Something that Won't Compute

Today was a good day, but it was one where I felt a little needy.A little lonely, a little clingy, a little bit just staring off into space...  My friend, James, can tell you how I am on those days. I used to go over to his place after work on the weekends and be miserable until he fed me chocolate-covered espresso beans and made me laugh. Today there was no real reason to miss home. Just one of those days when I get a little lonely.

I actually spent most of the day with people. My friend and colleague, Mark, and I spent the morning together. We got coffee and breakfast at a great little place near his house, and then we sat in his living room and planned for the future and prayed together. I returned home to eat lunch with my host family and then worked on expense reports for the month of January (I have to file all my costs at the office). Then I went to Gordon and Peggy's house for a spontaneous meeting to discuss our Cohort trip to Guatemala. I ended up leaving around 5, hung out with the family, and then had the house to myself after they went to church.

On lonely days, it's easy to want to distract myself, to shy away from the feeling of missing something or someone. But today I didn't. Instead, I read this:

Love the quick profit, the annual raise, vacation with pay.
Want more of everything 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 hey 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...
(First half of "Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front" by Wendell Berry)

Today, instead of wishing to go home where the loneliness sticks less often (but still hits, nonetheless), I decorated my home. I put up pictures and verses on my walls. I moved into my room really and truly. I prayed, and sat with my feelings. Logically, this is something that does not compute. But it was good. It was, perhaps, a practice in resurrection, as Wendell Berry ends his "Manifesto."