Finding Hope

Words of hope and rebellion, from Wendell Berry...

...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...


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.


~excerpts from Wendell Berry's Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front