Beloved Friends-
Until the beginning of September I will be stepping away from this blog space for a time of sabbath and renewal. During that time, I am offering some of my favorite poems to be solace and strength for our journeys.
I am so very grateful for the companionship we continue to develop in this expanding community of faith. Some of us are connected through face-to-face involvement through Trinity@316, Pop-Up Dinners, Mobile Food Pantry hosting and/or Toledo Streets monthly lunch making. Others are creating connection through our growing digital presence engaging Trinity@Home, participating in our on-line opportunities. And many, I am delighted to say are dipping in and out to all those ways of connecting on a regular basis. Who could have known two years ago that spreading God’s revolutionary love would be happening in all these ways? So, thank you, for offering yourselves and your hearts, your hands and your feet as we live out our Christian vocation as brave, tender, compassionate and humble disciples.
May God bless each of us with silence, rest, play, and the company of those we love in hopes of remembering and renewing our deepest joy.
And may you never forget that you are loved,
Lisa
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 who
has not encountered they have 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 down in the shade.
Rest your head in her lap.
Swear allegiance to what is highest in 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.