Soul Seeds: Thoughts on the way to Growth
by Chaplain David Brown

Mark 4:1-20

I remember a long time back, back in the days of going to Vacation Bible School, where we made crafts that I didn’t quite understand, but we made them anyway. And it seemed like every year we would plant that seed in the little coffee cup. If you were really lucky, you got one of those clear plastic cups where you could see the roots go down the sides of the cup and watch the seed lift itself toward the sky. Even when there is no evidence of anything happening, either on the surface or down there in the dirt with the seed itself, growth will push on when the conditions are right, when the right amount of soil and moisture and ‘stuff’ is available to the young plant.

Sometimes I would turn the cup upside down and watch the seed grow ‘down’ into the bottom of the cup, the seed almost always died. Sometimes after watching the seed grow the wrong way for a few days, I would turn the cup right side up again and watch the seed grow in a new direction because of the action taken against it, or maybe I should say “for” it.

And I would wonder. How does the seed know which way is up? How does the seed know what to pack for this journey called growth? How does this seed know what to become? How does the seed make the right choices so that it becomes what it can be?

I still don’t know how the seed does that. I still don’t understand the intricate process of growth, either with seeds or with humanity or with our own spirituality. But I think I think that there are some things that are very much the same.

Each of us, seed and person, human and bean, have to be nurtured for the best life results. Oh you can certainly just stick a seed out there on it’s own, and sometimes something comes up. You can leave a person out there all alone, and they will find a way. But which way? What will grow out there by itself? What will this new life become?

Nurturing seems to be about ensuring that the soil, the water, the stuff that this new life needs, is available. Nurturing seems to be helping becomers become. Nurturing is sometimes turning the cup; the world of the young seed, upside down so true growth and fruitfulness has a chance to happen.

So what do you do to nurture you? Who is it that you are becoming? What directions are you sending your roots? Who do you depend on to ‘turn your cup’ the right direction?

I still don’t know how the seed is brought through those crucial ‘growth direction’ decisions and becomes what it can be. But I do know it doesn’t happen alone; there was a sower who went out to sow his seed . . .

Return to Poems, Prose, and Pastoral Writings