My daughter runs a small farm in Vermont. In early spring, even while the snow is still
on the ground, her rickety old front porch turns into a plant nursery as big
wooden planks are attached to the walls so flats of vegetable starts can find
their place in the sun. Tenderly she
presses seeds into the soil of each small container. With time and patience, each cup cradles a
longing for bountiful harvest. Each seed,
a gift of life that will, within the dance of sun and soil, take root and offer
its fruit to nourish her world. If you
pay attention, it is a moment filled with the essence of life.
There is however, a lot of pressure to get things
going. A good quick start will stock the
roadside farm stand, fill CSA boxes for delivery, and create the bounty needed
to survive as last year’s canned goods run thin. There is a mountain of pressure to
hurry. And yet, before she places the vegetable
starts, she pauses and takes a deep breath of time to write some words of
longing, words of hope, words of trust, onto each wooden plank that will hold
each start. Words that are a thanksgiving
for the relationship that is about to unfold. Poetic words that will linger
beneath each small plant start soon to rest on a wooden plank.
Those words…
They are the soul beneath the soil. These are simple words that entrust one life to another. I believe this is a way to construct meaning
for our time. It is the speaking of
language that binds us to the very gift of life wherever we find it.
When I was growing up, I would stand in some
big church and speak words that were crafted to construct a metaphysical world
that seemed so distant from the one in which I lived. Words to connect me to some heavenly homeland.
Today, my daughter scratches language beneath the very soil that nourishes her
family. This is the soul beneath the
soil.
My guess is, that Jesus was probably doing something similar
until organized religion got in the way.
He spoke a poetic language written beneath the lives of the famer, the beggar,
the widow, the fisherfolk, the wedding.
And yet, to this day, church people continue to use a strange and
distant theological code language that provides some assurance that we have
mastered a world beyond our own. Was Jesus
really describing a metaphysical world, or helping us understand the one in
which we live? With the growing realization of our deep and abiding
interconnectedness to the natural world, religion might do well to construct a poetry
of the soul that can help us find ourselves within the wonder, the pain, the
grace and the mystery of the life that we live; To find our soul beneath the
soil.
When the seedlings grow strong enough to enter the furrowed
rows of rich soil on my daughter’s farm, those heavy planks get thrown behind
the garage until next year. Over the next
long cold winter, the words will slowly dissolve beneath the falling snow. Come spring, a new poem will find its way
onto a wooden plank. The circle of life
will fulfill its promise and my daughter will pause to mark her family’s place
within the dance. It is the language of
the soul that each of us writes beneath the gift of life.
