“So, friends, every day do something that won’t compute….”

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.

I came across these lines a while ago, noted them, and intended to go looking for where they came from – and forgot. They turned up again and this time I Googled them. I was surprised to find that, unsurprisingly, they are written by Wendell Berry. Surprising because to be honest I should have recognised them, and that for several reasons. Unsurprising because, first, I've now read swathes of Berry's poems, and his Sabbath Poems is at my bedside.

Second, I can almost hear his slow diction as he looks out at the world of people and says, slowly, "So, friends…" I know few poets who use the word 'friend' with such convincing sincerity – Seamus Heaney being another.

Third, the benevolent Luddite exhortation against the human obession with computing, calculating, bottom line, data-gathering ways of evading the beauty of the world.

Fourth the underlying grace and humanity of the last three lines, which define love not by definition but by disposition, action and the unselfing of the self.

The words come in one of Berry's signature poems, a long series of exhortations and life guidance, a sharing of experience that is the essence of wisdom, but to many others would sound like folly, and perhaps, above all, a poem that calls in question much of the trivia we invest with exaggerated significance in a world consumed by the human desire to consume. Our culture loves the sound byte and the buzz phrase – one of the kore recent 'taking the long view'. In ways much deeper than shrewd business strategies, Berry's poem takes the long view, and encourages the dispositions and actions of love, for others, for the world, for the Lord.

(The photo was taken from a ruined castle in rural Aberdeenshire)

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer's Liberation Front.

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 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 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.