Blessing, Breaking, and Giving

Matthew 14:13-21

It is appropriate, I think, that our text for this week falls on the third day of August, a time of year when the garden is practically bursting at the seams with vegetables. I spent the week husking and freezing sweet corn, pulling carrots and onions, picking cucumbers and tomatoes, digging potatoes, harvesting chokecherries from a secret roadside bush, and trying to keep the entire bounty from going south on me until I could get it into Ball jars or freezer bags. It occurred to me on Wednesday that I had not had the need, nor the desire, to make a trip to the grocery store. I was getting by nicely on what the earth and a little faith and sweat were now beginning to provide.

This summer marks the fifteenth consecutive year that I have participated in the harvest ritual of freezing or canning my own produce. People always ask if I do it to save money. I tell them that the practice is less economic in its intent than spiritual. When February comes along, there is nothing better than pulling a quart of green beans off the cupboard shelves and relishing the taste of a season gone by. More than this, it is a palpable reminder that in a global economy where one's sustenance and well-being have become dependent on a very impersonal exchange of currency, I can still participate in my own livelihood by growing food in my own back yard. So when August rolls around I have no trouble finding something to do. Though winter's cold may seem like some distant and unlikely reality, I am well aware that a journey of sorts lies ahead of me. Be prepared, as the old saying goes. There is nothing worse than finding yourself empty-handed and in need in some lonely, inhospitable place.

Nevertheless, there are times when we come up short. I can empathize with Jesus on the Sea of Galilee as he seeks refuge from the crowds to reflect on John's recent death at the hands of Herod Antipas (Matt. 14:1-12). Solitude and reflection at this crucial juncture in his ministry are what he craves; hungry crowds seeking yet another messianic miracle are what he gets. He has compassion on them, of course, and heals their sick, but coming on the heels of the news about John we get the sense that his heart and mind may have been just a little preoccupied. A darker journey now lay ahead of him.

We can imagine the sense of urgency he must have felt upon realizing that things now needed to change, and quickly. The disciples, who had up to this point spent much of their time knitting their brows over his confusing parables, were now going to be required to put their thoughts into action. The word now needed to become flesh in the hands of those to whom the Kingdom of God would soon be entrusted. In this lonely place by the Sea of Galilee, Jesus' command to his disciples becomes a harbinger of his post-resurrection charge to Peter on these very shores: "You feed my lambs." The Greek in Matthew's text is even more emphatic: "You yourselves give them something to eat" (14:16b).

In other words, "the show is over boys – now you need to do some work." Unwelcome news, especially for those who felt inadequate for the task, as evidenced by their response: "We have only fives loaves here and two fishes." Sure, things were grand when Jesus was the center of attention, when he was confounding the religious leaders with his parables, offering hope like some new Moses preaching from a mountain top, casting out demons, healing lepers. And there must have also been some small measure of glamour involved with being one of his inner circle, those to whom he offered the insights of his bewildering teachings. But now, as Jesus began to contemplate the inevitability of his destiny in Jerusalem and the need to perpetuate his vision, he was asking for something new. It was time for the disciples to become apostles, for the passive listeners of the Word to become doers of the Word, and this by following Jesus' principal example: "…taking the five loaves and two fish he looked up to heaven, and blessed, and broke and gave the loaves to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds" (Matt. 14:19b). Blessing, breaking, and giving: the three watchwords of the Kingdom.

Of course, we have to stumble over the obvious question posed by so many in our scientific age who feel the need to chase mystery out of every corner: "How did he do it? How did Jesus take a limited quantity of food and compound it to such an extent that twelve baskets were needed to collect the leftovers?" Commentators throughout the ages have settled on three possible answers. First, the literal approach: Jesus was God and could therefore create whatever he desired, ex nihilo. Case closed. Second, the mystical interpretation: the sustenance that was received must be understood as spiritual nourishment. Though each person could enjoy only the slightest morsel, it was nevertheless enough to satisfy every soul present, coming as it did from the hands of Jesus himself. Once the soul is satisfied, the body is also sated. Though one or both of these explanations seem plausible to many Christians, they tend to rely on the supernatural in a way that only leaves me with more unanswered questions. Therefore, this week I have been given to reflect on a third possibility, which has led me also to consider the importance of blessing, breaking, and giving as three essential acts of faith that mark the presence of the Kingdom of God.

In his commentary on Matthew, Douglas R.A. Hare summarizes succinctly what may have happened in this lonely place: as Jesus offered his modest portions of bread and fish to the crowd, "people were so moved by [his] generosity… that they brought forth the food they had hidden in their clothing or travel pouches, and it was discovered that, by sharing, there was sufficient for all" (Interpretation: Matthew [Louisville: John Knox Press, 1993] 165). Hare goes on to say, however, that because it is impossible to know exactly what experience underlies this story we are best advised to stick to the theological intent of the text. But given what we know about Jesus' mission to proclaim the Kingdom of God as good news for both body and soul, this latter explanation seems to hold the most theological promise, for the real miracle that takes place here is not the multiplication of a few loaves and fishes, but the elimination of the barriers of selfishness that keep so many, then as now, wanting and in fear of the other. Sin tells us to hold on to our own and guard it as "mine"; grace, on the other hand, tells us to acknowledge God's blessing in our lives and adopt a new mantra: "what is mine is thine." In other words, what I have – little though it may be – can be broken and shared, all in acknowledgement of God's gracious presence in our lives. Blessing, breaking, and giving, then, become the three essential watchwords of the Kingdom, as well as an effective means for meeting the bodily needs of thousands.

As I reflected on this pericope over the last several days, I could not help but read it in light of an impending global crisis whose cause seems to be little else than the selfish desire of many of us First Worlders to hold on tightly to what we have, to safeguard what is "mine" at the expense of what should rightly be "thine." For several months now we have heard a series of half-baked explanations as to why food prices across the globe are on the rise, leaving over a billion people in the world's developing nations in a position of alarming food insecurity. Though drought in some of the rice-producing countries like Australia is a factor in a declining food supply, the main reason that many parents in the Two-Thirds World cannot afford to feed their children, according to a recent report released by the World Bank, is that there is less grain on the open market due to the increasing demand for bio-fuels. That's right – our need to drive what essentially amount to suburban assault vehicles has, in effect, trumped the rights of people in many parts of the world to meet their most basic food needs.

So to the reality of the mother in Chad who at this very moment is desperately trying to find the means to feed her children I offer – and primarily to those of us in the church who continue to believe that our First-World lifestyle needs no amending – the image of Jesus on the shore of the Sea of Galilee calling his disciples finally to stand up and become apostles, to stop listening passively and start living the good news actively. And the call is no different for those of us today who have been blessed with both the abundance of God's grace and the means to nourish our bodies without fear of want or contamination. But blessing is all but empty, as Jesus so clearly demonstrated in that lonely place, without the subsequent acts of breaking and giving, dividing and sharing. Grace must follow upon grace.

For us, feeding five thousand requires little in the way of divine intervention; a few lifestyle changes could easily free up the resources that could make scores of hungry families secure in their food needs. The real miracle lies in first eliminating the barriers of selfishness that keep us from seeing and affirming that, in the Kingdom of God that we presumably proclaim as our own, "what is mine is thine."

Mustard, Mustard, and More Mustard

Matthew 13:31-33

For the better part of thirty years I have been a die-hard vegetable gardener, and probably a little snootier about it than I should be. In my mind, flowers have always been a nice embellishment to the practical task of growing enough tomatoes, corn, carrots, and potatoes to keep me going well into November, but nothing more. So it was a bit of a surprise for many of my closest friends when a few years ago I decided to get into perennial flowers. Actually, the choice was pretty much made for me as I had just moved into a small house in town that did not afford the kind of space or sunlight I had been accustomed to in the country. I could still have my vegetables, of course, but they wouldn't be right out my backdoor as in previous seasons. My backyard attention turned to flowers.

Being a novice, I was not sure what to plant, so like any consumer gardener I hauled out the seed catalogs that I tend to keep lying around – visual therapy during the stark and barren winter months – and, feeling a little like a traitor to my true calling, turned to the flower section. I was immediately overwhelmed by the variety, of course, but also by the dynamics of knowing what to plant, where to place it in the garden – the border or the back – and then trying to figure out when every last species was going to bloom. I was no longer engaged in gardening, it seemed. I felt more like a concert master attempting to orchestrate some complex floral symphony through four months of sun and shade, rain and drought, heat and frost.

I was taken by one unique flower – Zebra Mallow (Malva sylvestris), an apparent relative of the hollyhock. Perhaps more than any other plant, this little peppermint-striped beauty has taught me not only a lot about perennial gardening, but also about one of Jesus' best known parables. When I first planted it two years ago I was under the mistaken impression that it would be popping its pretty little head through the soil at the same time and in the same place for years to come. But it was not to be. What I didn't realize was that this little gem – whose seed is certainly not as small as that of Jesus' mustard plant (Sinapis nigra) but probably as prolific – would in no time become the undisputed master of my backyard. Like Sinapis, it is a reseeding annual, and reseed it did. I now have Zebra Mallow growing just about everywhere it's not supposed to be: in the borders, in the grass, in the cracks of the sidewalk, even in my neighbor's yard! Try as I may, I cannot seem to set my little corner of creation in order on account of this hearty little space invader.

My guess is that many of Jesus' disciples, upon hearing the parable of the mustard seed, probably had a similar reaction when they realized that a gardener was deliberately sowing a tiny time bomb in his plot. Let me try to place it in a biological context; think mint, or bamboo, or kudzu. If you plant mustard, it's there to stay. That's about as close as we can come to the kind of response that someone "in the know" might have had to Jesus' allusion.

But there is much more to this parable that we cannot even begin to fathom. In the first place, we have become accustomed to hearing about the mustard seed in our own relatively comfortable contexts and assuming that it is a compelling and inspiring metaphor for our personal faith. After all, doesn't Jesus say it's the measure we need in order to move mountains (Matt. 17:20)? But if we stick exclusively to this approach we only arrive at a kind of "camp song theology" – you know, "it only takes a spark to get a fire going."

Though the parable of the mustard seed can be interpreted in this way, I think we fall far short of its original intent if we simply stop here and content ourselves with having received another facile nugget of spiritual wisdom. This is no aphorism; it does not belong in a Christian fortune cookie. On the contrary, this parable is perhaps one of Jesus' most radical sayings, and it is unfortunate that the church has allowed its fuller meaning to become obscured. Indeed, its highly political and revolutionary tone may have been one of the fundamental reasons for Jesus' eventual crucifixion at the hands of the Romans.

In Jesus' day, Jews would have been immediately struck by the fact that it is specifically a mustard seed that Jesus identifies as being introduced into a garden plot. Many of the Am ha Aretz, the people of the land, to whom Jesus directed his teachings would have no doubt known how invasive this species could be, but being observant Jews, they would more likely have been struck by the unorthodox nature of the act itself. In effect, it amounted to an offense against God's covenant with Israel. Sowing such a plant in the midst of a garden, which was designated exclusively for vegetables, would have been a clear violation of the law of diverse kinds:

You shall not let your animals breed with a different kind; you shall not sow your fields with two kinds of seed; nor shall you put on a garment made of two different materials (Lev. 19:19).

Though this statute seems ludicrous to most of us living in the twenty-first century, the intent of the proscription was to honor the order of creation and thereby faithfully revere the Creator who had deigned to choose Israel as God's people. So in offering this allusion Jesus appears to be making at least two important points.

First, the Kingdom of God, which has been inaugurated through Jesus' teaching and ministry, transcends in an unorthodox and even absurd way anything that a truly observant Jew might expect from the law. A new covenant has been introduced in which the disruption of the old order has begun. Mustard can now flourish alongside like species, just as Gentiles can be welcomed into the Jewish fold. Whereas in the past the will of God was made manifest in the law, now the mystery of God would be made known through the peculiar grace of God's Kingdom.

Second, this new covenant will undermine the former dominion – and especially the oppressive aspirations of the most obvious invasive species, the Roman Empire – in the same way that Sinapis nigra eventually comes to occupy a field of wheat or a patch of vegetables. Try as we may to contain it, in the end the work of the Kingdom has less to do with our initiative than with our cooperation in God's grace and Spirit. Yes, the mustard seed is an inspiring metaphor for what our individual faith might accomplish, but ultimately its real power lies in the ineffable love of God and the redemption of all creation.

Finally, I think it is important not to overlook another possible interpretation for this parable, one that has been brought to light in Bernard Brandon Scott's excellent book, Hear Then the Parable. It is difficult for us to know the varying allusions that the image of a mustard seed might have offered in first-century Palestine. We have seen how the people of the land probably had a very intimate relationship with this tiny seed, knowing that it could disrupt not only their agricultural but also their religious lives through its unchecked presence in a field. However, as Scott points out, mustard had another important function among both Jews and Gentiles in Jesus' time. As the Roman historian Pliny makes clear, the pungent taste of the mustard seed was often used for seasoning, and not least of all for medicinal purposes:

Pounded it is applied with vinegar to the bites of serpents and scorpion stings. It counteracts the poisons of fungi. For phlegm it is kept in the mouth until it melts, or is used as a gargle with hydromel. For toothache it is chewed…. It is very beneficial for all stomach troubles…. It clears the senses, and by the sneezing caused by it, the head; it relaxes the bowels; it promotes menstruation and urine (Pliny, Natural History, 20.87.236-237; in Scott, Hear Then the Parable, 380).

In other words, this apparently insignificant seed not only wreaks havoc on the order of creation, as many farmers could attest, it is also invaluable in curing many of the ills that beset us as mortal beings. How much more appealing to think about the spread of this invasive species, this metaphor for the Kingdom of God, as a reintroduction of health and healing into our world. So often, as I have lamented elsewhere (perhaps ad nauseum to some), we conceive of God's Kingdom as existing in some nether realm where "moth and rust do not destroy," some heavenly sphere far removed from the drudgery of our day-to-day existence. In so doing we too often overlook our true vocation as citizens of this new world order (God's Kingdom, that is) to be a healing presence here and now.

So this parable is no simplistic allusion to the miraculous growth of any old seed; it is about mustard, mustard, and more mustard. Yes, we can apply it to our personal lives, knowing that even the smallest measure of faith can move mountains. But more importantly, we need to begin acknowledging its significance for our social and political lives as well. The inauguration of God's kingdom has begun, and through the creator's grace it will soon come to its full disruptive fruition. In the meantime, we have two roles to play. First, we must in all things act as an equally disruptive presence in the midst of "the old order," "the way things are," the status quo. But perhaps our greatest calling is to be what mustard had long been in the Mediterranean Basin of the first century CE, a healing presence. Maybe this was the original reason for the gardener sowing this plant in the first place. If so, how much more so should we allow ourselves to be cast as seeds of shalom into a broken world?

I have grown tired of trying to rid my garden, my yard, my sidewalk, and even my neighbor's lawn from the Zebra Mallow I so innocently planted just two years ago, and I know if I don't stay on top of the task I'll have more of the little beauties to contend with next spring. Mallow, mallow, and more mallow. But if nothing else, my experience has given me an insight into how Jesus' disciples must have reacted when they first heard that some foolish gardener was sowing that pesky mustard plant in the midst of his well-tended corner of creation. Ridiculous, they would have thought. Disaster. Certain ruin. Only later would they realize – and only a handful at that – that such is the folly of the Creator, bound by no clear covenantal logic, but intent all the same on sowing and harvesting the wisdom of the Kingdom.

Waiting for the Children of Godot

Romans 8:12-25

Lately I have been thinking about the absurdist play by Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot. Anyone who has seen or read it knows that the plot, along with the scenery on stage, is annoyingly spare. Two men, Vladimir and Estragon, wait beneath a single, sickly-looking tree for the arrival of Godot, a man (we presume he is male) about whom we know very little. As they pass the time, they become embroiled in a conversation, which soon becomes an argument, about the meaninglessness of human existence, and before long we realize that the lives of these men are marked by little more than sheer boredom and despair. The monotony is eventually broken by the introduction of a master and a slave, Pozzo and Lucky, the latter carrying a cumbersome suitcase that he never sets down, primarily because, apart from his master's command, he cannot begin to think for himself. These two clowns, however, offer little in the way of philosophical direction, and the audience is again left wanting.

The first act of the play concludes with a young boy arriving on the scene to inform Vladimir and Estragon that Godot will not be coming, whereupon the two decide it's time for them to leave. However, as the curtain falls, they are left in their same despairing position on their little hill under a barren tree. It appears they have no intention of departing. As the second act begins, the audience quickly realizes that a similar scene is about to unfold, with Godot's arrival as distant a reality as it had been when the play began.

Though Beckett never gave any clear indication as to what exactly he was trying to say in this work, many have concluded that it represents the plight of modern men and women, waiting in hope – a hope that keeps them afloat in a sea of absurdity – for someone, most likely God, who will never come. Godot never had any intention of coming. Indeed, we have no clear evidence that this off-stage character even exists.

So why has this depressing play been on my mind? I can assure you that it is not because I have fallen victim to all the chic atheistic writing that we have lately endured in our culture, books by Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris, for example. My interest is more subtle than this: I think the play provides a compelling metaphor, not for our human experience, but for the ecological condition of our planet and the fleeting hope that Christians might one day come to their senses and realize their moral responsibility to do something about it. In a way, the non-human others who inhabit our life-worlds are in a situation very much like that of Vladimir and Estragon, languishing beneath their barren tree, waiting for "the revelation of the children of God," as Paul puts it. But from the current perspective of creation, the present reality play might more fittingly be called Waiting for the Children of Godot.

The apostle Paul laid the foundation for a new way of understanding Christian repentance and redemption, but it is apparent – given our current ecological embarrassments – that we have not taken him entirely at his word. In his Epistle to the Romans he makes a curious allusion. Throughout the first seven chapters of the letter he admonishes the faithful of Rome to attend to what appear to be rather individualistic concerns: do not fall victim, he exhorts, to the temptations of idolatry (Rom. 1:18-32); recognize that all persons are guilty before God and deserving of judgment (2:1—3:20); affirm that the sinner’s justification, as the story of Abraham demonstrates, is not in works but through faith (3:21—5:11); believe in the efficacy of the atoning death of Christ (5:12); and be assured that no good resides in “the flesh” but only in “the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” (7:1—8:17). It is easy to assume from all of this that Paul’s primary focus is on personal piety pursued at the expense of the things of this world.

But then we are introduced to an image that seems at first to be an anomaly. The concern turns quickly away from the wretched condition of women and men to the certain hope, not of the individual exclusively, but of creation as a whole. “[T]he creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God …[when] creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God ” (Romans 8: 19, 22). Paul's subsequent allusion is even more explicit: the earth is like a woman "groaning in travail," in labor pains, waiting to give birth to this new redemptive reality. The only thing lacking, it would seem, is a faithful midwife.

Paul’s logic in this is easy to comprehend: if we agree that the entire created order fell as a result of one man’s disobedience, then we must necessarily assume that the redemption effected in the work of Christ, the Second Adam, is not merely a human affair but extends also to the natural world. Consequently, the works of sanctification that are performed in gratitude by each and every Christian must reach into the very earth of which we are a part. Indeed, creation is waiting with “eager longing” for this auspicious event – it is, in a manner of speaking, its birthright. If only we, who have been baptized into the life and death of the Second Adam, would once again claim our proper place in God's created order as a redemptive presence, then the world might once again praise God from the depths of its very being.

But a redemptive presence we are not – far from it. One wonders if part of the problem has been an implicit dualism that can also be found in Paul's writings. What are we to do with such statements, considered in the lectionary passages of the past few weeks, in which the flesh and the body – and, by extension, all of material existence – are disparaged as a stumbling block to the true life of the spirit? In light of this, is it any wonder that we prefer not to affirm our creation from the rich, vital earth itself and instead, when thinking of the natural world at all, focus on the lifeless dust to which we will inevitably return? If we persist in our implied assumption that "the earth equals death" – that "this world is not my home," as the old Appalachian hymn suggests – then it is only a matter of time before the curtain falls on a creation still waiting for the revelation of the "children of Godot."

This world, however, is our home, and despite some of Paul's apparent arguments to the contrary, our natural context is in fact good – very good. We are a part of this vital, green earth, not apart from it; therefore, our salvation must necessarily play a role in its redemption. When Paul assures the Corinthians that in Christ they have become a “new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17), he chooses his words carefully. Having been redeemed in Christ, they – and we – are not merely renewed persons – as many are prone to think in our highly individualistic society – but a transformed people living in place. The allegedly incidental face of creation that has lingered so long in the darkness, peering out with eager longing, must now be affirmed as a legitimate member of the Christian community and welcomed again into the fold. More to the point, our acts of sanctification, the gratitude we are called to show for God's grace in our lives, must extend to the very depths of the biotic communities in which we live. For this the creation waits with eager longing, not for the arrival of Godot, but for the final revelation of the children of God.

Preparing a Place

Matthew 13:1-9, 18-24

I have always held a special place in my heart for the Parable of the Sower, probably because my earliest childhood memories include vague images of tripping through our community garden in my toddler's shoes and "helping" two old men – "Doc" and Mr. Bliel – who seemed to be as rooted in the central Ohio soil as the Buckeye trees in the fields behind our house. It was the sixties then and Americans seemed more enamored of the fast and convenient meals that could be procured at the local Burger Boy than they were of growing and canning their own food, but thankfully providence allowed that I be placed in the hands of a couple of beer-drinking retired sailors who all but lived for the smell of the soil and the first sight of a tomato blossom. And all of this just right outside their kitchen window.

So when I hear the Parable of the Sower, I am taken back over forty years to a place that was my own, and was made more completely my own by the people who shared it with me. In my small town, I was fortunate enough to be one of the final witnesses of a way of life that was quickly passing into the obscure pages of local history. As the tentacles of Columbus began to stretch their way into the outlying rural areas, I saw old men who had spent a lifetime tilling the soil and living off the land hang up their hats, sell their small five-acre truck farms, and turn their attentions to smaller, more manageable garden plots that could feed them well for a season. And it was in these plots that I would bother them, picking green tomatoes in June and being burned by the carburetors of their roto-tillers. It's a wonder they didn't just chase me away, but for some reason they didn't, and I have been grateful for this gift ever since. It was from these old-timers that I first learned to listen and to take note of the world around me.

In light of this week's text, I cannot help but think of Doc and Mr. Bliel, and to imagine that the planter of seeds in Jesus' story was as tuned in to the soil as these two were. I am also aware that none of these men – whether in Gahanna, Ohio, or in first-century Palestine – would simply wake up one morning, grab a bag of wheat berries, and stomp off to find any old field that would serve their agricultural purposes. Jesus, in fact, introduces his parable about half-way into the entire process, for any gardener knows that before seed can be sown, the soil has to be adequately prepared. The earth has to be tilled. Rocks and other debris must be removed. In some cases, manure or compost must be added. Finally, the planter must know when the conditions are optimum for sowing. If it's too dry, the seeds will not germinate; too wet (hardly a problem in Palestine, but a scourge recently in the Midwest), they will simply rot in the ground.

In explaining his parable (Matt. 13:18-24 – which most commentators recognize as a later edition to the original telling), Jesus makes it clear that the seeds sown, representative of the good news, will meet one of four possible outcomes, each symbolic of a spiritual state as common today as it was two thousand years ago. Some hearers, like the well-trodden path, harden their hearts to the gospel, thus exposing its life and energy to hungry scavengers who are ready to use it for their own purposes. Others utilize the Word as a quick-fix for their psychological woes, seeing it only as the latest in a long line of soul drugs. When the euphoric feelings fade, they are quick to move on to something else. Another group succumbs to what I like to call "the Joel Osteen-ization of the gospel," allowing the pursuit of wealth and material goods to compromise the truth of what they hear so that their own avaricious ends can be served. Nothing ruins the health of a garden more effectively than noxious weeds; the same can be said for our spiritual lives.

A fourth group, however, is ready to welcome the seed and nourish it in the depths of their souls, eventually producing a harvest of thirty, or sixty, or a hundredfold (Matt. 13:8). These are the hearts that are prepared to receive the Word and allow it to nourish every aspect of their lives, from the inner workings of their spirit to the very movements of their bodies. Naturally, this would have been the soil that the sower had spent his time cultivating, and it is in this discipline – tilling and keeping – that we can find a source of inspiration for our own spiritual lives. How, for example, might preparing soil for planting be likened to the cultivation of our souls for the reception of the gospel? Conversely, how is it that the neglect of our "soil" – allowing the world to trample over us, for example, until we become some lifeless thoroughfare where nothing can take root – can serve as a metaphor for the abandonment of our spiritual well-being? Jesus certainly chose his allusions carefully, knowing full well that "those who had ears to hear" would take away much more from his parable than they bargained for.

Though I could speak with some authority on the barrenness of the garden path, I would prefer here to reflect on the importance of "preparing a PLACE," the latter being my own acronym for five important aspects of the spiritual journey that must be held in balance so that the seeds of the gospel can bear fruit, perhaps even a hundredfold. Granted, I am less of an authority on what it means to live a spiritually-centered existence, but I have certainly seen intimations of it in many of the authors I have read, and in many of the people I have known in my life, including the beer-drinking sailors of my childhood, Doc and Mr. Bliel.

About five years ago I decided to make a concerted effort to explore the spiritual disciplines associated with Saint Benedict by becoming an oblate of the Order. Since that time I have tried to prepare a place for the reception of the Sower's seed in a variety of ways, but five practices have stood out for me, both for their importance in the Rule of Benedict, and for the way that they have nourished me spiritually. There have been times when my observance has been less focused than others – times, in other words, when I have been threatened by weeds and scavengers and hardness of heart – but for the most part I have returned to these five basic "tilling and keeping" principles for preparing a PLACE where the gospel can take root.

Prayer

My Protestant upbringing left little room for the kind of prayer I am talking about here. When I was in high school I learned a tidy little formula for the way we should approach God on bended knee. It went by the acronym ACTS: adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication. In other words, 1) let God know how great God is, 2) confess how bad you have been, 3) thank God for God's steadfast love and forgiveness, then 4) hit him up for some goodies. Not a bad approach I guess, but it can too easily become rote and meaningless. It was only later in life that I learned about prayer as contemplation – not talking to God as much as simply "opening the ear of your heart," as Benedict says in the first chapter of the Rule. I'm so grateful for the times that I can be silent in my life, listening for the movement of the spirit, clearing away the clutter of the day and very literally preparing a place for her presence.

Love through Service

Ora et labora, "prayer and work," is the Benedictine motto. Silence is golden, as the saying goes, but our labor is how we can make God's presence known most perfectly in the world. And lest the monastic brothers and sisters come to regard their daily physical exertions as mere ends in themselves, Benedict offers a helpful guiding principle: "All… are to be welcomed as Christ" (RB 53). That is, as Jesus expressed God's love explicitly through his ministry to others, even unto the point of death on a cross, so must we be ever mindful of the objective of our labors: to make the love of God apparent to those in our midst. It is by their very presence that Christ walks among us.

Awareness

It is very easy these days to assume that spirituality is something that pertains only to individuals, something to be experienced rather than practiced, enjoyed rather than applied, guarded rather than shared. How else can we explain the prevalence of the commonly heard quip, "I'm spiritual, but not religious"? Recently I heard a lecture by Anselm Gruen, OSB, in which he suggested that many people he meets are drawn to spirituality because they see it as something that will make them "more interesting." This is a misguided assumption. The true mark of the life of the spirit, he went on to say, is the way that we are emboldened to look beyond ourselves and meet the other face to face. More specifically, it means taking what we encounter in our contemplative lives and making it applicable to the world "out there." In order for this to be effective, we must be acutely aware of what is happening around us in our local, national, and global communities. In this way, Gruen was echoing the words of the great Protestant theologian, Karl Barth, who said that a Christian must begin each morning with the Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other.

Community

While we live in a world whose contours are becoming unimaginably broader with each passing day, our prayer and work must still be practiced in the context of a particular community. This does not mean, however, that all other groups and concerns should be excluded, but to be effective, as well as personally fulfilling, we must work with our own spiritual "economy of scale." Jesus was able to change the world radically with only a handful of disciples, and not very capable ones at that. This means that we should regard our local church as a kind of base ecclesial community – a congregation of men, women and children who know us best, who join us in both our joys and our sorrows, and who hold us accountable in all things. But we must not stop here. Given our recent environmental embarrassments – from our appalling addictions to oil to our disgraceful insistence on conspicuous consumption – it behooves us to broaden our scope to include in this definition the biological communities, the bioregions, of which we are an integral part. Who we are is, to some extent, determined by where we are, so it makes sense that we should include as members of our moral community the nonhuman others who share our life-world. As Christians, we have an obligation to the well-being of these creatures.

Exercise

This is rich: Dan Deffenbaugh talking about the importance of exercise. Yes, I agree, this is certainly a "physician, heal thyself" situation for me, but we all have our weaknesses. I do know, however, that the care of a person's soul is usually reflected in the way that she cares for her body. It is ironic that Christianity, with all its metaphors and allusions to the body – whether as an indication of the inner workings of the church, or as an affirmation of the resurrection – has done little over the centuries to develop a spiritual discipline that emphasizes the importance of corporeal health. Recent hybridizations like "Christian yoga" or "Christian Tai Ch'i" only accentuate the absence of these practices in our faith tradition, not to mention the present desire on the part of the faithful to integrate spiritual and bodily health. It stands to reason that if we are called to care for and respect God's creation – as many theologians, including myself, have argued over the last several decades – then the most responsible and accessible place to begin is with our own flesh and blood. Put another way: If we expect prayer to enliven our bodies, then it is only fair to ask that exercise as a spiritual discipline enliven our prayer.

And so we are back to where we started. As the doctrine of continuous creation (creatio continua) suggests, the Sower is still planting seeds, and many of these are still landing in the same time-worn places: the hardened path, the stony ground, the weed-infested earth. Thankfully, some are still able to find the right soil. It is our good fortune that this same Sower also provides the nourishment that will help these seeds to grow; as the Psalmist says, "You visit the earth and water it, you greatly enrich it" (65:9a). But the work does not lie solely with the Creator, for what is cast must ultimately find its own rich, dark earth. And as any gardener knows, seeds can grow well only when a commitment has been made to listening, and laboring, and tilling, and weeding, and weeding, and weeding. In short, seeds can bear abundant fruit only when a commitment has been made to preparing a proper place.