A Metanoia Manifesto II | Poem
Values cobbled into a way of life. Written in a Holy Hour before a friends' wedding.
May 6th 2024
A Metanoia Manifesto II
1 Maintain your peace with fanaticism
Discern away the noise, limit the rivers flowing into the mind.
It turns out you don’t need any of it and people will tell you the important news.
Show up to the spiritual life, everyday, all of your days.
You will never regret exposing the state of your soul to God.
This is sunlight to the skin and your only hope of a fruitful life.
Don’t ever go it alone. You can’t manage this garden if you can’t discern the weeds.
Drink deep of His presence. Slow down enough to.
Light stress up with a holy fire. Hold anxious thoughts in a steady hand.
Breathe deeply in the spoken things and out the resentments.
Forgive as soon as you realise you are clenching your fists.
2 Follow the calling
Notice what lights you up, what calls you forth into God’s big, beautiful world, its people in need and its work to be done.
Remember that desire is good and holy and so, deep down, are you.
Spend your life in the outer circle, creating because it’s good for the soul.
Be an undistracted and non-anxious presence.
Give people your full attention, this transforms everything. Listen.
Serve the poor. This keeps your problems in perspective and you close to Jesus.
Love your neighbour, love the difficult people, love and forgive yourself, especially your younger self.
Chase the life-giving. Hunt your full potential.
3 Love your family
Help your parents to age, do the manual work.
Be the son they need now and into the future.
Have the courage to ask hard questions and listen.
Don’t just joke about death, someone may need more than that.
Love your siblings and don’t take their love for granted.
Be a fun uncle. That’s not hard, but it takes maintaining your peace (see point 1).
Be there for their parents. They are always on, so love them most intentionally.
Let your love be a doing word. Fix things and learn how to fix things.
Get in the garden and the kitchen and the attic.
Talk of life and God and prayer, chat the future through together.
Play games because life got more serious.
Lean on each other and lean on grace.
Bear fruit and reforest the world together.
(If you enjoyed this one, go read its inspiration ‘Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front’ by Wendell Berry)
Thanks for reading - Is
“Forgive as soon as you realise you are clenching your fists.” Ooof. What a convicting line.
I love this so much, especially part 1. I want to restack a quote from this but can’t! I think you need to alter some of your setting so I can quote you :)