(Un)Mute Yourself, Day 21

John 7:40 | On hearing his words, some of the people said, “Surely this man is unprecedented.”

Rev. Aline (Ah-lee-nee) Silva serves as the co-Director of CreatureKind, an international non-profit leading Christians in new ways of thinking about the Christian Faith and Farmed Animal Welfare. Prior to coming to CreatureKind, Aline served as a local parish pastor in rural and farming populations in Kansas, Missouri, and Colorado for over a decade. Aline shares herself as a queer, Black & Indigenous immigrant of Brasil to the US. Aline chooses not to eat non-human animals, her fellow-worshippers of God. Aline is a pastor, an excellent preacher, and a life coach. You can most often find her laughing out loud, twerking, and sharing her life with her emotional support pup and main squeeze, Paçoca (pah-saw-kah). You can learn about Aline and her work by following CreatureKind on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. She writes today from the unseeded lands of the Tequesta, Taino, and Seminole peoples, namedly South Florida.

“There is no end
To what a living world
Will demand of you.”

― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

Writing in post-apocalyptic times, and while attempting to re-image a new way of life on the devastated earth, 16 year old Lauren affirms the above quote.

Hear her, beloved. There is not one thing Capitalism and this Empire and its authorities are unwilling to demand of us in order to achieve its successful conquest of territories and bodies. Not one.

In 2016, right after the election of the 45th president of the American Empire, I moved to Grand Junction, CO, for a new call. This small town sits 25 miles from the Utah border, on the banks of the Colorado river. The western slopes of Colorado are little known to the well colonized tourist industry but well sought after and strategically fought for by the corporation of farmers, oil and pipe drillers, miners, you name it. This is true because all of the snow accumulated on mountains is responsible for feeding, nurturing, and feeding the Colorado River, its mountains, animals, and surrounding areas.

Since its industrialization, the river is has been made responsible for delivering water to all farmers settled in the American Southwest.

Where it once freely found its birth in the peaks of the Colorado mountains and its home in the Pacific Ocean, now it finds itself threatened by climate change and unpredictable snow as well as its depletion as farmers, drillers, miners, and others sucks its life for the production of produce and farmed animals.

In other words, the river no longer makes it to the shores of the Pacific. In fact, it has been re-routed, made to stop, and is now stuck in the desert. Think about it, in order for all those farms, those that are able to grow food all year around — where does that water come from? And why we are encouraging fresh fruits and vegetables to grow beyond its seasons and be exported beyond their nutritional value is beyond me.

But we can talk about local access to healthful foods another day.

Today we are talking about Living Water. The kind that the believers and followers of Jesus are supposed to receive and be all about.

One of my students and CreatureKind Fellow, Ciyadh Wells, recently asked the question, “How are we able to know that change is possible if we have never experienced change for ourselves?”

Ciyadh, much like Lauren, encourages us “to change our traditions and gatherings as care and concern for those most impacted by animal agriculture, BIPOC growers and climate refugees, come to the forefront. Change can start at the center of our [gatherings].”

Up to this point in the narrative of John, there is a clear distinction between the people and the present authorities. The crowds surrounding Jesus even notice the tension and some seem to fear for Jesus’ life. Some are also trying to make up their minds about Jesus and his protest of the status quo. They know that oral tradition and the ways of the people are in stark opposition to the scholarship of the priesthood and its proximity to the imperial authorities, but they can’t yet image a way forward that is safe for all.

They know they are finding themselves at the end of a tumultuous and confusion time, a festival known for the rock in desert that suddenly brought about the provision of water at Siloam. They know about the Messianic promise. They have been praying for deliverance all along.

And here they encounter Jesus speaking some nonsense about Living Water being freely given to his followers and believers, at their disposal for the rest of their lives. Forever.

As if it offered any comfort.

I know we have never heard it preached like this before — like, beyond the metaphor. This indeed feels unprecedented. They told us we were labor, machines of mass production, the backs, hands, feet, knees and breath of this economy, a monolithic dream, really, for the construction of their Capitalist dream.

But I am here to remind you that we are more than producers.

Beloved, we are for the world what Jesus has been for the us — rivers of Living Water and sources of life. We ourselves are embodiments of the Restored Creation, the Good News, and the creative womb of God. Followers and believers of Jesus too are holy containers of waters, channels through which life and love can flow into the world.

The authorities have come to tread upon our soil and desecrate us and our water. We the people of God will raise against them. They have tried to rule with weapons, and now of mass destruction.

But like fallen dew on grass, gathered up like showers, raining upon the forest, wetting peoples, places, and creaturely-kin, we will remember to be water and quench each other’s thirst again. We will remember to rush through the towns like a bursting dam destroying the pillars, sorcerers, and idolizers of capitalism.

We the savages, dismantlers of the white man’s way of life — let’s get them wet, beloved!

Mary is getting ready to go into labor. She, too, is about to burst. Let her channels rain down on you and show you that — in stark opposition to the Empire — her kid is the way to our collective liberation.

That earthly, water-containing body depends on it.