A young missionary in a church out west, I had my first real job, and my first family away from home. At the tail end of my two year stint, deep in the process of ordination, I was seminary bound. A colt kicking in the stalls, ready to run, I was pregnant with grand ideals about how to change the world. I was fertile ground, hungry for the right seeds.
Standing in the threshold space, right inside the church’s side door, I looked beneath my feet. Earlier that week, the wise custodian, Don Wooley, polished that old red tile floor on which I stood. He revealed its beautifully original design, the seams between each tile so bright. A mosaic of sacred geometry. The pattern was clear. It was there that I met The Sower.*
A fellow missionary on furlough, serving in Latin America, came to preach in the spring. Raising awareness for, as well as the hackles of, those gathered, he carried a call and a warning: surrender yourselves more fully, and tend to the pain of our world. Like John the Baptist, rough and wild, he pinned our ears back, crying out against the dirty rotten system of extraction and greed. He burned like a roman candle, a firehose of passion and prophecy that was neither rehearsed nor tempered. He cast the seeds of change that he was carrying.
Standing in close proximity to those falling jewels, as well as to the pain of the world, I felt them land. Shining like the polished tile beneath my feet, seams revealing my beautifully original design, they hit that soft little patch of earth right beneath my breastbone. A burning bush grew within me. I approached him, reverently, saying that I wanted to be like him. He asked, “Are you going to serve the church?” I nodded. He said, “my work is very clear: the needs of the world are close to my hands. Being like me is easy. Your work will be harder. You will be laboring in the belly of the beast.”
How do you bend an old institution towards justice? The future seeds that I would cast grew within me. He showed me the pattern within them, as detailed as the holy ground on which I stood. Sacred geometry. The Sower forever lives in the garden of my heart.
–Jim Marsh, Jr.
For Further Reflection
— Wendell Berry: “VI: Sabbaths 2001” [“Sit and be still”]
Wendell Berry is a poet, environmental activist, novelist, and a farmer from rural Kentucky. He came to mind as I wrote my reflection about seeds and sowers. He’s an American truth-teller prophet, a practical theologian, and someone who makes beautiful meaning of all of our seed sowing.
