Thoughts on Wendell

MANIFESTO: THE MAD FARMER LIBERATION FRONTby Wendell Berry Love the quick profit, the annual raise, vacation with pay. Want more of everything made. Be afraid to know you neighbors and to die. And you will have a window in your head. Not even your future will be a mystery any more. Your mind will be punched in a card and shut away in a little drawer. When they want you to buy something they will call you. When they want you to die for profit they will let you know. So, friends, every day do something that won't compute. Love the Lord. Love the world. Work for nothing. Take all that you have and be poor. Love someone who does not deserve it. Denounce the government and embrace the flag. Hope to live in that free republic for which it stands. Give your approval to all you cannot understand. Praise ignorance, for what man has not encountered he has not destroyed. Ask the questions that have no answers. Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias. Say that your main crop is the forest that you did not plant, that you will not live to harvest. Say that the leaves are harvested when they have rotted into the mold. Call that profit. Prophesy such returns. Put your faith in the two inches of humus that will build under the trees every thousand years. Listen to carrion--put your ear close, and hear the faint chattering of the songs that are to come. Expect the end of the world. Laugh. Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts. So long as women do not go cheap for power, please women more than men. Ask yourself: Will this satisfy a woman satisfied to bear a child? Will this disturb the sleep of a woman near to giving birth? Go with your love to the fields. Lie easy in the shade. Rest your head in her lap. Swear allegiance to what is nighest your thoughts. As soon as the generals and politicos can predict the motions of your mind, lose it. Leave it as a sign to mark the false trail, the way you didn't go. Be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction. Practice resurrection.

I've been pondering this poem by Wendell Berry all day. There is so much richness in his words that I need to take a moment to reflect in writing. I'm always attracted to the way in which Berry ever-so-politely mocks the meaningless things that American culture embraces. We are slaves to immediacy, to stuff and to ourselves. We build giant houses to keep ourselves at arms-length from our neighbors while simultaneously seeking cheap ways of making ourselves known to others through technology and status. We are easily bought and sold because we voluntarily buy and sell ourselves. We've taken what we've been handed and we no longer have anything good to do with it. We've shut the bread in our cupboards and have forgotten the goodness of its use.

"Every day, do something that won't compute." What does he mean? My only guess is that he's talking about what I call, "the pure acts". Taking a walk through the woods, sitting down by a lake with a fishing pole, overlooking the rude girl who rams you with her shopping cart. We don't take a walk in the woods to come out on the other end ready to sell the forest; at least I hope not. We don't go fishing because we have nothing to eat; maybe you do but I doubt it. We don't overlook the rude girl because we planned on forgiving a jerk today. We don't do these things because we need to. We do it out of a love for things that don't compute and don't resonate with our predictable human behavior. As a result of these unaccounted for acts, we become extraordinary.

Our culture prides itself on rational thought and the ability to explain everything that happens. Berry says to "give your approval to all you cannot understand." How contradictory is that! The truth is that there are depths that we cannot comprehend. The will of man seeks knowledge above all else and he will find it and put a patent on it at any cost. Praise the one who stops and realizes his own triviality and what he cannot know about the world and God. Go down to the stream with your fishing pole and just be. Understanding comes like a gentle wave: unexpected. She makes herself known to the one who humbles himself before her. He bends to her waters in adoration of what is; and there, life in all of its meaning is revealed like a pearl in an unsuspecting oyster.

Berry says, "be joyful though you have considered all of the facts." Don't be the majority who despairs at the depraved condition of man. I've heard myself say things like: "people will always be jerks, I shouldn't be surprised." We all love the world too little. We either hate it in its entirety or we love it for the wrong reasons. What we don't often see is how much good influence we might have if we chose to be joyful in spite of our knowledge. Be joyful though you've considered all the facts. Have hope in mankind and what he good he can do and be.

Berry tells us to put our faith in the goodness of the stuff that lasts on this earth like the 2 inches of humus that will build under the trees every thousand years. He implores us to be a part of this earth, but never to own it. It is not ours. Love God, love the unlovable and practice resurrection. These are the greatest things we can do. I think that he means that it's okay to die to ourselves over and over. This is where our path makes no sense. As Berry says, be like the wily fox who intentionally makes tracks that are unnecessary. We make wrong paths and we make pointless paths, but all along the way we are becoming who we were made to be.

Walk into the forest and gather flowers, not because you needed to, but because you smell the freshness of the autumn wind. Bend to its will and it will transform you. Take your Love with you and bind her to your side until you fade like the falling leaves.