Blooming Wherever We Are!
Introduction
Parables
A whole litany
of parables are lined up for us in the coming Sundays. A parable is a literary
device which says something more than it appears to say, and it sets us
wondering what that is. Since each of us
listens to the parables of Jesus with a different set of ears and out of different
life experiences, each of us comes up with different personal takes on them. No one take of a parable is right; they’re all
right. That’s what’s nice about parables. There’s something for all of us in
them.
Because I
happen to be the appointed preacher for the Sunday assembly, you have to listen
to my take on a parable. While you are busy all week
long fighting the battles of life, my task all week long as leader of the
assembly is to prepare my take on a parable. That should not preclude
but should, in fact, help to elicit a take of your own. When that happens, you
leave the assembly with something that’s not just mine but yours as well. When that has happened, the parable
has been successful. Like Yahweh’s word in the first reading, my parable has then
“gone forth from my mouth and has not returned to me void but has achieved the
purpose for which it was sent” (Is 55: 11).
Birth: terribly unfair
A farmer goes
out to sow seed in his field. Some of
the seed falls randomly upon a footpath or upon rocky ground or among thorns
and weeds. In such inhospitable terrains
the seed doesn’t do well at all. On the other hand, some of the seed falls upon
rich soil where it springs up vigorously and yields an abundant harvest (Mt 13:
1-8). I never get beyond this point in
the parable because I have a well-entrenched take on it, and I have no need to go
any further. My take is that the Great
Sower, namely Birth, is terribly unfair, as he randomly casts us as
seeds into the furrows of life.
On the one hand,
the Great Sower, Birth, casts some of us upon a footpath to be trampled under by
people, or on upon rocky ground to be deprived of nourishment, or among weeds
and thorns to be suffocated by problems. On the other hand, the Greater Sower casts
others of us upon truly fertile soil, there to blossom into the full beauty we
were created to be and to produce a rich harvest of our potential. Some of us
are born simply lucky and some of us are born unluckt,
and that’s not fair!
My dog Simeon,
for example, was born lucky. His
pedigree states that his father’s name is Shadowlake Sun and his mother’s name
is Carly. The names of his two
grandfathers are Gordie Boy and Casey. The
pedigree also names his great grandparents and even his great great
grandparents. I actually consider it a
privilege to be his chauffer as he sits in his favorite car, a Rav.
But just across
the alley from me there’s a poor black lab, just a pup, not so luckily born. He
is utterly without pedigree. He’s tied by a chain to a car, mind you, sometimes
with no water on hot summer days. I do everything I can. I try to feed him and
slake his thirst. I screw up enough courage,
dangerous as that can be, to confront so-called human beings about the
matter. I even try to ransom the pup or
steal him or let him loose to go in search of a more humane society. I picture the little guy being locked up in a
basement all winter long, and then I picture how he could be sitting in a Rav
and being chauffeured for the rest of his life. It makes me cry out, “Foul! How
terribly unfair birth is!” It’s then
that I know for sure there’s a heaven for dogs just as there is one for human
beings, where the unfairness of birth is made right.
Our stories
We all have a
story behind us, and we are all cast randomly into our story, as the seed is
cast randomly in the parable today. I
have my story. You’ve heard it before. My parents were Italian peasants who
came to this country in the early part of the last century. They migrated to
During those
terribly critical seedling years, my father had no helpmate in a foreign land,
my sister and I had no mother, and our house had no soul. We lived in a
typical little American town with its neat little houses all lined up on neat
city blocks and in those houses lived good Protestant Christians and good
Catholic Christians. As I see it now (though I didn’t see it then), there were really
no good Samaritans among them to stop and pour the oil of compassion upon an
immigrant family waylaid on the road to
Whatever it was
I don’t know. But upon such a footpath, upon such a rocky terrain and into such
a thorny patch my sister and I were randomly cast as seed into the furrow of
life. Some have stories that are even much more painful than ours. On the other
hand, others have really good stories to tell. The Great Sower, Birth, has randomly
cast them upon good rich soil. That’s a mixture of all the right elements, like
being born on the right side of the tracks and the right neighborhood, of the
right father and mother who are imbued with the right messages and equipped
with the right techniques for good nurturing.
The mixture, however, is never perfect. There’s always something
lacking. We’re all born into some kind of dysfunctionality.
Telling our stories
Obviously a
story is for telling. It's important
that we tell our story, especially to ourselves. Those who never tell their
story, at least to themselves, never really get to know who they are, what
makes them tick, and what it is they should be doing to dig themselves out of
their story, if they are, indeed, snowbound by it. And given the right moment
and the right reasons, it's good also to tell our story to others, as I’m telling mine to you, but not over and
over again as a broken record dripping with self-pity.
As we tell our
story to ourselves and others, we tell it not as an excuse but as an explanation. If my story, for example, is an unfortunate
one, I may use it to explain me to myself and to others. But I may not use it as an excuse for not
going anywhere in my journey of life. I
may not use my story to feed self-pity which simply immobilizes me and prevents
me from going forward. When I don’t go forward, I go backward.
Forgiveness & patience with our
stories
Very few of us
have an excellent story to tell—a story that is a perfect mix of all the right
elements, especially the right mother and father imbued with the right
messages and equipped with the right techniques for good nurturing. That
perfect mix is almost impossible. So almost all of our stories
call for forgiveness. They call for children to forgive
their parents for doing the same imperfect job which they themselves are now
doing in raising their own kids.
Our stories
call for patience—the
patience born of the wisdom that knows that we can't re-do our story. A story
is always in the past tense, and we can’t redo the past. If in birth we have
been cast as seed upon a footpath, that’s history, and we can’t redo history. Our
story (our birth) goes with us to the grave when another Great Sower, Death,
levels off the unfairness of birth. We can’t redo our story (our birth), but we
can dress it up and modify it a bit. We can discipline our dysfunctionality and
bring it into obedience. We can even make
an unlucky story turn into good for us.
Harvesting our stories
As I look back now upon
my story (my birth), I see not only its hurts but also its harvest, not only its pain but also its profit.
I see in myself gains and growths
that others do not have. Motherless as
our family was, with no one to compassionately wrap a warm scarf around us on a
cold winter day, my sister and I eventually learned how to take care of
ourselves. Some guys don’t know how to boil water. I know how to cook, how to
make good spaghetti sauce, how to make homemade pasta, even how to make good gnocchi.
I can recognize dirt when I see it, and I know how to clean it up.
And by some sort of
reverse psychology I know how to be compassionate, despite a story lacking in compassion.
That little black lab chained to a car fills me not only with a raging anger
but also with great compassion. Years ago I found a cat dying in the alley—that
road that goes from
Once I found a tree lying
half dead in an empty city lot. City
workers had set out one day to plant four trees there. They were nursery trees with
huge root systems typically wrapped in burlap. No doubt they cost a good penny.
The workers managed to throw three of them into the ground, but then the whistle
blew for quitting time. They unceremoniously threw the fourth one off to the
side, went home for supper, and never returned. Through the dark cold months November and
December I watched the poor tree with its exposed roots shivering in the cold
and lying there half dead. Then one day I, with a gang of two, stopped and
poured the oil of compassion upon the poor tree, hoisted it upon our little
truck and hurried it off to my inn. There we placed it into the arms of our
good Mother the Earth on the darkest day of the year, December 21st. All three trees in that inner city block are now
dead. The one we had compassion on, after much tender loving care, is now a
thriving magnificent silver maple with a huge glorious crown luxuriating in my
backyard.
Despite my story or perhaps because of it,
I never pass by anything lying wounded on the road from
Conclusion
Blooming wherever we are
Compassion,
by some strange reverse of psychology, sprang up and blossomed out of harsh
terrain. So at the end of the day, birth and environment do not explain
everything. Into the mix enters an absolutely mysterious element that can knock the wind out of all our
predictions and prognostications.
A farmer went
out to sow seed in his field. Some seed
fell randomly upon rocky ground. So what! The Prophet Isaiah promises that,
“The desert will rejoice, and flowers will bloom in the wasteland” (Is 35: 1). Some
seed fell upon a footpath. So what! The
dismissal today bids us go forth and make even an inhospitable terrain yield a
rich harvest for us. Some seed feel among thorns and weeds. So what! The
dismissal today bids us go forth and bloom
wherever we are.”