#practiceresurrection2015 - Who wants to join me?
During Lent the phrase retrieve lament captured me through the words of Rilke. During the Great Fifty Days of Easter, it's the lovable contrarian Wendell Berry exhorting my imagination with two words (plus many more): Practice resurrection.
If that weren't enough, my mom and sisters and I are reading Surprised by Hope together this Eastertide. And it helped me remember the passage I'd fallen in love with a couple of years ago after first reading the book:
"... we should be taking steps to celebrate Easter in creative new ways: in art, literature, children's games, poetry, music, dance, festivals, bells, special concerts, anything that comes to mind. this is our greatest festival....This is our greatest day. We should put the flags out.
...if Lent is a time to give things up, Easter ought to be a time to take things up. Champagne for breakfast again -- well, of course....The forty days of the Easter season, until the ascension, ought to be a time to balance out Lent by taking something up, some new task or venture, something wholesome and fruitful and outgoing and self-giving. You may be able to do it only for six weeks, just as you may be able to go without beer or tobacco only for the six weeks of Lent. But if you really make a start on it, it might give you a sniff of new possibilities, new hopes, new ventures you never dreamed of. It might bring something of Easter into your innermost life..."
I spent the first week of Easter dreaming up ways to celebrate -- practice, even -- Resurrection with you my dear blog readers. After we meditated and storied lament, how might we make much of the festal Easter hope? I loved the photo stories you shared with me back in 2013 and want to do that again, but a bit more simply.
For the next six weeks (from now until Pentecost), will you join me in feasting on Resurrection goodness in our everyday lives? It can be as simple as a special candle you use for your meals during Eastertide or as elaborate as traveling across the world to meet new people.
Whatever it is, will you show us a picture and tell us a few words? Plant spring flowers (maybe a new variety this year)? Show us! Get up to see the sun rise on a Sunday morning? Tell us about it! Take a new route to work (maybe taking more time than necessary in honor of the mad farmer)? Share it!
Three steps to play along:
Add something to your day that helps you practice resurrection. (one day or fifty days doesn't matter)
Take a picture and write a description in 1-50 words.
Share it with me via an email,Facebook or hashtag it on Twitter or Instagram#practiceresurrection2015. I'll share some of your photo-stories with everyone here each week.
Who's in with me? Best place I can think to start is to sit with the mad farmer and a cup of tea.
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 what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. 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 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.
.....
april 12
Here's my first #practiceresurrection2015 photo to get us started.
"I woke up early Sunday morning wanting to see an Eastertide sun rise. Unfortunately, it was a pretty foggy day on Mount Bonnell, but a new day, nonetheless."
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For ideas, see the bullet list in the photo at the top of this post. I'm grateful to Amy at Splendor in the Ordinary for planting this seed of thought for me way back in 2009.
Now it's your turn. Who wants to join me?