The Simple Life as Resistance

Wendell Berry's 'Manifesto'.

Sometimes I write so that I don’t have to think about something any more. This way of writing is cathartic, a process of release. I write to unwind my twisted thoughts so that my mind can become spacious and receptive again.

At other times, writing opens up a doorway and my words become footsteps as I begin to find my way through.

Last week I told you how much time I’ve been “wasting” on presence and how a life of loving presence increasingly feels like the definition of a good life. Articulating that seems to have solidified something in me. My purpose feels clearer or more bounded somehow. I feel more able to shrug off the nagging thoughts telling me to be more productive or useful because a simple, slow, present life - while a lovely idea - is unrealistic as a way of life. I still have a to-do list but I’m taking a lot more breaks. I’m lingering on walks (mostly to admire cow parsley).

I had an Anne of Green Gables moment walking along this path.

As I live deeper into presence, poetry is keeping me company.

This week it’s mostly Wendell Berry’s poem ‘Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Movement’ that has been offering me encouragement. It’s not one of his most well-known poems but it offers a wonderful introduction to the twin themes of his writings - his reverence for the land and his critique of modern life. Reading it for the first time can feel like a punch to the gut or a kick up the backside. Its pithy lines are statements and commands, not intimations or invitations. Part of the reason I love it is that it offers balance to the gentleness of his other writings. I hear in it an echo of the Jesus we meet in the gospels. The Jesus who defies the meek-and-mild stereotype and speaks directly without compromising for our comfort.

Each time I read Berry’s ‘Manifesto’ something different stands out but I’m always made to pause by the line “each day do something that won’t compute”. Perhaps it’s because it’s the hinge upon which the rest of the poem hangs. The lines before focus on the entrapping commands of consumer capitalism. All the lines that follow describe things that won’t compute with this matrix. Things like loving God, working for free, loving those who don’t deserve it, planting slow growing trees, rest.

None of these things are presented as complicated, none of them appear to require a particular set of skills. Although he’s writing as a farmer, what Berry describes are the foundations of a good life for any of us. A simple, shared life surrendered to the rhythms of the natural world and attuned to the Mystery that speaks through those rhythms. A life that doesn’t grasp or strive but opens its hands to give and receive. Living like this is the antidote to the poison of waste and greed, the red pill that breaks us free from the matrix, the way we practise resurrection from a deadened life.

I’m still unpacking the implications of all this but I think part of what I’m learning from Berry is that a simple life is not a pleasant escape from reality. Quite the opposite. A simple life is a sometimes costly, daily act of resistance to unreality. A rebellion against oppressive forces. A way of freeing ourselves from the binding forces of a sick culture. For me, most of that resistance, rebellion and loosening happens internally when I choose to turn away from the life-sucking demands of hurry, productivity and consumption. I’m tempted to use the language of battle which makes the internal struggle sound like spiritual warfare. Maybe it is spiritual warfare. I don’t know. What I do know is that I need voices like Berry’s to call me back to presence when I feel myself beginning to deaden. The voices that translate to my soul the counter-cultural, anti-greed message of a Middle Eastern carpenter who walked the earth 2,000 years ago. The voices that help me understand what “life in all its fullness” really means.

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All of that was really a preamble to me sharing the poem. I recommend you read it a couple of times, pausing between to notice your inner response. I'd love to hear which lines stand out to you or what you find yourself still chewing on later in the day/week.

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 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.

Photo by Vitto Sommella on Unsplash