You would think—growing up in New England—I would be better at enduring the cold, gray winters. And every year, somewhere around February, I convince myself that I am. But then late May arrives with its return of sunlight, and I realize just how much of myself had gone dormant. I return to myself. Suddenly I remember what I love. I remember that I am nourished by warmth, by breathing in the clarity of ocean air, by evenings stretched long around tables with friends, and by the exhilarating chill of plunging into the Atlantic, by lilacs, hydrangeas, and beach roses bursting into color. Creation itself seems nourished back into fullness.
In summer’s light, the seeds buried deep in the earth seem to awaken too. They stretch toward life, toward growth. And perhaps that is why Jesus so often speaks to us in the language of gardens, soil, seeds, and harvest. We, like the earth, need certain conditions to come alive. We long to discover the fullness of who we are and to live into the truth of who we are meant to be. In today’s Gospel, we are the seeds, and yet we are also each other’s co-sowers.
Throughout my life, I have always felt a pull toward my vocation as a theologian, but I scattered myself across so many different places because I wanted to try things out. Sometimes, the birds came and ate the seeds up quickly. Other times, I felt the slow pain of the earth scorching around me until those seeds seemed too far gone to salvage. And still, there were moments where the soil where I planted myself was rich enough to bear fruit.
Anyone who knows me knows that my ministry with adults with intellectual disabilities at L’Arche is a cornerstone of who I am. And yet, strangely enough, it is not where I spend the bulk of my time anymore. But it remains the place I return to over and over again to remember something essential about myself and about the world.
Core members—folks with disabilities—ask me questions about myself in both a literal and cosmic sense. They hold up mirrors to the parts of myself I want to hide—the impatient parts, the insecure parts, the exhausted parts, the parts of me obsessed with achievement and productivity and appearing put together. And at the same time, they continually invite me into a more honest and tender way of living. They prompt me, again and again, to ask: what is the best way to live? What actually makes a life fruitful?
My fellow assistants—many of whom have become some of my closest friends—do this too. They call me into becoming my best self without awakening shame. They offer a kind of presence so rare in the world: a non-judgmental place of rest.
And I think that is what Jesus is getting at in today’s Gospel. Soil does not become fruitful through force or perfection. Good soil is soil that has been tended to. Softened. Nourished. Given water and sunlight and time. L’Arche has been that kind of soil for me, and let me tell you, it took many test runs.
For a long time, I thought that vocation was mostly about finding the right thing to do—finding the useful, marketable skill to make money and live: The right career. The right ministry. The right path. But in these last several years, as I have nurtured the beginning of my adult life, I have come to believe that vocation is just as much about finding the communities and relationships that make it possible for us to become who God is calling us to be.
In the parable, the seed is good from the very beginning. It was made good. And in the parable we come to see that the problem is never the seed itself. The question is whether it has the conditions necessary to grow and bloom.
I think many of us are tempted to spend our lives wondering whether we are enough. Whether we are talented enough, faithful enough, disciplined enough, holy enough. We look at the places where we have struggled, where things have not worked out, where our efforts have failed, and we begin to wonder whether the problem is us. To quote Taylor Swift, we might be tempted to say “It's me, hi, I’m the problem, it's me.”
But Jesus offers a different perspective. Sometimes the issue is not the seed. Sometimes the issue is that the seed landed among rocks, or thorns, or ground that had not yet been prepared. Growth requires relationships. It requires care. It requires belonging.
That has certainly been true in my own life. Every meaningful transformation I can point to came not because I worked harder or became more impressive, but because someone made room for me to grow. Good teachers played to my strengths and watched me soar. My parents nurtured the earth around me so that I could thrive. Someone believed there was something worth cultivating. Sometimes we drop our seeds in the wrong places and we have to start all over again. But what a gift to be on a journey to find that perfect, just right soil.
We are also invited to be co-sowers in one another's lives. We help create the conditions where growth becomes possible. We encourage one another when the harvest seems distant.
The truth is that none of us grows alone. We rely on people who soften the hard ground around us. We ask our friends and family to help us navigate the things that get in the way of joy. We gather near the people whose presence reminds us that growth happens quietly, beneath the surface, long before anyone can see it.
Seeds do not stop being alive simply because growth is not yet visible. Beneath the surface, God is still at work.
And as we all bask in the joy of summer’s warmth, vibrancy, and sunshine, may we be reminded of this feeling when the trees are bare in the dead of winter. When the sun is setting before 4 pm (at least for me in Boston), when the mornings are sub zero. That the promise of a summer bloom for creation, is also the promise of growth and blooming in our own lives. I leave us with the words of Pope Francis from On Hope.
"Let us be confident as we await the coming of [our God], and what the desert may represent in our life — each one knows what desert [we are] walking in — it will become a garden in bloom. Hope does not disappoint!"
So scatter your seeds and continue the journey of finding that just-right soil. It is promised.
https://www.catholicwomenpreach.org/preacher/olivia-catherine-hastie
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