Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front by 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 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.
When I was growing up, Fridays were “taco days.” Friday morning, while we kids were in school, my mom and Hermelinda would make homemade flour tortillas, delicious guacamole, fresh salsa, and all the fixings. It was there that I learned to pile on the toppings until my tortilla threatened to burst, and slowly learned to enjoy tomatoes and onions. Tacos were my favorite food growing up, so Fridays were a little bit like Christmas for this missionary kid.
But it wasn’t just the food that made Taco Fridays special. My parents practiced hospitality often – inviting others over, into our home, to stay, to celebrate, to laugh and worship and tell stories, to eat good food, and to enjoy each other’s company. My parents practiced hospitality generously – with other missionary families, with our neighbors and friends from church, with the co-translators and their families, with orphaned boys who had been abandoned in the hospital, with fugitive terrorists from the Sendero Luminoso. And my parents practiced hospitality in a way that drew us kids into the practice.
Everyone was allowed to invite one friend over each Friday. So our family of six would often turn into 10-12 people around the lunch table – eating, laughing, enjoying table fellowship together. And each of us, from my parents to the children, was a part of being hospitable – of opening our home to others, and sharing our lives together. It was a beautiful, delicious, sacred experience.
As I remember Taco Fridays, I realize how all too often I’ve waited to practice hospitality. I’ve waited until I’m no long alone, or until I’m settled into a place of my own, or until things are better, things are easier. But lately, I’ve been challenged to ask how I can create those spaces for community to flourish – for Shabbat to enter my life and my home and my community – and am excited to intentionally begin putting into practice the lessons I’ve learned from Taco Friday.
Wanna come over tacos and stories and laughter? I’d love to have you…
So I’m waiting in the restaurant area of a Flying J trucker’s stop. The buzzing noise from the harsh fluorescent lighting competes with the sickly sweet ballads of love songs playing on the radio, the floor alternates sticky patches of spilled soda, brown slushy ice, and yellow “Slippery When Wet” signs to mark the areas that have been freshly mopped, while the smells of stale donuts, slowly roasting hot dogs, and burning french fries wrestle for dominance in my nostrils. This is not the most beautiful place I have sat, yet the presence of God is here.
There is a beauty in colors and murals painted on the wall, the lyrics to the sappy love songs contain glimpses of transcendence, and the veil of the mundane that shields the faces of the cashiers working behind the register slips, showing glimpses of their true nature as the beloved daughters and sons of the King who created them in his image and loves them. Beauty and glory are around, and gratitude and awe pour from my every pore.
I am so thankful for life – to be alive – to move, breathe, taste cool water on my lips, feel the soft warmth from my jacket, marvel at the chemical processes and electrical impulses that move my fingers on the keyboard, and seeing each and every moment as the precious gift that it is. I am so thankful that words just don’t seem enough.
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The police officer who stopped on the side of the road and asked me what happened, shook his head, and told me I should buy a lottery ticket, because today was my lucky day. Two hours ago, I was driving from Grand Rapids back to Rockford – my car full of practically every possession I own on this earth as I completed the move from Philadelphia back to Northern Illinois (for those of you whom this portion of the story catches you by surprise, just roll with it – I’ll explain more about that transition next time).
As I came around the corner on the highway going about 70 miles an hour, my phone rang – my eyes darted to see who it was, and when I glanced back up I saw the car ahead of me slam on the brakes. I’m not sure what they were trying to avoid – I never saw it in any case. I was able to swerve and miss hitting them, but as I cleared their car my tires hit a patch of ice and the car started fishtailing. I was controlling the slide when the ice stopped, and my tires all of a sudden had traction again. Unfortunately, they were no long pointing down the west bound lanes, but were at about a 45 degree angle to the road. This managed to propel me across the lane of traffic to my left into the snow covered median, where I and my car were suddenly airborne and spinning.
I’m still not sure how many times we flipped as we bounced over the median: it could have only been once, or it could have been up to three or four. Regardless, I managed to roll my way across the median, landed the car right-side up, then slid across three lanes of oncoming (eastbound) traffic before lightly coming to a stop on the guardrail at the far side of the highway.
I got out, shaken but otherwise completely unhurt, pulled my car completely onto the shoulder (it still runs, even though it is completely missing the back windshield – lost somewhere in the flipping and bouncing), and was greeted by an off-duty police officer who called it in. Within a few minutes, I had three officers there who all expressed amazement that I was unscathed (from the aforementioned “lottery ticket” comment to another officer exclaiming that my car should be in a Honda commercial for protecting me that well and coming out of it still running.)
The rest of the story is strangely anticlimactic – tow trucks, figuring out the logistics of getting the car looked at and deciding if it’s drivable, Abby driving down from Grand Rapids (over an hour) to pick me up, along with her mom (which made me tear up with gratitude when I heard it), to sitting in truck stop writing this. My family is currently in Korea (except for Jon, who hasn’t picked up his phone yet), and the adrenaline is wearing off. And above all, I needed to get it down and process my gratitude once more. As he drove away, the police officer called me over and said, “Seriously, if I were you, I would buy a lottery ticket. You are one lucky man. I’m surprised that you’re still alive. I’ve seen people MUCH worse off from much less serious accidents. Count your blessings.”
So this is my attempt to stop and express my thanks. Thanks to God for protection. I am ok. Thanks to people for picking up and driving 90 minutes each way to be with me. Thanks, thanks, and more thanks. Gratitude overflows. Grace abounds. And if you’re reading this, you too are alive.
Know I’m thankful for each of you – the family, the friends, those whose lives have touched mine and who have been touched by me. So humbled. And so, so, so thankful.
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A Post-Script – So I am under the impression that my car (Eustace) has been trying to kill me. On Monday night, en route from Philadelphia to Upland, I spun out on a slushy, snow-covered highway in Ohio going 50 and did at least one full rotation (it might have been two – I’m a little hazy and all I really remember is spinning) before stopping on the side of the road, facing the direction I was originally headed. A few days later, after clearing off almost an inch of ice frozen to the car, I was driving from Indiana up to Michigan when the last of the ice melted. My hood flew open as I pulled onto the highway from a rest stop, cracking the windshield, bending the hood in a few places, and generally scaring me half to death. I was able to pull off the highway, bend the hood back down, and keep driving the rest of the way. And then today, this happened. Seriously Eustace, what is your problem with me, and why is it that you’ve decided I should no longer be among the living? I think I may preemptively get rid of you in order to avoid any further attempts on my life…
A Post-Post-Script – I hesitate to admit this on a public forum such as the internet, but I will confess to you that as I walked, watched, and waited by the side of the road for the tow-truck to come, the song that kept running through my head was Amy Grant’s “Angels watching over me…” Check it out. It is amazing.
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