Advent Contra Empire — A Fugitivity of Hope
Collapse & Creation: When Empires Fall and New Worlds Hum Beneath the Rubble
Advent Contra Empire — A Fugitivity of Hope
Week Two of Decolonial Advent (Eastern Orthodox Calendar)
Collapse & Creation: When Empires Fall and New Worlds Hum Beneath the Rubble
Texts: Isaiah 65:17–25; Luke 21:5–19
Maintaining a Beginner’s Mind
Beloveds, we are living in the long shadow of endings.
The world we were told to trust—its institutions, its promises, its mythologies of safety—has been cracking open for years. And we know this in our bones: the world is ending, and it always has been. Not creation’s world, not the land’s world, not the world that hums beneath our feet—but the world built by empire, the world built by extraction, the world built by supremacy culture pretending to be salvation.
Luke 21 is not a threat.
It is a clarity.
Jesus is saying: The illusions are falling—do not be afraid.
False messiahs will come—do not be deceived.
Persecution will rise—do not surrender your voice.
This is not apocalyptic doom; it is apocalyptic tenderness.
An unveiling.
A revealing of what has been true all along.
Where empire seeks to terrify, Jesus invites us into discernment.
Where empire promises safety through domination, Jesus invites us into solidarity.
Where empire seeks loyalty, Jesus invites us into liberation.
Advent Contra Empire begins here: in the collapse of illusions and the sharpening of our sight.
Paz, —RCE+
Isaiah’s Dream of the World to Come (Which Is Also the World We Remember)
Isaiah imagines a world born from tenderness rather than domination:
No more children born into violence.
No more houses stolen.
No more labor extracted and discarded.
No more hunger crafted by policy.
No more death ushered in by systems of neglect.
Imagine:
The wolf and lamb together.
Predator and prey unlearning the choreography of fear.
A creation that remembers itself whole.
This is not utopia.
This is memory.
Isaiah is not describing a fantasy—Isaiah is describing the world before empire.
A world we can still touch in rare moments of care, in those tiny rebellions of tenderness that refuse to disappear.
To read Isaiah 65 in 2025 is to remember what our ancestors survived and what our descendants deserve.
The Bridge Between Collapse and Creation
Luke 21 and Isaiah 65 are not opposites.
They are partners in holy mischief.
One text names what is crumbling.
The other names what is possible.
Together they form the heartbeat of decolonial Advent:
Collapse: Unmasking the lies that keep us tethered to empire.
Creation: Returning our imaginations to what is true, tender, and possible.
Advent Contra Empire is not passive waiting.
It is active unlearning.
It is fierce remembering.
It is choosing to see beyond the spectacle of empire’s panic into the slow, quiet work of new worlds emerging.
This is the work of fugitivity—Moten’s whisper that we are always escaping, always improvising another world inside this one.
This is the work of Baldwin—face what we fear with courage sharpened by love.
This is the work of Anzaldúa—live in the borderlands with la facultad, a seeing soul.
This is the work of bell hooks—love as the practice of freedom.
This is the work of Dussel—locating truth in the underside of history.
This is the work of Advent.
A Theo-Poetic Word for This Week
Beloveds, the world is ending again.
Not the world of rivers and mycelium and ancestors.
Not the world of breath and bodies and shared meals.
But the world that harms—the world that lies—the world that builds “saviors” out of violence.
Let it end.
Let the illusions fall so we can finally see.
Let the false messiahs fade so we can finally refuse.
Let empire crack so imagination can run free.
And while the old world collapses, listen closely:
There is a hum rising beneath your feet.
A new world, tender and fierce, aching to be born.
Isaiah has seen it.
Jesus has named the clarity we need to reach it.
You can feel it in your chest even now.
Advent Contra Empire is the invitation to midwife that world with our bodies, our breath, our courage, and our care.
Advent Contra Empire Field Guide — Week Two
Embodied Practices for the New Heaven & New Earth
These practices are meant to be done slowly, gently, with honesty. Advent in the Eastern Orthodox tradition is long for a reason—there is no rush toward transformation. There is only turning, noticing, repairing.
1. Practice of Unmasking (Luke 21)
Spend ten minutes each day this week asking:
What illusions have I been taught to trust?
Safety through money?
Worth through productivity?
Belonging through assimilation?
Notice what rises.
Name it.
Refuse its claim on you.
2. Practice of Re-membering (Isaiah 65)
Go outside.
Put your hands on the earth.
Ask her what she remembers that we have forgotten.
Listen without needing to understand.
Let her imagination pass through your chest like breath.
3. Practice of Reparative Gesture (Daily Act)
Choose one small gesture each day that brings the world of Isaiah closer:
Cook a meal for someone who is lonely.
Repair something instead of replacing it.
Offer softness where empire demands hardness.
Bless a creature, a tree, a stone.
Small repair is how abolition grows.
4. Practice of Communal Imagination (Weekly)
Gather with one or two people—online or in person.
Read Isaiah 65 aloud.
Ask:
What part of this world feels possible if we practice it together?
Then choose one thing you’ll embody together this week.
This is how networks of trust → networks of care → networks of solidarity begin.
Benediction
May the falling away of empire not frighten you, but free you.
May every illusion that bound your imagination lose its power.
May Isaiah’s dreaming settle into your bones as memory, as promise, as path.
And may the Holy One—the fugitive Christ who refuses domination—walk beside you as you midwife the world to come.