Staff Reflection: Advice from American Poets

A friend of the Farm recently sent me an email with an excerpt from Walt Whitman's great work, Leaves of Grass. In it Whitman dispenses some good advice about how one should live and view the world. I'm inspired by these words of arguably our country's greatest poet.

You Shall Be A Great Poem (by Walt Whitman)
This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any one or number of persons, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body... The poet shall not spend time in unneeded work. He shall know that the ground is always ready plowed and manured... He shall go directly to creation.

A second literary work I've come across is a poem by a contemporary American poet, Wendell Berry. The poem is called "Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front" and it is another great source for advice, a wonderful point of view on how to approach many of the forces in our lives. But enough from me: I'm not the poet. See what you think.

"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."

Staff Reflection: Diggin' a Ditch

This week, I had the opportunity to dig a trench to bury a gas line for a couple of days during chores. I was accompanied by a few lucky individuals, and it was an enjoyable 10:10 minutes both times. It was the first thing I did that day and I was sweating after just 5 minutes of taking a pickax to the ground. It was hard work for sure. But God was in it, and here's a pair of reasons why.
While I was operating the pickax, I thought of all the people who have done similar work. I thought first about prisoners working on chain gangs. They were put to work to help repay their debt to society, and the image that comes to mind is of the movie "Cool Hand Luke," where Paul Newman and his cohorts are digging a ditch on the side of some road in the blazing summer heat. I only used the pickax for about 20 minutes in the cool morning, but afterward I was drenched in sweat and had gained a new respect for prisoners and laborers who worked in such a way for hours on end. I felt in solidarity with a group of people, even if for only a short period of time.
The other thing that came to mind while digging the trench occurred when we went to put the dirt back into the trench after we had placed the gas line in the bottom of it. The earth didn't settle back into the ground as well as it had originally, and all of the pounding with our feet couldn't create as hard a surface that we started out with. It was obvious that the dirt would settle more with time and precipitation, and the feeling that we disturbed something couldn't get out of my mind. I thought about mountaintop removal and the damage it brings to the mountain itself and the surrounding environment. Mountaintop removers are supposed to return the mountain to an area just as good if not better after the removal of coal. However, it is impossible to put back all the rocks, trees, wildlife and water formations that are uprooted and destroyed after such an aggressive destruction of the environment. What we were doing wasn't nearly at the same scale as mountaintop removal, but it made me realize that God's creation, a creation that is ever evolving and changing without our help, is a gift that is irreplaceable and precious. Nature is imperfect, but it is perfect in its imperfection. I gained a greater respect for what God has given us through this experience. I can now see beauty in dirt, why it's something worth preserving, and how God reveals profound truths to us through simple acts.