Praticing resurrection - part two...

As yet more snow covers the Berkshires - we already have 18+ inches - my soul calls me to something the gentle prophet and poet, Wendell Berry, wrote in 1973: "The Mad Farmer Liberation Front." I wish I had known it 36 years ago, but better late than never - and it deserves a full sharing.

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 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 millenium. 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 down 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.

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front" from The Country of Marriage, copyright © 1973 by Wendell Berry, reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.

The last line, of course, has inspired both Eugene Peterson and Nora Gallagher -Practice Resurrection: a conversation in growing up in Christ, and, Practicing Resurrection: a memoir of work, doubt, discernment and moments of grace - respectively. Both are among my favorites, albeit in very different ways. The heart of both their insights, however, has to do with practicing living into the way of Christ both consciously and in community - not an easy commitment in the feel-good churches of the United States in the 21st century. Today's devotions have turned up a few clues that also deserve sharing. The first, from Fr. Richard Rohr of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico, writes:

Ken Wilber says that he believes the function of religion is to grease the wheels of history so that we can move toward non-dual consciousness, or what I would call the contemplative mind. Quite simply, we are supposed to move toward love. Mature religion’s function is to make us capable of compassion, mercy, forgiveness, nonviolence, and care for others. When religion is not creating people who can reconcile things, heal things, and absorb contradictions—then religion isn’t doing its job.

When we stopped teaching the contemplative mind in a systematic way about 400 to 500 years ago, we lost the capacity to deal with paradox, inconsistency, and human imperfection. Instead, it became “winners take all” and losers lose all. Despite all our universities and churches in Western Christianity, we learned to choose one side over the other and if possible, exclude, punish, or even kill the other side. That’s dualistic thinking at its worst; and it’s the normal mind that has taken over our world. It creates very angry and often, violent people. Peace and happiness are no longer possible, because there is always a crusade to be waged and won. That is ego at work and surely not soul.

And Eugene Peterson writes:

There is a great market for religious experience in our world; there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for the long apprenticeship in what earlier generations of Christians called holiness... (That seems to be why) dissatisfaction - coupled with a longing for peace and truth - are the only way we set off on the pilgrim path of wholeness in God... As long as we think that the next election might eliminate crime and establish justice or another scientific breakthrough might save the environment or another pay raise might push us over the edge of anxiety into a life of tranquility, we are not likely to risk the arduous uncertainties of the life of faith. A person has to get fed up with the ways of the world before he or she acquires an appetite for the world of grace.

Both of these wise old souls resonate with what I have discerned, too. And both go on to say that none of us can move deeper only by ourselves - we need community. I know many who are dissatisfied, but they still insist on exploring their anguish in solitude - or with just a therapist - and not community. There is a place, God knows, for both therapy and solitude but God's way also includes community - and most of us don't grow up without becoming part of a community. Dare I say that without community, we remain perpetual adolescents? That seems to be often the case...