I am grateful to Huffington Post Live and my friend Alyona for having me on to speak about my decision to become a war tax resister.
Faith
Wendell Berry: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
As we struggle with our personal and daily trials and difficulties, while wrenching and stumbling from the constant, unremitting horrors of the world as they keep stride with our lives through the tv and computer screens in every room we enter, take that much needed breath, perhaps permit yourself the luxury of a tear, and, for as many moments as you can allow, think of what your life, your world, your kingdom, mad with your own visions, wishes and loves, would be like. Now, go build it and live there.
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 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 sequoyias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant.
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 easy in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts
As soon as the generals and politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trial, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.
Brief Thought on Faith
A very kind stranger inquired about my faith and my loss of it. My response to her was something I wanted to share, as that is the intent of this blog and it contains far too little of that kind of discussion. Please feel free to share your thoughts, your experiences or where you are with your faith.
I lost my faith a long time ago. In college, over twenty years ago. It was winter time. I think 1993. Of course it was complicated why I lost my faith, but I think if I had to summarize it, it was because what I saw of the world, of institutions and of people, did not measure up to what I believed my faith encompassed and required.
I saw the hypocrisy of organized religion and the hypocrisy of the actions of the religious. I saw that hypocrisy in myself too. I viewed and experienced my faith primarily through the structures of organized religion and found such a relationship to be restrictive and negative. Organized religion ran hard against the realities of life, both the joys and the sorrows, and so I rejected religion and chose life. I have to admit James Joyce had quite an influence on me :).
But now, after living nearly two decades without faith, living a full life, with many joys and much suffering, particularly witnessing the suffering of others, I am finding that my rejection of my faith was wrong. I am certainly anti-institution and I see quite clearly the hypocrisy of the religious, but I am now understanding the teachings of Jesus and Buddha to be individual teachings and through that I am discovering and enjoying an intimate and personal relationship with the Father, as well as an appreciation and desire for the path to Enlightenment.
The wars had nothing to do with the loss of my faith, as I had lost it over a decade before. The wars did further strangle my soul and they ensured the impossibility within my mind of any connection to or any thought of the spiritual or to Truth (big “T” truth). With healing and with recovery, through the help of many: friends, family and strangers; professional health care providers, fellow veterans and kind strangers; I have come back to faith.
Or maybe, I haven’t. Maybe I have come to understand something I never did, something I never truly understood or experienced. That faith, that understanding and acceptance of something greater than you and this world, exists as a personal relationship not bound or ruled by man-made dictates or organizations.
What I do know is that my life is better with faith and that I have a purpose in my life as a result of my suffering, as a result of these wars, rather than in spite of them.
Thank you to Angela for her question and for prompting me to reflect.
Matthew Hoh 