfire community is to immerse ourselves in a constant practice of practical theology such that meaning and renewal are breathed into everything we do.
We are a church, but we do church very differently.
Our church may be found in a bonfire dance to the rhythm of drums, in voices crackling over the line of a prison phone, in the sweating whiskey glasses of late-night porch discussions, in the laughter of conversation over our weekly potluck, in chants screamed through a megaphone, or in the simple knowledge that however it may feel, you are not alone.
Yes, we do church differently.
In so doing, we seek to recapture the meaning of what it is to be church.
We seek changes in the practice of restorative & transformative justice, as church.
We seek an end to mass incarceration and the warehousing of human beings, as church.
We plant a garden with its orchards, herbs, and vegetables, and raise chickens to tend, and that is church.
We see the other as ourselves, the reflected image of the divine in all creatures, and that is church.
Our message comes through spoken word, poetry, art, teaching, resistance, the work of our hands, and conversation, as church.
Inasmuch as we work together to answer a call greater than ourselves, the radical call that envelopes all of creation, we are church.
It is in the shelter of each other that the people live.
Irish Proverb
Earthfire Abbey
Each day we wake up knowing that the work we must do
is the work of advancing liberation.
How daunting.
How endless.
How beautiful and free.
Those who take their vows and live at Earthfire Abbey have dedicated their whole selves to serving a purpose. A purpose that is defined not by a single visionary or a set of rules, but by a dedication to unifying principles. Additionally, there are those who are part of our extended community, who may also live according to these vows.
We are at our innermost core an Abolitionist and Liberationist order. Our work then is one of liberation and cultivation, understood and informed through mysticism as much as an ethos. We believe that no one can be free while others remain in bondage, so we seek to unbind.
One of the more pernicious ideas that have kept us from liberation is the idea of self-sufficiency. Independence is a myth, and one that keeps us from more fully investing in each other and our world. No one living thing on this earth exists independent from others. But rather than accept the simple truth of nature, the dogged pursuit of independence has led us to a societal cliff. We reject it.
Our way of life reflects our recognition of the need for interdependence.
We choose to live knowing that we reside in the care of each other.
We respond to each other's needs and tend to each other's futures.
We choose to take our chances on believing in each other.
We are the hope of each other.
That is the simple call of those who choose to make their home with us. To live lives of interdependence and to make their work the work of cultivation and liberation.