Week Three – Advent Contra Empire
Prepare the Way in the Borderlands: Wilderness Prophets & Fugitive Comfort
Week Three – Advent Contra Empire
Prepare the Way in the Borderlands:
Wilderness Prophets & Fugitive Comfort
Texts: Isaiah 40:1–11; Mark 1:1–8
Opening Meditation
Beloveds, welcome to Week Three—the week where the ache of exile meets the fire of preparation. Where comfort is not sentiment but solidarity. Where the borders between despair and possibility crack open, just enough for light to slip through.
Isaiah 40 is spoken to a people who have been displaced, dispossessed, and disoriented by the overwhelming machinery of empire. The “comfort” offered here is not soft or passive; it is the fierce tenderness of a God who remembers exiles, who refuses to abandon those empire discards.
And then Mark opens abruptly, without genealogy or preamble—just the wilderness, the threshold, and a wild prophet proclaiming:
“Prepare the way.”
Together, these texts teach us something essential about decolonial Advent:
Liberation begins in the borderlands, not the palace.
Salvation emerges from the wilderness, not the center.
Comfort comes through truth-telling, not denial.
Isaiah 40: Comfort as a Politics of Proximity
“Comfort, comfort my people,” says the Holy One.
This is not comfort as avoidance.
Not comfort as numbing.
Not comfort as empire’s fragile peace.
This is comfort that tells the truth:
Acknowledges displacement
Names harm
Denounces domination
Refuses the illusion that oppression is normal
Speaks directly to the hearts of the brokenhearted and the dispossessed
Isaiah 40 is spoken to people whose souls have been stretched thin by imperial cruelty. Comfort here means God draws close to those crushed by empire, not to those who benefit from it.
This comfort prepares us for the next movement:
Every valley lifted up.
Every mountain made low.
Uneven ground made level.
Rough places made smooth.
This is the topography of abolition.
This is the leveling of supremacy.
This is the terrain of social repair.
Isaiah imagines a world where the landscape of domination is undone, and a path is carved through the desert for all who have been wandering.
Mark 1: John the Baptist and the Borderlands of Becoming
Mark begins in the wilderness because that’s where truth lives.
Not in the sanitized corridors of power.
Not in the temples aligned with domination.
Not in the marketplaces governed by extraction.
But in the desert—in the places empire considers empty, marginal, or unimportant.
John the Baptist is a borderlands prophet:
Unaligned with Rome
Uncontrolled by religious authority
Unsettled by empire’s myths
Unafraid to disrupt the status quo
He is what Gloria Anzaldúa called a mestiza consciousness in motion—a prophet living in the in-between, the threshold, the space where dominant frameworks crack and new imaginations emerge.
John proclaims repentance—not as moral punishment, but as turning toward liberation, toward right-relationship, toward the repair Isaiah envisioned.
Repentance here is not shame-based; it is an invitation to:
unlearn domination
break with supremacy culture
loosen empire’s hand on our imaginations
practice honesty that leads to repair
He baptizes people in the river—a liminal space, a threshold space—because liberation always begins at the edges.
The Thread Between Isaiah and Mark
Together these texts whisper (and sometimes shout):
Liberation is already emerging at the margins.
Prepare yourself.
Prepare your spirit.
Prepare your community.
Prepare the way.
Isaiah names the landscape that God is reshaping.
John names the posture required to walk that path.
Both prophets are calling us out of illusion and back into right relation.
This is the week of fugitive comfort—comfort that exposes lies and calls us home. This is the week of wilderness clarity—where the noise of empire grows thin and our sacred hum grows loud. This is the week of borderlands preparation—where imagination begins to stretch toward liberation.
A Word for Your Heart This Week
Beloveds, if you find yourself wandering—good.
The wilderness is where prophets learn to listen.
If you find yourself unraveling—good.
Empire requires your tidy obedience; the Holy requires your honest becoming.
If you feel the ground shifting—good.
This is the terrain Isaiah promised, the leveling of harm, the smoothing of rough places.
You do not need to be certain.
You do not need to be calm.
You only need to be willing.
Willing to turn.
Willing to soften.
Willing to imagine.
Willing to prepare the way—not through domination, but through care.
Not through certainty, but through courage.
Not through empire, but through the wildness of God.
Advent Contra Empire Field Guide — Week Three
Embodied Practices for Preparing the Way in the Borderlands
These practices anchor the prophetic work in your body—where liberation always starts.
1. Wilderness Walk (10 minutes daily)
Take a short walk each day—preferably somewhere quiet, empty, or marginal.
Ask:
What am I hearing now that I could not hear in the noise?
Let the wilderness (inner or outer) teach you to listen.
2. Gesture of Comfort (Daily)
Offer one act of fugitive comfort to someone this week:
A note
A meal
A listening presence
A gesture of tenderness
Make it small.
Make it honest.
Make it an interruption of empire’s cruelty.
3. Topography of Repair (Weekly)
With pen and paper, draw a landscape of your life: valleys, mountains, rough places.
Then ask:
What needs to be lifted?
What needs to be lowered?
Where is the path uneven?
Name one place where repair is possible this week.
4. Borderlands Breathwork (3 minutes)
Sit in a doorway or literal threshold.
Inhale: “Prepare.”
Exhale: “The way.”
Feel the space between worlds settle into your lungs.
This is the breath of fugitivity—the breath that refuses to collapse into despair.
Benediction
May the wilderness guide you.
May the valleys rise to hold you.
May the mountains bow to your becoming.
May every rough place in you soften toward repair.
And may the Holy One—the God who speaks comfort to exiles and truth to empires—go with you into the borderlands, where a new world is already being born.