Vision

About Canticle Farm

Overview

Canticle Farm is an urban garden, educational center and community of intention, experimenting at the intersections of faith-based, social-justice-based, and Earth-based nonviolent activism. 

We live in eight houses around a large garden in the Fruitvale District of Oakland, California. We are working to heal and transform historical and present-day trauma across difference, especially that of race, gender, class, religion and age. 

We act as a platform for The Great Turning – the planetary shift from an industrial-growth society to a life-sustaining society – which is served by Canticle Farm through our local work and support of national and international movements for social and environmental justice.

OUR VALUES

How will Canticle Farm achieve our goal of facilitating the Great Turning? We remain deeply committed to and operate from core values of community, service, spirituality, nonviolence, regeneration, simplicity and healing of historical divides. We manifest these values by providing a platform for the teaching and sharing of those skills, technologies and practices most likely to create a resilient community in the 21st century.

Making herbal medicine for the Run4Salmon prayer journey, June 2019
Community members being sent off on journeys, August 2021

The Land 

At Canticle Farm we value the sacredness of the land upon which we live, the sacredness of all land and the sacredness of Earth. We have the honor and responsibility of living in a respectful way on the location of the indigenous village of Huchiun, within the ancestral territory of the Chochenyo-speaking Lisjan Ohlone people. We support the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, which nourishes restoration and rematriation. We encourage everyone living on land taken from Indigenous peoples to engage in or support in some way the path toward acknowledgement, reconciliation and healing.

CURRENT PROGRAMS

  • Sister Water House of Restorative Justice is home to community leaders, elders and organizers in the formerly-incarcerated community, all men of color paroled from life sentences.
  • Sister Stars is home to youth activists who organize in the climate justice, housing rights, food justice, and indigenous sovereignty movements.
  • Brother Wind is home to our asylum program, supporting women, children and queer folks from Central America.
  • The Restorative Circle Room is a dedicated space for restorative justice circles, open to the public for this purpose by arrangement.
  • The Retreat & Workshop Space at Sister Moon is a gift-economy based space for meetings, workshops, trainings and retreats, serving grassroots, community and movement-building organizations. More info here, please contact us to enquire about using it.
  • Our Garden is an urban permaculture demonstration and teaching garden, hosting many volunteers and interns from local high schools and beyond.

OUR NAME

Canticle, or “Song,” is taken from the example of Francis of Assisi. Born into a materially rich family, Francis left his inheritance and devoted himself to a life of poverty in joyful service. Nearing his death, in great physical pain and almost blind, he wrote the “Canticle of Brother Sun and Sister Moon” as a lasting expression of praise for the world and kinship with all beings. This practice of praise and kinship with all creation is core to Canticle Farm. It also reminds us that, despite the profound difficulty of these times, it is still a good time to sing and to practice gratitude.

More than our work in urban permaculture, healthy local food and sustainable economies, Canticle Farm is a farm in the sense that we intend to inspire and create a close familial relationship of mutual benefit to the human and the other-than-human worlds. The work of Canticle Farm is for all future beings and that work is supported by honoring our ancestors in every place and time.

OUR WELCOME

Many people find meaning in the “Community Welcome” that we read at Canticle Farm Liturgy each Sunday morning. You can find it at this link if you would like to read it or adapt it for your own community. You can also find there our “Acknowledgment & Commitment”, which begins: “We name that we live in a nation created by enslavement and genocide of peoples…”

Joining Our Community

We are constantly humbled by the number of requests we get from those seeking to join an intentional community, and/or find housing in the Bay Area. We know it points both to a growing hunger people are experiencing to find meaning and purpose by sharing their lives with others, as well as the housing crisis and unraveling of so many community support systems. We know that ultimately very few people will be able to come live with us, and so we hope that more and more communities will form to meet the growing need and hunger for a shared life of service and purpose.

When we do have spaces open in our community, we invite those with whom we have built deep relationships over time to come join us. Others arrive through particular programs and partnerships. Still, people do write to us out of the blue expressing interest in joining our community, and our response to such enquiries is “Come serve with us.” This is the first step in building a relationship, and everything we do is about relationships! During this process of getting to know each other, we discern if we want to build a life together, and if the one you are called to live is aligned with the mission and purpose of Canticle Farm. 

Soil & Soul: Restorative Justice & Urban Ecology workshop for Black Mountain Circle, October 2017
Soil & Soul: Restorative Justice & Urban Ecology workshop for Black Mountain Circle, October 2017

Influences

Several traditions, philosophies and practices inspire, inform and influence the emergent nature of Canticle Farm including:

  • The Work That Reconnects
  • Integral nonviolence
  • Franciscan spirituality
  • Nonviolent Communication
  • Restorative justice
  • Reparations
  • Gift and relationship-based economics
  • The Catholic Worker movement
  • Urban permaculture
  • Initiation rites and “soul work”
  • Healing across the differences of race, gender, class, and age

Canticle of Creation

Most high, all-powerful sweet Lord,
yours is the praise, the glory, and the honor
and every blessing.

Be praised, my Lord,
for all your creatures,
and first for brother sun,
who makes the day bright and luminous.

And he is beautiful and radiant
with great splendor,
he is the image of you, Most High.

Be praised, my Lord,
for sister moon and the stars,
in the sky you have made them brilliant and precious and beautiful.

Be praised, my Lord, for brother wind
and for the air both cloudy and serene
and every kind of weather,
through which you give nourishment
to your creatures.

Be praised, my Lord, for sister water,
who is very useful and humble
and precious and chaste.

Be praised, my Lord, for brother fire,
through whom you illuminate the night.
And he is beautiful and joyous
and robust and strong.

Be praised, my Lord,
for our sister, mother earth,
who nourishes us and watches over us
and brings forth various fruits
with colored flowers and herbs.

Be praised, my Lord,
for those who forgive through your love,
and bear sickness and tribulation;

blessed are those who endure in peace,
for they will be crowned by you, Most High.

Be praised, my Lord,
for our sister, bodily death,
from whom no living thing can escape.

Blessed are those whom she finds
doing your most holy will,
for the second death cannot harm them.

Praise and bless my Lord
and give thanks to him and serve him
with great humility.

— Francis of Assisi

(translated by Stephen Mitchell)

Canticle Farm is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit with EIN 461484633