Practice Resurrection

Practice resurrection.

That's the final line of Wendell Berry's prophetic poem, Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front.

In truth, the stanzas are dripping with the gentle liberating rhetoric of one who knows what it really means to live--who's tasted the sweet bile of power, the split-backed jeers of others when it's forfeited, and the now growing shalom that comes from a resurrection only God can bring.

Think Moses.

A man who grew up amongst the ridiculously rich architecture of the world's pre-eminent empire. No finer status could be rendered than what Egypt had to offer. Moses knew the satisfaction of a life not having to concern itself with others, especially the "bumpkin" Hebrews. And yet in a moment of revelation, Moses discovers that beneath the golden coat of his painted heart lay a more dormant, and living soul. It was a soul comprised of earth, straw, wood, grass and water, a more organic and elemental identity. It was a soul that experienced shalom in the "powerlessness" of knowing it was simply, and only ever, a creature. One who lives with the earth, rather than subdues it. It was the shalom of one who recognizes the joy found in equal-kinship with others, rather than self-imposed hierarchies wrought by a currency's valuation.

Moses discovered that his soul was more at home in the staining earth with equally-yoked brothers and sisters than in a palace where the power structures of the day dictated propriety's order.

So he killed a man in an attempt to bring about this new-found reality. And then he ran away in fear.

And he tended sheep for forty years.

Then God resurrected him.

Notice the trend. Moses lived in un-enlightened selfishness while divorced from the earth, from his people (a people of terrible ordinariness). Then through an act of revelation, he discovered a more fundamental nature to his soul than what Egypt's self-seeking allowed for. He acted brashly in an attempt to satisfy this craving by killing the oppressor, an attempt to satiate his soul by his own power. And then he ran away from fear when it did not work.

After forty years of banal living, of seemingly purposelessness by herding sheep and living out his days until death (so he thought), God showed up out of nowhere and resurrects him for a new purpose, a new reason to live.

So then, practice resurrection. From the lips of Wendell Berry, the formerly-venerated-professor turned dirty-fingernailed-farmer/prophet, abandon the futile pursuit of self.

It can't bring you what you seek.

Trust him, you'll find a joy unspeakably greater if you simply return to the land, to the powerlessness of a life found in the service of others, to the reality that you are nothing but a piece in an organic puzzle much deeper and wider and truer than you'd ever have the courage to fathom.

You are a creature, like the sequoia, like the doe, like the mosquito. You are a creature of tremendous value for your God has said you are valuable. But that value is unperceivable whilst your hands vigorously claw at anything that will prove this to you and aid your quest at acquiring power.

Allow God to put you to death--put to death your fear that you're not good enough.

Go tend sheep until you die (or until God decides to call you to something else).

Or as Berry puts it earlier in the poem,

"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."

Trust him, trust Moses...It's only after you die that you'll understand what they mean.

Or rather, it's only after you're resurrected that you'll understand. But you can't resurrect yourself. That's what they discovered. God has to do it. All you can do is consent to be killed...and trust rebirth.