This week I would like to invite you to join me in considering this essential question of faith, and of the potential unfolding of our own humanity, as a flower opens with the first rains of spring, its green shoot having burst through cold earth, not dead after all. Do we allow ourselves to be acted upon, to be changed, by mystery?
FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Hi John,
ReplyDeleteWhat a graced conversation/reflection you have invited us to this week. May I start with another poem of Wendell Berry's?
Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
Wendell Berry
Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your 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 governments 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 you 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 the 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.
Bob Scullin used that last line in his Easter Vigil homily and suggested some ways we might "practice resurrection." The one's I remember are, of course, ones that pertain to me. The first is to have breakfast with someone. Seems kind of simple, but you know from the breakfasts that you and Bob and I used to have, they can be times of great grace and welling up of new life (even in the face of death -- recall our last breakfast after you got your initial diagnosis).
The second is to plant a garden. A little more work involved in this one, but at Gloryland or in the two beds in Brightmoor that Billie and I began digging today, it is so easy to see the seed die and rise to new life.
The third is to enter into the "joyful wounds of the Christ." That means to try to be of help, companionship, service, etc. to someone in need. I have never thought of helping the people I am privileged to help as "practicing resurrection." But, yes, I think it can be. Jesus says no wound ends in ultimate death. But that's hard to see or believe unless there is someone who is willing to enter the wound with you. Then you might hope; then you might believe.
So, this is a bit of my "Eastered Manifesto ."
Alleluia!
Bill