Resurrection is the word that comes to mind as I read this text. Resurrection also encapsulates the insurmountable distance between struggle and hope. Should we summon Jesus even when a child has already been pronounced dead? Should we expect healing from the mere touch of his robes? What if hope died when the struggle was lost?
So in this season of reflection, and discipline, and practice, as we expect the resurrection it is good to remember that resurrection is more than an Easter expectation. Resurrection is a practice that reminds us that our faith allows struggle and hope to live together. When we expect resurrection even outside of the Easter season, we begin to practice it and remind ourselves that struggle doesn’t exclude hope and that our faith doesn’t promise a tidy resolve or demand that everything work out perfectly the first time. When we expect resurrection we do things so crazy as reaching out for Jesus’s robe in the crowd expecting healing and summoning Jesus to visit the daughter who has already been declared dead. In one of my favorite poems, Wendell Berry offers some resurrection practices. How do you practice resurrection?
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 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 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.
