Just something fun today.
Farm Church Ceasefire Statement
December 17, 2023
A Call to Christians, from Farm Church:
As Christians in North Carolina celebrate the Advent season, stringing lights, decorating trees, and exchanging gifts, our Christian siblings in Bethlehem have canceled their public festivities. They’ve said that they are unable and unwilling to celebrate amidst Israel’s relentless bombardment in Gaza.
Knowing this, we at Farm Church feel compelled to interrogate our role and responsibility in this moment. This statement is an outward demonstration of our internal, ongoing commitment to such interrogation.
We are heartbroken. Since October 7th (and as of this writing), nearly 19,000 Palestinians (many of them children) and 1,200 Israelis have been killed. Nearly 2,000,000 Palestinians have been displaced by carpet bombing and vital resources being cut off. We know that there is no justification for genocide —ever. In the land where Jesus was born, we are seeing horrific violence enacted against communities as bombs level whole city blocks and people are killed, injured, trapped, and traumatized. Settler colonialism, Christian Zionism, and U.S. imperial aims are driving forces in this conflict. As a church located on the occupied lands of the Occaneechi, Cheraw, Shakori, Catawba, and Lumbee peoples; as a congregation largely made up of people who are descendants of white settler colonizers; and as inheritors of a faith tradition that has often fueled both antisemitic and anti-Muslim violence, we recognize our culpability in what’s . We also recognize our obligation to do something.
Farm Church is a community informed by Jesus’s example, centered in the sacred work of growing and sharing food, and committed to honoring God’s image in all people. We meet on a farm and leverage our resources to address food insecurity in Durham. In short: we grow food and give it away.
The work we do in the garden necessitates that we pay attention to the world around us: the micro life and death inherent to a garden’s ecosystem, the threats of the climate crisis, the realities of systemic hunger and poverty, as well as the potential for abundance and the power of transformation. As a community, we are convinced that all things are interconnected in nature and in our communities; as Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
Our church’s primary spiritual practice is tending to a little patch of dirt in the center of Durham, North Carolina. As such, we relate to land — all land — as sacred, and we honor the holiness of all beings, past and present and future, who traverse the land that we call home.
We understand, as Palestinian human rights attorney Noura Erakat said, that “land doesn’t belong to us but we belong to the land.” We dream of a future — here in Durham, in Palestine, and everywhere — where the bounty of a well-cared for earth is sufficient to the health and wellbeing of all its inhabitants — Christians, Jews, Muslims, Atheists, everyone — and that they would know a deep sense of safety, freedom, and belonging to the soil upon which they reside. We invite you into that vision.
We call upon our Christian siblings — and all people who understand land as sacred — to take action with us.
- We invite you to follow the leadership and strategy of those at the forefront of the movement for a free Palestine. Locally, Farm Church is following the leadership of the Triangle Chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace, Muslim Women For, and the UNC and Duke chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine — among others — as they call on our elected officials to demand a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, an end to all US military aid to Israel, and an end to the Israeli occupation.
- For people living, working, and worshiping on the occupied lands of Turtle Island, we invite you to give directly to the Indigenous peoples upon whose land you reside. The Farm Church Council is committed to giving to the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation in our next budget. May this be part of a deeper practice of land-back and decolonization.
- We recognize the harm that Christianity causes when it is used in pursuit of domination, rather than liberation. One way this shows up is in the form of Christian Zionism, an antisemitic ideology that ultimately uses Jews as formulaic pawns in an apocalyptic end times theology. As Farm Church, we are learning together about Christian Zionism and how we can work to dismantle it, and we invite you to join us.
May we lament, protest, grieve, and relentlessly work for justice until all people everywhere are free.
Receptive
I recently heard someone say,
“You can’t be angry and receptive at the same time.”
I don’t know if this is absolutely true. Sometimes, an epiphany hits us when we’re not expecting it at all. Or sometimes, we receive aspects of what we need from our anger — self love, protection, and insight from that very anger, just to name a few examples.
But I imagine that this is often true. When our anger persists beyond what we need, or when it morphs into bitterness, we do become more closed off. We are less receptive. We are less open.
There’s an invitation within that statement:
“You can’t be angry and receptive at the same time.”
We can work on our anger. And we can be grateful that insight still manages to break through.
—Renee Roederer
Mental Health Monday: Window of Tolerance
Have you ever heard the term “Window of Tolerance?”
When we face high stress and trauma in our personal lives or collective trauma in our public lives, the window by which we can regulate our nervous systems grows smaller. In such moments, people react more frequently to stress with
fight or flight (< — hyperarousal) responses, or
freeze or fawn (<— hypoarousal) responses.
In this graph, we might call the normal range the window of tolerance. When a traumatic event or a stressful occurrence takes place (possibly also harkening back to a past event) our bodies can react, moving to a state of hyperarousal, hypoarousal, or back and forth. This may take place until we can regulate our nervous systems and come back to equilibrium.
Trauma, high stress, and addiction all decrease the window of tolerance. Imagine this normal range becoming narrower so we’re bouncing to fight or flight more regularly, or plummeting down to freeze or fawn more regularly. Coping mechanisms, particularly somatic practices and connection in safe relationships, can widen this window of tolerance, helping our nervous systems and emotions to stay regulated more easily.
Here’s a great TikTok from @Sleepylands, a therapist who explains this below:
This Week in Nature: In Between
Neato Curiosities: Learn about Honeyguide Birds
A Good Word: How Seeds Grow
My Little Narwhals Swam Across the Zoom Screen
I was in the midst of a community conversation on Zoom, and we were reflective, sharing deep needs together. From that sharing, a kindness arose: “I want to give you a teddy bear,” someone said.
Then there was a pivot.
Technically, someone started it, but in a rather spontaneous contagion, people seemed to leave their computer screens at once and come back with a bunch of stuffies. There were a variety of animals. We had bears and elephants. My two narwhals, Boris and Bella, swam across the Zoom screen. All of us, full grown adults, and most of us, adults in our senior years, decided that grown-ups need lovies too.
And in a moment of playfulness, we loved each other.
—Renee Roederer
Hidden Rules
I wonder what other hidden rules we miss?
From the Wings
It’s fascinating how an encounter with music can transport us to another time. I was driving in my car yesterday, listening to my music on shuffle, when the keyboard intro to “Morning Glow” began, a number from the musical Pippin. I smiled instantly, and as the song progressed, I sang along with gusto. Feel free to have a listen.
I attended a high school that is nationally and internationally recognized for theatre, and I had tremendous adventures taking part in that. I was also able to do this alongside an incredible set of friends. At an age where we were developmentally known to shrug things off, we were aware that we were experiencing something very special when it came to our theatre experiences; I have a number of vivid memories where I remember thinking intentionally that I needed to savor this.
“Morning Glow” is one of those memories. We performed Pippin when I was in my junior year. This was my favorite show of my high school years, and as the Leading Player, it was my favorite role too. Because I had that part, I didn’t stand on the stage when Pippin, the main character, and most of the chorus sang “Morning Glow.” But I was in the wings, specifically in a little area just to the side of the front part of the stage near these textured, stone walls that were a part of our auditorium.
Every single performance, I sang there from the wings. I added my voice to my classmates on stage, and I loved that we got to create this. I felt this awareness of being young, very alive, and grateful. And I sang my 17 year old heart out:
Morning glow, by your light.
We can make the new day bright.
And the phantoms of the night.
Will fade into the past.
Morning glow is here at last.
It feels cheesy when I type it out in print. But it was a special moment every performance. And I felt that yesterday, too, multiple decades later while singing again from my car. I remember my from-the-wings self, grateful to create with others, present, in the moment, savoring.
—Renee Roederer
Smuggling Grace 