Wendell Berry on Life

I'm sure by now you've read many of the thank-you’s, essays, and nods to the poet-farmer Wendell Berry. The prolific writer, thinker, and poet passed on Monday at the age of 92 in a rural county in Kentucky. I'm not a Berry scholar and honestly came late to the Berry party. I picked up some books about ten years ago, and read a few essays in grad school.

There are many things I could say about Berry and the influence of his ideas through his novels, essays, and provocative philosophy of how to live well in the modern world. A world infected with the disease of speed, mobility, and efficiency. Berry believed in land, place, and writing by hand.

But today, I want to offer you a line from a poem:

So, friends, every day do something that won't compute.

—Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Wendell Berry's life could be summarized in this line of poetry. Berry found some success in the New York literary scene and left to farm in Kentucky. This doesn't compute.

Why not chase those big paychecks, and snuggle up next to the New York literati, and live out your days chasing the Next Great American Novel? Berry chose the road less traveled. He picked up a shovel, and determined his life would be better off spent on the land of his birth.

Berry took his own medicine and chose the things that won't compute. Don't compute.

Later in the poem, Berry gives specifics as to what this non-computing life might entail:

Love the Lord.

Love the world. Work for nothing.

Take all that you have and be poor.

Love someone who does not deserve it.

For Berry, loving God, and the good world he made won't compute. Being rich won't either. Loving people who do not deserve it, which is everybody by the way, certainly will not compute. The World of Grace is foreign to most.

Unfortunately, it took Berry's death and a swarm of people giving their nods, condolences, and thanks to remember this poem. A poem I've read many times over the years. But a poem easily forgotten in our days of numb-scrolling, and doing what everyone expects of us.

I often succumb to doing what will compute, what makes sense to the logical brain, or your parents, or faith community. Instead of doing what causes some to raise an eyebrow in confusion. But Berry saw life in richer colors.

Most of life in the American Experiment wars against a non-computing path. We are told from an early age to follow the path of least resistance. Pay attention in school, get a degree, find a good paying job, find something to share life with, have a few kids, buy a house, retire, travel, and die.

I'm certainly overstating the story of America. But I'm not far off. We have little space for the non-computing lifestyle. The place of loving God, his world, and doing things that aren't predicated on making more money, being more efficient, and climbing some career ladder.

Everything we do is supposed to compute. Berry wanted none of it.

Berry moved back to Kentucky to work the land and write on his family farm after finding success in New York. This doesn't compute. At least to a watching world that values the big, bold, and gold. But Berry chose the small, intimate, and the close comfort of the land. This doesn't compute if you measure a life by dollars and cents or location.

But this poem isn’t only about Berry. It’s about me, and you. I think about my own life, and how much of it has followed a similar shape, and the inverse. I have spent many days doing what doesn't compute. I'm a pastor by vocation. A job most people know nothing about, and never makes the top ten list of desirable high paying jobs. We tend to live at the bottom. But I find great joy in the work.

I write, too. I've written everything from articles for my denomination, traditionally published nonfiction, thousands of blog posts and articles from theology to my love of the Clippers, short stories, fiction involving paid assassins from Missouri, and I dabble in poetry.

I hear it all the time. Stay in your line. Leave the writing to others. Write theology or something else pastoral. I could, and I have. But it's not the only thing I want to explore. I'm not trying to write only theological papers; I write whatever I'm curious about.

Perhaps I've taken Berry's advice and applied it in more ways than one. I write because I like it. I've not stopped since banging out stories on a typewriter when I was nine. I don't write for money. I write for the juice, the buzz, as Stephen King says.

Writing doesn't compute because it's inefficient. It takes way too long. Not many make much money at it. I torture myself when I write, and when I'm not writing, I feel less than whole.

But who cares. I like the jobs I have because they are subversive and different and bring me much joy. I don't need to explain it, or justify it, or make sense of it. Most days it doesn't compute, and I like it that way.

The work is slow. Most days you don't see instant results. But here I am. Doing the thing that doesn't compute to most.

I'm a Christian, and that doesn't compute either. I follow Jesus of Nazareth, who lived, died, and rose again 2,000 years ago, and is alive today. That's the point. Maybe all the ways we try to make life compute are our downfall. We're taking the wide road when the narrow one is much better. Maybe the less-computing road is where the buzz is found.

Our culture loves to remind us how far behind we are. How alone we are. And how what we do for work, or how we spend our days, is the wrong path.

I don't know if I'll ever fully live up to Berry's advice. Most days I still chase what computes. But every so often I get up and do the other thing — write for no reason, love someone who hasn't earned it, believe in a God who doesn't make sense — and those are the days I feel most alive. That's the grace Berry was pointing to.

I'd like more of those days.