Beyond Thoughts and Prayers: The Rituals of Freedom
Brad welcomes Liz Theoharis and Charon Hribar, editors of We Pray Freedom: Liturgies and Rituals from The Freedom Church of the Poor. Both guests are key leaders in the faith-based anti-poverty movement and longtime organizers with the Poor People’s Campaign. Together, they discuss how liturgy and ritual can be reclaimed as acts of collective resistance, solidarity, and hope among the poor and dispossessed.
The conversation weaves through Liz and Charon’s personal journeys—Liz’s formation in faith-driven social justice work and Charon’s discovery of liberation theology growing up in a steel town—and traces how decades of grassroots organizing through the Kairos Center inspired this new book. They explore how faith traditions, particularly Christianity, can serve as public, justice-oriented practice rather than private belief, what it means to “pray with your feet,” and how ritual itself can be political.
Drawing from We Pray Freedom, the guests share powerful examples: a memorial liturgy for unhoused people at New York’s Potter’s Field, a reimagined Las Posadas led by migrant communities, and multi-faith celebrations like Diwali and Passover that embody joy, resilience, and defiance. They also address the current “war on the poor” in the U.S.—from healthcare cuts to attacks on education—and highlight how communities continue to organize, resist, and find joy together.
This episode is both a spiritual and practical conversation about how worship, art, and music can sustain movements for justice.
Resources Mentioned:
We Pray Freedom: Liturgies and Rituals from The Freedom Church of the Poor – available via Bookshop.org and major retailers
Companion site: weprayfreedom.org (includes songs, liturgies, and other materials)
The Kairos Center: kairoscenter.org | @kairoscenternyc
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I'm coming to you from On the Road this week and nonetheless, can't wait to talk to two first-time guests.
And that is Liz Theo Harris and Sharon Rebar, who are the editors of a new book called We Pray Freedom, Liturgies and Rituals from the Freedom Church of the Poor.
So Liz and Sharon, thanks for joining me.
Thanks so much for having us.
It's great to be here.
We love your podcast.
Oh, well, thank you.
That's very humbling.
I pretend no one listens so that I don't get nervous and overwhelmed like you're going to make me right now.
So, well, let's just talk about the both of you.
You're involved in a big fight, a fight to end poverty.
This book really comes out of that movement.
And the Center for Cairo Center for the Kairo Center for Religious Rights and Social Justice is a big part of that.
I think people will be familiar with your work in the Poor People's Campaign and other places.
Can we just talk for a minute?
And I'll start with you, Liz, about, you know, how you arrived here, the the fight to end poverty and the ways that that has fed into your work as somebody who is a faith leader.
So I was raised in a family that was very active in social justice work, but from a faith perspective.
And so, you know, I have been at this intersection of Jesus and justice for my whole life, really.
I was introduced to the movement to end poverty led by poor and dispossessed people when I moved to Philadelphia for college and got involved in very grassroots anti-poverty organizing, moving with homeless families into abandoned public housing,
setting up housing encampments and challenging the church and all of our religious institutions to kind of live out what's there in the Bible, what the Bible really says about poverty and justice and what we're supposed to do in the face of, you know, grave injustice and hurt.
I got together with Sharon and others to help found the Cairo Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice.
It was first called the Poverty Initiative more than 20 years ago.
And we have been doing kind of the work of trying to build a movement from the ground up, led by those that are most impacted, but also not letting the faith community off the hook, seeing the important role that faith and in my case, Christianity plays, moral standard bearers for a movement instead of kind of praying and being priests of kind of empire, but instead kind of chaplains for a movement.
And so, you know, I love the Bible.
I love Jesus.
And I can't see how to live it out in the world without praying and protesting and singing with impacted and amazing, beautiful grassroots movement builders and leaders out in the world who are not just waiting for those in power or, you know, anyone to come save the day, but who are taking life-saving action together.
Sharon, how about you?
Yeah.
So I grew up in a small town just north of Pittsburgh.
It was a steel town.
My family were steelworkers.
And, you know, that was really influential in my life as the mills closed when I was five.
I also grew up Catholic.
And that was a major part of my upbringing and being really, you know, just a place where people in our community gathered and took care of each other.
And, you know, I think along with both of those things, you know, I kind of was always, I had a lot of questions growing up of, you know, like, what did, you know, faith mean in the context of a lot of things that were happening in my community with people losing their jobs, people getting sick a lot in my family.
I also grew up in a place where there's a lot of, you know, pollution from different plants that were there, whether it be the steel mill, the uranium plant that my grandfather worked in during World War II or the first nuclear power plant in the country.
And it was probably when I got to college, I went to a Catholic college and was introduced to liberation theology that helped me to kind of make sense of some of the things that I too had experienced.
And, you know, having a faith tradition that was really starting with people's experience and context, that was starting with an understanding of the economy, that was starting with an understanding of the politics.
And I found myself eventually, you know, kind of getting a chance to go to Latin America and meet folks that had been organizing in based Christian communities for a long time, learn, you know, what it was like to be organizing their communities in response to, you know, the kinds of conditions and powers that were there.
And it led me eventually to Union Theological Seminary where I did meet Liz right at the time where, as she was mentioning, she and then myself were helping to found the Poverty Initiative.
And it was really a place where, you know, seeing that folks weren't just saying, oh, this is just the way it is, but folks had for years been organizing in poor communities, coming out of a history of homeless organizing and welfare rights organizing and saying, you know, actually this, this doesn't have to be this way.
And when folks come together, especially, you know, poor and dispossessed people, that another world is possible.
And it's definitely an uphill battle in the conditions that we're facing.
But we know that it's not going to happen otherwise because we can see, especially as we see what's happening right now, that the more, you know, those in power are not just going to make decisions to help folks as, you know, they're making money and profits off of the lives that we're living.
I want to come back to what's happening now, the current climate.
I want to ask, though, first, this is a book that is really a collection of different liturgies, different rituals.
And, you know, I want to get to the specifics of some of those in a minute.
These are ways that people together can perform different ceremonies, different practices as ways of protest and resistance.
There's probably someone driving right now thinking, well, that's great, but thoughts and prayers are not enough.
We have a poverty epidemic.
We have a gun epidemic.
We have just unspeakable income inequality in this country, infrastructure, living conditions, healthcare.
Thoughts and prayers aren't going to work for that.
Is this a book that offers thoughts and prayers or is there a lot more at stake?
I was laughing because there's actually a quick song and Liz, you can jump in, but it's actually one of our contributors.
The song itself isn't included in the book, but another song that Josh Blaine wrote, but he taught me this song that was actually written by Paul DeSile.
And just the way you framed it, it says, there's not enough to offer thoughts and prayers.
It's not enough to know that you care.
You got to pray with your feet.
Pray with their feet.
Pray with your feet and get out on the street.
But, you know, that saying comes from Rabbi Heschel, right?
That it's not about just offering thoughts and prayers, but it is about, you know, really understanding where prayer come from and in the Bible even.
And I think Liz was probably about to jump in on that view, so I'll hand it to her.
That was unplanned, everyone.
No one did any vocal.
There was no vocal warm-ups.
There was no staging.
That was incredible.
I'm a little emotional.
So Liz, you start talking so I can get it together.
It's hard to say that I should start talking, though, because we could just sit in that because it sums it all up.
In addition to Rabbi Heschel talking about praying with our feet, like, you know, there's this reference in Luke in the 18th chapter of Jesus telling people how to pray, right?
And he goes on to tell a parable and he talks about praying without ceasing, you know, and I was raised in the middle of the country, in the Midwest, in Wisconsin.
I have a lot of relatives that have been promise keepers and other kind of, you know, quote unquote conservative Christians who did a lot of praying, right?
Of one-on-one conversation, you know, with God sometimes and a lot of conversation about praying without ceasing, right?
And what that means and having, you know, 24-hour prayer vigils and all of the like.
But the story, you know, in Luke 18, it's Jesus talking about praying without ceasing.
And then he goes and tells the story of this woman who has to advocate for justice against her adversary.
And she's going up against this unjudged judge, right?
And the judge, you know, the Bible is very clear.
Jesus is very clear that like this judge doesn't give a damn about other people and doesn't even fear God.
And then this is the story we get from the Bible on prayering.
It's a woman advocating for justice, fighting for justice, advocating.
And I imagine the scene, she shows up first with just her and her kid, but then she probably shows up with her community, right?
And I think that that's exactly what we just heard in Sharon's song and what is contained in the other rituals and liturgies and prayers and songs that are in this book.
You know, they're not about showing that you care or saying that you care.
They're about, you know, showing up in some of the hardest moments of our lives and saying you're not going to be alone and saying it doesn't have to be this way, like Sharon said, and that we're going to fight, fight, fight and organize, organize, organize to be able to build the kind of power, right?
And in that parable in Luke, the judge never really changes his mind.
He still has a hardened heart at the end of it.
And I think that's actually beautiful.
It's not that the prayer is just about her, you know, changing his mind.
It's about building the power to get the justice that she needs and deserves.
Prayer is not simply about wishcasting.
Prayer is about mobilizing.
That's what I hear you saying.
One of the things I was in discussion with my colleague Sam about this book.
And one of the things that Sam said was there's kind of a way that liturgy is a sneaky way of protest.
There's an example of hospitality workers in New York City.
And I wonder if, Sharon, you want to talk about this example of liturgy as the work of as work, right?
If I'm not wrong, liturgy is a word that means work.
How liturgy is a way that leads to protest and resistance in the streets rather than simply in a walled off cloister?
The word liturgy actually in its inception means the work of the people, right?
So we really take that to heart when we're looking at, you know, how do we think about, you know, these rituals and practices that in their own right, you know, as we look and reflect on like our faith traditions actually in their origins came out of people that were struggling, right?
If you look back at the communities of the Bible or other faith traditions, like they're not just, you know, nice practices that people created.
They were practices of people who were suffering different hardships, you know, and they too were using those faces to organize, to protest, you know, whether you look at something like the Palm Sunday march that Jesus first did, you know, and it was a counter imperial protest going into the streets of Rome as the Roman Empire was hosting their own, you know, protest.
But, you know, so as communities today, you know, coming from lots of different faith traditions, you know, it is, it's, it is not, I don't think it's sneaky, though people can think of it that way, you know, but it's actually, I think, a way of living out our faiths fully too, right?
And in some ways, you know, I think it gives us new creative possibility of thinking about how do we show up, right, in this moment and how do we, you know, be able to speak from all parts of our lives, you know, both speaking out realm and talking about,
you know, how we're being impacted in this moment, sharing our stories, and then also drawing on our faith to say our faiths actually share a lot of ideas about how we can be living.
And so putting those two things together in this beautiful way of bringing kind of the work of the people and creating liturgies in this moment of like taking those out into the public, you know, that I think part of the practice is, you know, in institutionalized faith traditions, we do sometimes get stuck in these happen in our buildings.
But really, you know, I had a teacher at Union Theological Seminary who taught ritual.
You know, ritual is about practicing so that we can go out and do these things in our daily lives.
So we've taken that very seriously.
And the communities that have come together in this book, you know, over 80 folks that are represented and many more communities represented over many years have been living that out, you know, and so whether it be, you know, doing foot washing, but really taking care of homeless folks' feet in the streets of Atlanta,
or whether it be folks in, you know, in New York that are domestic workers that, you know, during COVID started gathering in a community garden, both to be a space of, you know, where people could gather outside during a time where people were extremely isolated when domestic workers were, you know, also not being employed because people were going back to work and needed a community to come together as.
And, you know, it became a place that was a community garden.
So they were beating people, like all of these layers that was taking that.
It doesn't have to happen behind closed doors, but into the public to both meet the needs of people, both spiritually and materially.
And then also being able to call out through that the contradictions of a society that is, you know, claiming that, you know, people like the domestic workers are essential workers and then not providing the needs that they need to be essential in this moment.
You just mentioned how many movements and folks and traditions are represented.
You gave us a couple examples, but there's many more.
I'm wondering if each of you want to highlight one that comes to mind.
I'm not going to say favorite, but just one that comes to mind.
I mean, there's a liturgy for workers on Black Friday, which to me is just like amazing in terms of its creativity and its need.
And it's highlighting what happens on Black Friday and how it goes against so many good things about human flourishing.
So Liz, is there one you want to highlight right now?
I think one that comes to my mind, and this is for anyone that has ever taken communion, is the kind of origin story of communion and of especially that meal that Jesus has with his like co-workers and how it's actually taking up the kind of tradition and liturgy of these burial associations,
these mutual aid societies that existed in early Christianity and pre-Christianity.
And so that we include in this really beautiful liturgy and really memorial service led by Picture the Homeless, an unhoused organization of an organization of unhoused people here in New York City who actually lost one of their co-founders, died on the subway.
People didn't know he had died.
He was buried in a potter's field.
And, you know, cities and towns across the country have potter's fields.
They're a place where poor and unidentified people are buried.
In New York City, the Potter's Field has about a million people.
It's on Heart Island, which is actually the purview of the Department of Corrections.
So if you're poor and buried at Pottersfield in New York, you're buried by prisoners who do it with such great care because so many of the folks that are in prison and know that this is the fate of people like them and their family.
About a million people are buried in mass graves on this island.
you know, in New York City.
And when Lewis Haggins, the co-founder of Picture the Homeless, died and was buried there, at that point, there were no memorial services allowed.
So they were telling us this story.
They were trying to figure out what kind of organizing and advocacy to do on the face of this.
We were actually able to stand up a campaign that had faith leaders and unhoused leaders advocating and pushing the city.
In fact, we were able to win the right to have memorial services on Potter's Field on Hearts Island and developed a liturgy that folks used for years.
But it's a liturgy that both kind of reinterprets or almost kind of is like a midrash of the Bible passages in Matthew of Potters Field, but also kind of remembers that the story of communion is a story of people gathering who don't really have resources and who have a chance to like remember and honor and then pool their resources to make sure to be able to bury their fallen fighters.
And so to me, it's a really beautiful, powerful liturgy because it makes us remember that communion for anyone that takes it or serves it, actually, for that matter, are tapping into a tradition of what poor people throughout history have had to do to remember and fight like hell for the dead and people who are too poor to die and who've been denied the dignity kind of in death that they were denied in life and
how poor people have turned that on its head and that that's what we're doing when we're engaging in communion.
So I love that story.
It's moving and it, you know, for me, it brings up, I've made very bad choices in life and I'm writing a book about some of the worst people on the planet.
And what those worst people on the planet often write about is how they're upholding tradition and they're upholding the conversations of their ancestors.
And we need ethno-nationalism because I'm just honoring my ethnic forebearers and ancestors.
And what you're reminding us of is that the remembrance of the dead and even the burial, the care is a privilege.
And that for as many folks as you might venerate, we can think of those 1 million people buried in a Potters Field in New York City.
So Sharon, how about you?
Is there one that sticks out in your mind?
I think the one I've been thinking about today, and, you know, it's one that people have started to replicate around the country as well.
It's Las Posadas ritual.
And, you know, we've had different communities around the country do this.
And, you know, the Las Posadas ritual comes out of Latin America where, you know, you have the enactment every year, often with, you know, the story of Mary and Joseph looking for a place to go and give birth to Jesus, right?
And the tradition, right?
And it goes that people go to different houses in their community and they're turned away, right?
And then they finally get to the place where they're welcomed in to give birth.
And, you know, I think this tradition has been reimagined, especially by those migrant communities and others in the U.S. that have like continued to look at who is shutting our communities out.
And especially in this moment, as we see what's happening with, you know, migrant communities in the United States very much being turned away, the power of lifting up that ritual of thinking about who was Jesus, right?
That Jesus was homeless, that Jesus was poor, that Jesus was a migrant, right?
And taking that story and folks have then, like the folks in Una Nibecinos in LA or folks here in New York City have gone and will do this in neighborhoods and go to different places that have been,
you know, basically, whether it be landlords that aren't, you know, taking care of the buildings and kicking people out of buildings, or whether it be, you know, healthcare facilities that aren't providing resources and cutting people off Medicaid and, you know, or closing, you know, hospitals, they're, you know, claiming and saying going to these places in their communities and saying, you know, you were supposed to be welcoming us in right now, right?
And taking this, you know, tradition and longtime ritual and bringing it to look at the current moments.
And I think that's really powerful and getting people, you know, again, in very different communities now taking this kind of ritual up together.
We did this action going to Governor Hookwell's mansion in Albany this past December, lifting up child poverty.
There's a campaign in New York State that was recognizing like we have the resources to end child poverty and yet there's continued to be decisions to not move forward, you know, in implementing that.
And so, you know, we did a Las Plosadas procession and took families that were migrant families and other families up to Albany.
And, you know, we're, we're enacting this.
And I think it's really powerful to build on those rituals, especially in a time of year, you know, where there is a lot of conversation about taking care of the poor, right?
Or, you know, and that we should be, you know, thinking about, you know, loving our community and yet so many are getting turned away.
And so how do we call out that contradiction in this time, you know, leading up to the Christmas holiday to actually say these communities are organizing and that's what it's going to take, you know, to actually care for our communities and not just to say we care for people.
Speaking of caring for people, we're living under an administration that is sending us seemingly apocalyptic news every day.
And that I imagine when it comes to the work that y'all are doing and you think of the work contained in this book really pertains to so many areas.
It could be a bill that was passed in Congress that is going to cut aid for people.
It could be health care.
It could be children's programs.
It could be educational programs.
It could be military occupations of cities and saying, you know, people from the administration saying, I don't care how they got there.
We're just going to get rid of them and talking about unhoused people, poor people and so on, dispossessed people.
What are some of the challenges that you are seeing when it comes to poor and dispossessed people in the United States?
There has seemingly always been a war on poor and dispossessed people in the United States.
What are the ones you're seeing right now kind of at the forefront of an administration that is unprecedented in U.S. history?
Yeah, I mean, I mean, it just, these are dark and dangerous days, right?
And even before Donald Trump was in office, there were, you know, 140 million people who were poor or one small emergency away from absolute economic ruin.
That was like 40% of the population.
You know, about a month ago, I saw some statistics that 60% of people in this country are reporting not being able to make ends meet, not being able to pay their bills.
And that is before any effects from the threatened Department of Education, which, you know, my kids go to Title I schools in New York City.
It'll mean gutting like crazy amounts of money from, you know, the poorest and most marginalized.
That was before this, this big bad bill where, you know, tens of millions of people are going to lose their health care.
And just also millions and millions of folks are going to lose what little bit of food assistance still existed.
I mean, I just think when we think about the devastating impact, I mean, you know, we have been traveling around the country over the last couple of months and just, you know, been in food pantries and soup kitchens that are just running out of food, even though we live in a country that throws out more food than it takes to feed not just everybody in this country, but everyone that's hungry across the world.
And so I think, you know, when you have the places that people go to get food running out of food before even these massive cuts, I mean, it's just not good.
I mean, it's just horrible.
I mean, we were in a community up in upstate New York in Binghamton, who the week before we were there had just had 25 truckloads of food, 200,000 meals just not get delivered because of, you know, the threats of these cuts, not even the cuts.
And so it's horrible.
I don't need to tell people it's horrible because there isn't a town or a city or county anywhere in this country that actually isn't impacted.
And what we're also hearing is that people, you know, are not having it.
People do not agree with this and are actually organizing in really beautiful ways, sometimes a lot below the radar.
You know, people, we've been hearing about people gathering in these more massive mobilizations and kind of events and protests.
And those are beautiful and amazing.
And in fact, happening sometimes in towns where like half the town that's never protested in their whole lives are turning up.
But we're also hearing not just about these one-off mobilizations, but of just really heroic work of grassroots people, you know, defending the immigrants in their communities, making sure to kind of make up missed meals for folks that are nearby.
And just like, so I felt like this is a really horrible moment and it's bringing out, you know, the best of people, but it shouldn't be that way.
It's not that the government should abdicate its responsibility to actually care for people.
What is the role of a society if it isn't to actually kind of lift from the bottom so that everybody can rise?
But to see the beautiful kind of life-saving action that people are taking in this moment is really heartening.
And it's a real balm because of how bad it's getting.
It already is.
Any other thoughts on that front, Sharon, or other things that you'd want to highlight from traveling across the country and just seeing where people are at?
Yeah, I mean, I think one of the other things that we're seeing is, you know, I think in the news, you're only getting glimpses of how people are responding.
And often it is in the most kind of out front, you know, in the streets kind of ways.
But I think people are also just out there gathering every day, like just to show presence in their communities, you know, whether it be, and I'm a cultural organizer as well.
So, you know, we really have seen a lot of like musicians and, you know, just local cultural, you know, folks showing up constantly so folks don't feel isolated and alone, you know, and people are coming out to just be a presence and be in public because people are so afraid and concerned right now.
You know, I think also, you know, we've seen a lot of faith leaders or just community members showing up at local courtrooms every day or outside of detention centers every day.
Just again, because people are, you know, very afraid in this moment or showing up at schools or showing up at Home Depot.
You know, like I think, you know, people are being present in a really powerful way.
And, you know, I think we talk about that in our in our book as like, what does it mean to show up as part of this kind of ritual practice?
And then, you know, in that, that then we can add these layers of real intention, you know, of thinking about how to then, you know, bring in kind of the vision and power and message of how do we want the world to look like.
So how do we not just be afraid?
Because I think that that's a really detrimental space to stay in, you know, and is what causes people to like isolate and to, you know, not feel like they can be present or don't just don't know what to do.
And so I think, you know, it's really important to kind of get these stories out of these many, many ways that people are being present for one another and connecting them.
Because I think the other thing is, you know, that we're trying to do through going out and, you know, going around the country and connecting with others that are doing this work is that, you know, there does need to be a connection of that activity, right?
That's part of a strategy of pushing back against, you know, those that are continuing to try to divide and isolate, right?
And so how do we not only like just know that it's happening, but how do we start to build relationships and connect folks that are doing this and to share, you know, to share the strategies of that work of what's working.
And so we see that happening as well of people really wanting to build on the lessons that they're learning in this moment and to share that with other communities so that they too can show up.
And that's really what this book is too, you know, is a resource to say, you know, we can learn from each other.
And these are things and experiences that we've had and you too can do this.
And there's wisdom coming from all angles in the book, not just from Christian perspectives, but from others.
And I think that's one of the things that people need to realize.
And I guess for me, when you said, you know, we can gain collective wisdom, engaging in the traditions of others for me has always been a way to learn, not to appropriate, but just to learn and understand wisdom in those practices and traditions.
If we can ask just one more question, I know you probably got to go.
Chapter five is about celebration.
And I think it's easy in these dark times, as you put it, Liz, to think that celebration is something we should feel guilty about.
And it seems to me that it's actually essential for not giving in to the darkness.
Chapter five talks about organizations that really came together after the George Zimmerman acquittal just about 10 years ago in the murder of Trayvon Martin.
And there is a sense there that the Black Youth Project and other Projects are places where people can celebrate through song, through creativity.
And I'll just finish on this.
What is the place of celebration in an era like the one we're living through?
And why is it a helpful thing for us to do together?
Yeah, I could start and let's can jump in.
I think one of the powers of celebration, especially in communities and in movements is, you know, grounding ourselves in the fact that we come from a long history of struggle and movements.
And so oftentimes I think when we look at the kind of celebrations that have come out of these communities, it's both a, you know, celebrating like the joy that we need to experience in this moment, but it's driving that like change doesn't happen in one moment, that it takes, you know, that we have to be part of a long struggle and there will be ups and downs.
And that has happened.
This, you know, people have encountered this before.
And so, you know, when we look at, you know, the ritual from the Black Youth Project, you know, that it starts with this chant that says, ancestors watching, I know they're watching, ancestors watching, I know, I know.
And, you know, it reminds us that we are connected to something much bigger than ourselves or this moment and that we can actually learn real lessons from that history.
And, you know, there's another story of celebration, you know, that Savina Martin wrote and draws on and lifts up, you know, the celebration that we were about to launch, the Poor People's Campaign in 2018.
And, you know, she wrote this poem that we turned into a liturgy that was, you know, looking at these different moments in history of, you know, going back to the Jesus movement to the leaders of, you know, the civil rights movement, to the, you know, the practices of today, the Welper rights movement and the homeless union movement and saying, you know, we are celebrating that we stand on these shoulders, right?
That we have the strength to kind of move forward because we know that actually we have tools and resources to build on in that.
And I think that right now, because so many people, especially in the fact that we're, you know, erasing history in this moment or, you know, trying to, you know, just forget that all these struggles happened, you know, that it's a really important moment to celebrate these kind of collective movement histories and through these kind of celebrations to teach that history and to build on it in this moment.
And I don't have a ton to add, but I wanted to pick up on this piece that you were saying about how it's from different faith traditions, right?
Because there are celebrations of various faith traditions that, again, not in a way of appropriation, but like where we get to learn from, you know, a celebration like Diwali, you know, this festival of lights and thinking in this really dark moment, like where do we see light and where is it breaking in?
And so to have Hindus of this movement share kind of Diwali services and prayers that bring some of that light in to the current moment or this, you know,
like looking at the story of Passover and having a whole kind of justice oriented seder for this, you know, really important observance and celebration of times in history when people have had to, you know, live under a tyrant and kind of get there together or we never get there at all, right?
And so I'm just thinking about, you know, those that have come before us and those that are coming along with us right now have great wisdom and of how to kind of both make it when you don't really have anything to make it with,
but also how to not let kind of those with power and authority, you know, take away our joy and take away our celebration and take away, you know, a sense of what makes us human and kind of, you know, in this moment, like that meaning making and that building of a place for kind of spiritual and political belonging, not in a partisan kind of way, but in a like, we can do this.
We can make things better for everybody.
I think we have to hold on to this.
And so, you know, there's just great kind of joy and celebration, you know, really throughout, I think, drawing on so many different communities and traditions.
It seems like when the goal of a regime is to humiliate you and dehumanize you, that celebration and mourning are two ways to say we are human and we will remember those who you don't want us to remember.
And we will take joy in our existence, even if you think we're not worth it.
And I think that's loud and clear in the book and in all the work that both of you do.
Thank you for your time.
Can you tell us about places people might find you, ways they might link up with work you're doing and where to get the book?
I'm sure they can get it anywhere, but what's the best way?
Start with you, Liz.
Go ahead.
Great.
So if you're interested in the Cairo Center and the Freedom Church of the Poor, please check us out on all the socials.
We're Cairo Center NYC.
And you can go to our website also and sign up for CairoCenter.org for like internet updates.
There's links to get the book there.
We're encouraging folks to use bookshop.org as a way to support independent books sellers.
And then maybe Sharon will tell us about, we just launched a website that we'd love people to take in.
Yeah.
And if you get the book, you'll notice in the book, they reference a companion website that we just launched, weprayfreedom.org.
And especially because there's so many songs and, you know, just kind of additional resources that we weren't able to fully appreciate through the written form of the book, we did launch this companion website where people can hear, you know, the songs, they can learn them, they can use them in various ways.
There's also other kind of liturgies and liturgical calendars that are on the website.
So it's really meant to be a resource because as we've said, you know, we want people to use this book, not just to read it, but it really is a resource to engage these communities that are present here and inspire additional work out there in the world.
And so we're grateful to be able to share this powerful, you know, the powerful contributions that so many made to this book through both the book and the website.
Well, after you're singing, Sharon, people are going to wonder if you have an album coming out or where they can find, you know, more of that, I'm sure too.
So I know I'm going to get those easy.
We do have a whole collective of singers and artists that are part of this work, including myself.
We actually have a retreat this weekend that we're going to be recording some new movement songs for this moment.
There it is.
Okay.
Awesome.
Well, thank you.
Thank you to both of you for your time.
As always, friends, we are so grateful for your support.
We'll be back Wednesday with It's in the Code and Friday with the weekly roundup.
