Manifesto: The Mad Preacher's Call for Community

In the summer of 2006 I was 21 years old and standing on the edge of a field where the Community Supported Agriculture program I worked for grew our organic vegetables. Our farm manager, an eager and earnest young woman not much older than I, read Manifesto: A Mad Farmer’s Liberation Front to us before we started our work for the day. She wanted us, summer workers who just wanted a decent job, to feel a deep connection to the food we were growing, the land around us, and the crusty old republican farmers we sold next to at the St. Joseph Farmers Market. I loved the poem, instantly, and because this was a time before I even had a computer, to say nothing of a smartphone, after work I bicycled to the library, copied it out, and hung it on the refrigerator in my apartment. 

It has hung on many refrigerators in many apartments since then. I have carried the phrase “So, friends, every day do something that won’t compute.” in my heart for nearly 20 years. 

The poem hits differently now at 40 than it did at 21. Quick profits, annual raises, and vacations with pay sometimes seem desperately out of reach for my working class husband and me. If there is a window in my head, people probably see my wishing for a vast inheritance from some long estranged family member I have never heard of. Working class folks  work very hard to simply maintain a standard of living that my parents–also working class people–endured for a few years in their early 20s.

For my fellow working class folks and Millennials, our lives and the cards in their heads are probably very similar. We’ve been offered a raw economic deal, social support systems that are, frankly, laughable, and wave after wave of seemingly unprecedented world events. Much of Berry’s advice: to invest in the millennium, praise the slow growth of things, and take time to breathe in the holiness of the world around us  are trampled under the day to day grind of student debt, stagnant wages, inflation, and a dying planet. 

So why do I continue to hang this poem on my refrigerator? Better yet, why do I continue to carry it in my heart? 

I have worked for almost twenty years in community nonprofits and I spend a lot of time listening to stories of women who have endured horrific violence, children in poverty, and folks struggling with addiction. I have, on occasion, hidden in an office supply closet to cry. The longer I have spent in nonprofit the less time I have spent crying in the supply closets because of the stories themselves. I spend more time crying over the cruelty of generals and politicos Berry talks about and wealthy tax dodgers who are unnamed and the middle class folks who simply do not care because they have achieved a comfortable job and a single family home. It is heartrending and exhausting. 

I get told often that my response to things is always overblown. My tears are the reaction of ADHD overwhelm or life as an empath or the kind of personality that leads one to become a chaplain, but I think that when we say those things to ourselves and one another  we are simply falling into the very thing that Berry is cautioning us against–we have become predictable, ready to die for profit, ready to accept suffering. We have forgotten to “do something that won’t compute.” When we fall into the trap of never having enough spoons, or being too busy running the kids to soccer practice, or needing to veg out in front of whatever bingable show we’re currently watching we are hiding behind things to keep from engaging with our emotions,  our friends,  and our families. 

What profits can we expect from that sort of a life? Are they worth prophesying? 

Beloveds, I am not asking us to run ourselves ragged or become burned out trying to fix this bloody and broken world. Our economic system is slowly grinding us all to dust and yes, occasionally we do need to just get the kids where they’re going and have a few quiet moments before bed. But this is not always the case.* 

In fact I think it rarely is. Sometimes we are simply stuck in our own inertia. And I am there too. I understand the lure of scrolling tiktok and half watching a tv show, but let us consider–could we not use that time to do something that won’t compute? 

You’ve heard me preach before on the corporal works of mercy, but today I am not even asking us to take on anything that big. I am asking you to ask a trusted friend to watch your kids for a few hours while you go on a date with a spouse. To say to a family member “I am really overwhelmed this week, could you bring by dinner and I’ll bring you something next week?” 

And for those of us whose lives are not currently on fire or even currently very hectic to say yes to those requests–or to do something that will not compute. Walk the picket line with the currently striking City Park Workers, take some mail to the post office for your elderly neighbor, do a very un-Minnesotan thing and invite someone from church you do not know very well to your house for coffee. Yes, to your house, not the neighborhood coffee shop. 

Perhaps I am pushing us a bit with that last one, but beloveds, I am asking you to do these things because what else can we do in this broken world? Some of us are activists and organizers and I applaud you for that work, but we are not all cut out for it. To borrow a concept from Christianity there are many gifts but the same spirit. There are many ways to live a life that will not compute. 

And when we find those ways and break free from bingable shows and snackable media, when we begin to live lives that do not compute, something powerful happens. We can be joy despite knowing  all the facts about our economy, our political system, and our world. Joy is a powerful thing–when was the last time you felt joyful? Really, think about it. I don’t know when the last time was for me. 

My husband has teasingly called me a bit of an egghead. I spend a lot of time thinking about joy and suffering and what they mean theologically and socially. I spend a lot of time thinking about the implications of joy–that it is transformative, leads to public action, and is a radical middle finger to a world that is trying to return us to dust. 

I spend a lot of time thinking about joy and living a life that will not compute, and less time actually doing those things. When I’m not watching The Sopranos for the fourth time and  mindlessly opening and closing apps on my phone, I spend a lot of time pushing joy away from me because there is still so much to do. There is always another grant to be written, another dish to be washed, another reminder of a world coming apart at its seams. I will be joyful later, when I have fully lived a life that invests in millennium and takes care of others and only eat organic produce raised within a hundred mile radius of where I live. 

Beloveds, I have been very inattentive. 

In an attempt to live a life in line with my ethics, to love people who do not deserve it, and serve a God  whose existence I am frankly very iffy about, I have forgotten to reap the fruits of such a life. I have forgotten that this is my one chance–to live in this world and love it and its people and the God who maybe created it all. I have forgotten the pleasure of standing on the edge of a field and listening to a poem, and feeling it overwhelm me with emotion. 

I do not know what awaits us when we leave this world. What I do know is that this is our one chance to experience joy as ourselves, in this beautiful and broken world and not in an eternity we cannot even begin to fathom. We must take this opportunity. Our lives depend on it. Our community depends on it. Perhaps, even the world depends on it. 

Beloveds, may we live lives that will not compute and may we experience the joy that those lives bring us. 

Let it be so, and amen.  

30x30 #1 Run a Ragnar

A little over a week ago, I ran a 12 person, 205 mile, 30 hour relay race.

Ragnar Napa Valley was really what drove me to write my 30x30 list. It was going to be the crowning jewel of the list, the capstone to everything I did.

Yeah, the list is only about one third finished. 

I've checked off some big things that I haven't blogged about because, well, because I haven't blogged about them. I saw Hamlet live. I directed a 5K. I gave away my copies of books that changed my life and I accomplished random acts of kindness (normally in the form of baked goods). I'm giving myself until January (when I wrote my list last year) to finish the rest of it. There are things that are unlikely to happen (Century Ride, duathlon) and things I'm really looking forward to doing (best friend road trip to South Dakota, visiting the World's Largest Ball of Twine Made by One Man, hearing the Minnesota Orchestra in Orchestra Hall). 

But Ragnar was really it for me. 

One of the biggest things I wanted to do with the 30x30 list was pick things that were fun, challenging, or places where I could grow. 

Ragnar was all of those things for me. 

There are a lot of things in my life right now that are challenging my ability to write, and write well, because the sheer enormity of the experience or the emotions is hard to capture. So here's Ragnar, in brief. I learned what it means to be a team captain. I ran across the Golden Gate Bridge (Bucket List Achievement Unlocked!). I relied on strangers and watched as they turned from people I met on a San Francisco street to teammates I was excited to see at the exchanges. I found out that I'm tougher and stronger than I knew. I discovered what it means to have someone at home say "I've missed you" and mean it.

More than any of those things, though, Ragnar reminded me that I have a home.

Let me back up. For months now, I've been looking at job postings in other places. I've had the itch to move, mainly because I've rarely stayed put for this long. I was anxious and getting ready to bail, because if I didn't bail, I'd never be happy.

The dumbest part about that whole thought process?

I was happy.

Not annoyingly, disgustingly, ridiculously happy, but just happy. Content. Pleased with the direction my life was going. So, of course I had to move. Because it was possible that annoying, disgusting, ridiculous happiness was waiting for me at some other point of longitude and latitude.

Trust me, I know.

After a lot of long conversations with Kerry, I managed to calm down and resign the lease on my apartment. I told myself I would give this place another year and I was going to San Francisco in a few weeks, a city I love and a place where I've considered moving many, many times. It would be enough to get the travel bug out of my system and I could find out if my love affair with the West Coast was still a thing.

So I booked plane tickets and Air BnB rooms. I bought and broke in new running shoes and made a Wonder Woman costume. I counted down days and racked up miles. I argued with my running partner and listened while he sang me Justin Timberlake. I dreamed of Golden Gate Park and seafood.

And, meanwhile, in my real life, I got an amazing performance review at work. I met someone. I went to birthday parties and had long heart-to-hearts with my best friend. I made art for my walls and unpacked the last of my boxes.

When I landed in San Francisco the city was everything I remembered, everything I loved (a little hotter and dryer, no doubt). And I wandered Golden Gate Park and went to Muir Woods and walked next to the ocean and ate seafood. I ran Ragnar.

It was amazing.

And the whole time I was there, the Midwest poured out love and support via phone calls, texts, emails, and Facebook. I received a "kick Ragnar's ass" gift that made me melt. My Midwestern teammates, used to my emotional reactions to things, rubbed my back and insisted the team stop for chocolate milk at the end of my long run.

While I ran along the Golden Gate bridge and through Napa's rolling vineyards, I reveled in their beauty and the ability to do this difficult thing and be supported by people who love me. I kept myself going by thinking of all the people back in Middle America who were cheering me on. I made it up those final hills thinking about my job and how much I love it (also about how I will be a prairie runner FOR LIFE).  When I watched my running partner finish his final leg, I got excited about all the races and trips we have in store for us.

If Ragnar made me realize that I'm stronger and tougher than I thought, California forced me to realize that the Midwest made me that way.

Put another way, I love you, Minnesota.

Or, another way, see you next year, Great River.

Midwestern Girl

"Today," I say, pausing to take a bite out of my corndog, "is everything I wanted it to be."

"You really are a Midwestern girl at heart, aren't you?"

"What the hell does that even mean?"

We're walking around the Minnesota State Fair. I'm happily eating a corndog and drinking lemonade, on my way to see the butter sculptures of Princess Kay of the Milky Way. I've been relentlessly, ridiculously cheerful the entire time we've been here, no small feat considering I've spent most of the past week really down.

"For all your love of big coastal cities, for as much as you talk about the West Coast in particular, you're just so damn Midwestern."

"Yeah. Again. What does that mean?"

We detour into the Horticulture building so I can talk to the beekeepers and see if I can identify the queen in the display hives. I charm the beekeepers with equal parts erudite questions about bees and hives and sheer, unadulterated enthusiasm. When we get to the crop art section of the building, I literally clap my hands and jump up and down when we see a picture of Nikola Tesla made out of grain.

"That's what I mean." He answers my question from half an hour earlier.

"Exuberance is the antithesis of Midwestern." I retort.

"Nah. That's not what I mean. I mean, well, a lot of things. Mainly that when you love something, it's unironic and intense and maybe just a little bit weird. And that you love, well, Midwestern things. Corndogs. Lemonade. The sound of Canadian geese migrating. Scott Fitzgerald. Winter."

"I honestly don't know if I've been complimented or insulted, but if you really want to see me love something, we should go get some cheese curds."

We go for cheese curds. We see the Butter Princesses. We talk and laugh and get stopped by an impromptu parade and listen to a marching band arrangement of Fireworks, which prompts a long, funny story. We marvel at the paddlefish in the DNR exhibit. We eventually say goodbye and he heads one way to his moped and I walk to the transit hub and board a bus home, ruminating on something Fitzgerald wrote in Gatsby (have I mentioned how it's my favorite book?). Nick Carraway, reflecting on the summer and Gatsby writes:

I see now that this has been a story of the West, after all--Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life.

The quote's been rattling around my brain for most of the summer. Time during which my private writing has consisted of me muttering about being discontent, distracted, and dissatisfied. There was nothing concrete to complain about, just a vague sense that settling here in the Twin Cities was, well, settling. That I've never done anything or been anywhere. Prior to now I've never lived anywhere for longer than nine months without actively scheming to go somewhere new and try something different and (trust me, I know how batshit crazy this sounds) spending this much time without being dissatisfied is making me dissatisfied. I spend a lot of time wondering about Gatsby and Nick and Daisy's subtle unadaptabilty to Eastern life, and wonder if I would be the same.

The discontent is something that I only discuss with Kerry. I spend an entire Sunday afternoon spilling my guts about how I'm worried I'm settling and that I've never done anything. My every instinct is to bolt, to pull up my stakes and head off to Boston or Seattle. When my landlord slides my lease for the next year underneath my door, I run for a paper bag. Kerry reminds me, gently (in the way of really lovely friends) that perhaps I've spent too long pulling up my roots, that staying is the uncomfortable, difficult thing for me.

So it's more likely I'll learn something if I do. 

My 20s have been about bolting, about learning to leave bad relationships, bad jobs, bad cities. Those lessons have, literally, saved my life. However, they also made me terrified, well, of things being right. I spent most of my 20s unhappy, either as a result of other people (aforementioned bad relationships) or because I was slowly going crazy. Happiness still feels a bit like walking on ice at the end of March. I'm reasonably certain that it'll support me, but it every creak and groan leaves me anxiously counting the steps until I get to the shoreline. 

I get off my bus a few blocks from the Mississippi and take the long way home, thinking about what, if anything, it means that I loved the Fair unironically. That I look forward to fresh squeezed lemonade and long, lazy summer afternoons on the boat. That I can't wait for autumn and anticipate winter with the kind of eagerness that would horrify my fellow Minnesotans (still a little shell-shocked from three Polar Vortexes).

Maybe it means I would be subtly unsuited for life on the coasts. Perhaps it doesn't mean anything. But for the time being, I'm going to trust that it means that I should be content to be content, and learn to trust the ice under my feet. 

And eat more cheese curds. It definitely means eat more cheese curds. 

Say That

My older brother is laughing so hard he sounds like he's choking.

Our family has a strong aversion to talking on the phone, so we don't talk to one another often, but I always enjoy myself when we do catch up. He's the only member of my family I allow myself to be bitchy and sarcastic around. He has a real capacity to make me feel less like the crazy black sheep of the family and more like . . . I don't know, but I always feel better after we've had a conversation. 

I've just let fly with the most sarcastic thing I've said all week, the sort of thing that I would never ever say around another member of my family, the kind of thing that might actually give me pause if I let it slip in mixed company. 

"Just do it," he eventually manages to spit out. "Just once, say that." 

***

I don't like going back to Southeastern Wisconsin. 

I love the state, I love my family, I just don't like making the trip back to Mom and Dad's house. It's a long, tedious drive, and when I get there my folks are inevitably working or getting ready for a major holiday or doing something around the house and I don't get to see them or we end up arguing because we're all holifrazzled. Any friends I had in the area have either moved away or have kids of their own now. I hate, with the heat of a supernova, going for runs in the country. 

I much prefer when they make a trip to Minnesota or we meet one another at the cabin. I like when I can show them the city I'm living in, introduce them to my friends, and generally demonstrate that I'm a successful, happy adult. 

When I go back to their house I become . . . unimpressive. I forget that I am a successful, happy adult and revert back to the quiet, polite, painfully withdrawn kid I used to be. 

***

"That . . . was brutal. Efficient, well conceived, well executed. If you don't mind, I'm just going to go bleed out in the corner." 

One of the things I love and appreciate most about the people I am close to is the fact that I don't feel like I have to pull any punches. The above was someone's response to a (apparently) particularly well-aimed verbal cut. I am momentarily chagrined, afraid that this time I really did let my sarcasm and love of protracted verbal duels get the better of me.

When he assures me that No, really, it was fine. Your ability to skewer people is actually rather impressive it occurs to me that this moment is emblematic of my close relationships, of the reasons I have chosen to care about the people I care about. 

***

"So, Kelly, anyone special in your life?" 

From the time I get south of Madison until the time I cross the border back into Minnesota, I am asked this question approximately 532 times. 

The family members who ask it are, I think, well-meaning enough. But it's one of only two questions they ask. It's never "I heard you're sitting your comprehensive exams, what's that like?" or "You mother told me you're training for a twenty-four hour relay race, what made you decide to do that?" or even "Are you going to catch a Brewers game while you're in town?" Nope. It's invariably: "Is there anyone special in your life?" or, equally frustrating, "When are you going to settle down and start a family?" 

Inevitably my answers are "No" and "Not anytime soon" when I really want to respond with: "Well, I just got an IUD, so I wouldn't count on a baby shower invite anytime soon." 

It's the kind of smartass reply I wouldn't hesitate to make to my friends or my older brother, but it's something I couldn't shouldn't say in front of my extended family. It's the reason I hate going back to Mom and Dad's. I rail constantly about how much I hate being buttoned up and I'm never a stiffer, more guarded, more repressed version of myself than when I'm back in Southeastern Wisconsin. 

The funny, smart, mildly crazy girl who blogs about her sex life and can reduce a grown man to tears with a carefully aimed coup de grace? 

She's in the corner grinding her teeth, getting drunk, and tapping her foot impatiently. For years I've stuck her back in that corner and told her to just sit down and be nice. 

She's the one my older brother is encouraging me to let out of corner, to finally introduce to my extended family. 

And for once, I'm actually considering it. 

Spittin' Image

"Daddy, what are you doing this weekend?"

I'm nineteen, home for one of my college breaks. My mother is insisting that I put on a dress and high heels and accompany her to the wedding shower of a distant relation. I'm in my marriageisashamforceduponusbythepatriarchy phase of my life (also the phase of my life where I would rather die than wear a dress. Or heels.) and I'm trying to beg off the event.

"I'm going to go shoot my bow."  My father is nothing if not to the point.

"Can I please, please, please, please, please come with you?"

He just laughs.

"I should have been born a boy." I grumble.

***

Female rights of passage make me uncomfortable. 

A few years ago a close female friend of mine got married. Through some sort of clerical error or the intervention of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, I managed to avoid invitations to every single one of her wedding showers. It's not that I don't love her or that I wasn't thrilled she was getting married. I do and I was. I've just never been terribly comfortable in large groups of women. 

Well, large groups of mothers at anyrate. 

***

"C'mon, Kel, we're going to miss the window!" 

I go running onetwothree down the steps to the lake, step off the pier into the boat, and drop the cooler down next to my seat. 

"What'd you bring me?" Dad starts the motor on the boat and we're off before either of my brothers can object. 

I grin at him. "Night crawlers. And PBR."

"Did you get a . . ."

"Fishing license? You betcha."

"That's my girl."

***

"I regularly apologize to my mother for the period of my life between eleven and nineteen."

"Why?"

"We didn't get along great."

"How were things with your dad then? I mean, I can't imagine he found having a nerdy, klutzy, hormonal daughter super easy." 

"You know. They were actually all right." I pause. "I used to be a little bit of a Daddy's Girl." 

The friend across from me actually does a spittake. When she manages to cough the coffee out of her lungs she chokes out: 

"Used to be?"

***

"Here, Kel. Open this one." My father is beaming. He loves Christmas, especially Christmas morning, before Mom starts her yearly shouting sessions about the turkey and church and ohmygodcompany. Despite my bad attitude (I'm eighteen and have just broken up with my first boyfriend and am so not in the mood for Christmas) I smile at him. 

I take the package from him, staggering a little bit. "I picked it out for you myself!" He looks so happy and excited that it's infectious. I rip off the brightly colored wrapping paper and find . . .

Hubcaps. 

"Now your car won't look quite so old!" He snatches them out of my hands. 

"I'm going to go put them on for you right now." 

***

"Why do things like this make you so uncomfortable?" 

I'm standing outside a wedding shower, taking deep breaths and trying to talk myself back into going inside when a friend appears at my elbow with a glass of champagne. 

I shrug. "I don't have any sisters. Mom would take me to these kinds of things and I was always the kinda awkward girl in the corner." I take a sip. "I don't like to coo over baby things. I think watching people open presents is an uncomfortable waste of an afternoon." 

She smiles at me over her champagne glass. "You remind me a lot of your dad."

"Huh?" 

"You look just like your mom. I mean, just like her. But the first time I met your father and watched the way you interact with one another and with your mom and with the other people in the room all I could think was "Jesus. They are the spittin' image of one another." 

"That," I say, starting to tear up a little, "is the nicest thing you've ever said to me."

She smiles. "We should probably go back inside."

"Shit." I drain my glass and she laughs.

"See what I mean? Just like your pops."