Good Soil

For Janet (and Julius, of blessed memory)

He’s now in the good soil he named for himself, after the Horror.

I did not know him, this elder named Julius. His daughter is a NY friend, a kind of friendship I’m learning is connection different than I have known. Connection no less for my ignorance of it, but one that surprises me all the same. I had invited her to teach me a little about her kashrut practice, but this exchange led to correspondence of accompaniment while her father went into the hospital. Then end-of-life care. The one really nice outfit I brought for the unscheduled meeting with the Chancellor became funeral garb to honor the father who gardened in good soil.

I was grumpy about going, split inside as I was. Life away from home immersed in others’ space wears thin eventually. I was thin because I was no longer there. Inside, where presence happens, where one can feel others and know one is alive, there was no one home. So who was grumpy? The mind separate that had imagined spaciousness and quiet along the Riverside. Blessedly, the inner-friend connected to the mourning ones was there, strong in heart, opened and opening still. Even more, a Spirit-friend made arrangements and we were set to leave in the morning.

Some inner-one shepherded me into a Eucharist service before the drive up to the funeral home. Shared quiet, a Psalm, the quiet ring of a bell to signal the end of contemplative practice. A gentle nod to the separate mind, always hungry. Then those familiar scriptural words: A sower went out to sow, and as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. 

Those few gathered in the small Christian chapel nodded at how familiar the story was. The explanation of it was given 40 verses later, but no one in the room needed it. Everyone had already knocked the text down, collective foot to its throat, unable to breathe.

Instead, the words were for a day alongside a planter, full of life upon its exit. Against the odds, he had breathed life beyond overwhelming death. He had taken the collective foot to the throat and somehow moved it aside. Uncovered and unconquerable, except for leaning it aside with love irrepressible. He had gentled his sorrow into actions of tending, whispering, urging, listening. His garden, tended over the years, surrounded the casket and gave voice to what had sustained him, grown them.

Good soil.

Dreams of life.

A vow.

A middle-way of seed-planting.

Tenacious tendrils.

Vegetables in the sunlight.

Food tasted in its season.

Its blessing shared.

Blessed are You

 King of the Universe

Who gives us life,

Sustains us and

Brings us to this time.

The planter entered into his rest, but the remaining soil received new seeds, uncovered but somehow protected from the ravenous birds, the choking thorns. A young boy awakened to his promise, offered to the teacher departed. Stories of life painted a new future. An uncertain teacher allowed his Spirit-friend to tend, whisper, urge, listen, while driving on the thruway. An inner-friend got out of the car and in leaving, strengthened the yearning. 

In the end, split-separate souls learned, despite themselves. Good soil, carefully seeded in a middle way, will always promise Life’s harvest. When separate minds become shared and lean aside the unconquerable together, then death’s life becomes life’s undying love.

Blessedly, we're never the same. Rest in peace, good and faithful one.