Time for a reboot.
I’ve been using that term a lot lately for different things. It seems to just be synonymous with pruning and cutting things out of life. Taking things to their simplest state again. Because of that, I’ve sort of been pondering something that I affectionately call “Wendell Berry-ing it.” Wendell Berry is someone that I’m challenged and inspired by. Berry is a prophetic-type guy: a farmer, an advocate for peace, activist with much to say about war, the environment, the economy and society in general, he’s a novellist and poet, and he doesn’t own a computer and lives an Agrarian lifestyle. This outspoken voice resonates in my imagination. But to be honest, I’m learning to look at ‘heroes’ as people that I try to imitate; someone who is a model or an ideal. Don’t get me wrong, Berry is a rockstar, I respect Berry, and I love reading his stuff here and there, but here’s the thing: I believe that it is unattainable for me to live completely like him with an Agrarian reality. I’m challenged by it, but I don’t imitate him really. Sometimes I agree with him, but sometimes not. Honestly, I kind of feel like Owen Wilson’s character in the movie Zoolander (didn’t think I’d be saying that today, haha), who in an interview said, “Sting would be another person who’s a hero. The music he’s created over the years, I don’t really listen to it, but the fact that he’s making it, I respect that.” But I use my term “Wendell Berry-ing it” as an expression that I use to say that I’m ready to swing toward my anti-technology side. Recenter on my relation to technology. To remember that life isn’t in a box of gigabytes, and to once again get dirt under the fingernails, feel the sun, hear the wind, etc. I think Thomas Merton captured this well when he wrote,
Technology can elevate and improve man’s life only on one condition: that it remains subservient to his real interests; that it respects his true being; that it remembers that the origin and goal of all being is in God. But when technology merely takes over all being for its own purposes, merely exploits and uses up all things in the pursuit of its own ends, and makes everything, including man himself, subservient to its processes, then it degrades man, despoils the world, ravages life, and leads to ruin” (1968, p. 253).
Spring is a great time to stop the madness. Get outside. Talk to God. Contemplate. Listen to your life. Hear Matthew 11:28-30 again, with fresh ears…maybe in the way The Message puts it:
“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”