I was knitting and daydreaming during a budget review when a dedicated committee member looked at our numbers and said, “We need to make the margins work.”
I agree. Margins matter.
Margins are the critical space we clear during cancer treatment. They give us room to make mistakes, to keep the lights on and the doors open. Margins can make or break a business.
But margins also describe where people live and the vulnerable people themselves who are pushed to the edges. People in these margins are undervalued in the marketplace.
What we are doing at Thistle Farms is living into the story of love. It means dreaming and working in the margins! That is the role of old-school prophets who have always desired a more just future. We care not only about profit margins, but about prophet margins.
The play on words matters.
Profits are defined as what we make after we pay costs. Profits focus on the bottom line—the measure that helps a business sustain itself and scale. Prophets are trying to do something similar, but for a community. They understand that for a community to sustain and grow, we must care about the margins of society—those often overlooked or left behind.
Prophets see the present clearly, but they also imagine that it can be different. They envision a more just future and call us toward it.
Thistle Farms is creating a love economy that is creatively changing the narrative that pushes women to the margins. We are bearing witness to what becomes possible when those once confined, exploited, and excluded lead the movement towards a more just and loving world.
A woman receives her first paycheck after years of exploitation. A survivor gets the keys to her own apartment. A woman makes candles and body care products beside someone who knows her story and calls her friend. Women around the world earn a living wage for their hands, their artistry, and their labor.
Margins are key to understanding justice in the marketplace. They give small justice enterprises the space to thrive. Changing the margins between producer and customer changes people’s lives. A few more dollars paid to a producer may look like a smaller profit on one side of the spreadsheet, but on the other side, it can mean food, education, healthcare, safety, dignity, and freedom.
It’s wildly prophetic and joyful to see the value in the margins change!
This is the Love Economy, where love underpins how we live and assign value to resources. It looks at the margins, not just the difference between the cost of goods and the sale price. The Love Economy asks us to change the whole calculation. Sometimes that means accepting a smaller profit margin in order to create a larger prophet margin. It means heeding the call of the prophets to do justice, walk humbly, and love kindness.
Because all the data—and thirty years of experience—tell us that when we do this, when we invest in women, communities thrive. And when women are exploited, violated, and impoverished, entire communities suffer.
Tasha Kennard, CEO of Thistle Farms, says, “Reframing economics through a prophetic lens is a delicate exercise. It invites people to imagine an economy measured by flourishing rather than extraction.” It means inviting compassion into the equation of commerce.
It means understanding that success cannot be measured only by what accumulates at the bottom of a spreadsheet, but by who no longer lives in the violence and vulnerability of poverty.
Margins do matter. Margins are the space of grace in which we can err. A bigger margin means there is more wiggle room. The margins are also where the fringe hangs, no longer woven into the fabric. Margins are places where people suffer the system's injustices. If we love the world, we need to be concerned about margins.
We are trying to keep healthy prophet margins: enough room in our work and lives to notice suffering; enough courage to welcome strangers; enough humility to listen to people whose lives are different from our own; enough imagination to believe that love can become an economy.
So yes, when people at a budget meeting ask about margins, they are concerned with profit margins. Profit margins ask: “Does the business work?”
It’s a valid question. We need profit margins that keep the lights on. And we need prophet margins that keep the light shining. Thistle Farms, the largest justice enterprise in the US, is living into the truth that it is in the margins where love heals. Prophet margins ask: “For whom does it work?”
Building a global movement for women’s freedom, we have watched a wild tapestry emerge from the margins—a beautiful love story woven from thousands of lives.
We have been gathering threads from the margins and weaving them back into the whole: survivors, artisans, customers, employees, partners, supporters, and friends. And maybe that is what prophets have always done. They stand at the margins of society until those margins become the center of a new love story.
-- Becca Stevens, with guest collaborator Rev. Frannie Kieschnick
Published 8/28/26