Beauty in What Doesn't Compute

In the last couple of weeks the world has lost two travelers that, while on different paths, similarly saw virtue in humanity and, in ways that were counter-cultural, planted their flag for truth. Dolly Parton was the much more celebrated of the two. You couldn't move on the internet or in the news without a tribute to the "great American" who stood for family values, grew up singing in the church, etc ... So much has been said about Dolly that I need not add my two cents.

The other now deceased traveler I mentioned is a little harder to find in the news cycle, namely Wendell Berry. Berry was known for his writings encompassing novels, essays, and poetry. I came to Berry through his Port William novels (Jayber Crow, Hannah Coulter, Memory of Old Jack, etc ..) which in addition to highlighting a simpler way of life, explore themes of faith, human relationships, loss, contentment, progress, and many more. A Christian himself, Berry sought to see the beauty in the world around him, even in the midst of brokenness, death and loss. As a farmer, Berry often looked to nature as the general revelation displaying the handiwork of God. In his Manifesto: The Mad Farmer's Liberation Front he encourages listening to carrion, the world of decaying flesh and rotting matter, to "put your ear close and hear the faint chattering of the songs that are to come". It is firm belief in the things unseen that evoke such lines as: "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." The poem ends with the exhortation to "Practice resurrection."

Though he writes of a simpler world through a lens of faith and hope, that does not mean that life is easy. Jayber Crow, Port William's barber, struggles with his sense of calling throughout his life, eventually "finding himself" through grief and loss: “I whisper over to myself the way of loss, the names of the dead. One by one, we lose our loved ones, our friends, our powers of work and pleasure, our landmarks, the days of our allotted time. One by one, the way we lose them, they return to us and are treasured up in our hearts. Grief affirms, them, preserves them, sets the cost. Finally a man stands up alone, scoured and charred like a burnt tree, having lost everything and (at the cost only of its loss) found everything, and is ready to go. Now I am ready.” 

Hannah Coulter similarly must go on through pain as her husband is killed in war: “The living can't quit living because the world has turned terrible and people they love and need are killed. They can't because they don't. The light that shines into darkness and never goes out calls them on into life. It calls them back again into the great room. It calls them into their bodies and into the world, into whatever the world will require. It calls them into work and pleasure, goodness and beauty, and the company of other loved ones.” 

I could go on and on with words that evoke reflection and awaken hope. But the key here isn't what Mr. Berry wrote, but where he placed his trust, or more specifically in whom he placed his trust. He placed his trust in the same Savior, Jesus, who we will gather this week to celebrate, to sink our hands in the loam of his truth and allow all that He is and has done to carry us forth into the world, into the life we have been given. Perhaps one more quote from Hannah Coulter will bring this to a close: "You mustn’t wish for another life. You mustn’t want to be somebody else. What you must do is this: 'Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks.' I am not all the way capable of so much, but those are the right instructions.”