September 13, 2026
“Here Again” Photo by LKV Walsh
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As I was growing up, my father told me that every Sunday of his childhood, his mom went to church and his dad went into the rice fields he worked in Lake Charles, Louisiana. This made sense to me once I was an adult and found myself caring for a tiny farm in Seattle, WA. Farmers, even tiny ones, get to see the holy cycle of death and resurrection everywhere. I was reminded of it this week when the farmers here in Ireland worked frantically to bring in the last of the hay and silage just as it began to rain. But I’ve also been thinking about it a good deal since we lost the poet/farmer/theologian Wendell Berry two weeks ago.
One of my favorite poems of all time, and my all-time favorite of Berry’s, is “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer’s Liberation Front.” I have loved it for decades, and it was the last line that I found myself repeating this week, the line in which Berry tells us to PRACTICE resurrection.
Practice resurrection…because stuff this important doesn’t just happen. Practice resurrection…because things must come and go and come again for the world to be made whole.
The ending of things and the new beginning of things are not competing ideas. They are the tensions we hold in order to see the richness of what we are offered by life. My grandfather did not do it wrong to go into the rice fields while my grandmother went to church. He was seeing resurrection his way. He was practicing resurrection. And with all that we face in the average life, we will have to each find our own ways to do the same. Lest we feel bereft of where to start, I offer the place Wendell Berry gave us just a year after I was born. May he rest in peace.
Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
by Wendell Berry (1973)
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.
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