The Slow Way: Nothing Is Wasted

What Jeff Chu's new book "Good Soil" wants to teach us about the slow, faithful work of transformation.

for the frantic strivers, serial doers, and weary achievers

Here in the northeastern corner of the US, the sun spends November to March like a sulking teenager hiding out in the corner of the room, making her presence known just enough to be missed. We can see her in the sky but she refuses to shine. Classic emo.

So five Aprils into my time here and the sun continues to shock and surprise me during these weeks (always these exact weeks!) of spring. The sun slips out of her annoyed hideout, and shows her face again. We humans, along with the plants and animals in my home, can’t help for find ourselves mesmerized by her presence—warmed and cleaned, nourished and grateful. I don’t use the word blessing that often. But the way the sun pours herself on our skin? It’s like spring awakens us right along with the plants and animals. Light on our heads like baptism. What else is blessing anyway?

I’ve had time to watch for the sunshine this week. Sunshine putting her hand on our heads and leaving a mark. I watch the way my kitten Annie stretches her arms out, refusing to sphinx, flattening herself into the sun’s puddle. I’ve listened through the open window of my bedroom to the bird songs growing louder by the day. So much work to be done, so much to prepare before their nests are full. Each petal that appears overnight opens to the sun’s appearance as if to a master.

I want to arrive in the sun’s presence as well. But I’m mostly stuck inside with an illness that’s strange and feels a bit dramatic. Something I’d rather ignore but can’t. I’m annoyed with it and myself. I’ve spent most of this week in bed.

I’ve been asking myself what to do with my own fragility, with a body that refuses to follow the plan. It’s helped to have Jeff Chu’s new book Good Soil: The Education of an Accidental Farmhand beside me, inviting me to see myself as one small element in the goodness God is making of the natural world.

Jeff’s book is memoir, a story of his time spent at Princeton Theological Seminary, working in the “farminary” program, a twenty-one acre working farm where seminary students combine theological studies with lessons of the land. In the book, Jeff works through the mysteries of his own faith alongside his uncertain relationship with his parents who have remained in his life despite their disapproval of his marriage to a man. He considers friendship, loss, suffering, and what makes for “good soil,” both literally and figuratively.

I read most of his book while I rested, then made it out of bed in time to watch Brooks seeding the patchy spots of our front yard. Last week we were all pulling out the clover and dandelions that have tried to take over the yard, and now Chris and I are paying our kid to do the hard work of aerating the soil, spreading the grass seed, covering the spots with a mix of top soil and compost, and sprinkling a bit of straw on top for good measure. It was a gorgeous evening. Chris was in the backyard grilling and Ace hovered near Brooks, watching him closely as he completed each task.

At one point Brooks asked me to sort through the soil we had transferred from a different part of the yard. “Mom, there’s a lot of rocks in this.” I got my gloves on and handled the soil carefully, pulling out the rocks, thinking about the parable Jesus told of the seed scattered on the rocks. How did the story go? The farmer haphazardly scatters seed wherever he wants. Some flourishes, some gets eaten, some grows but dies. The seeds on the rocky soil sprout immediately but then are scorched by the sun. They die because their roots have nowhere to go.

Jeff writes about that. “In the churches and Bible classes of my childhood, this parable was taught as a warning and threat: You have to be the good soil—or else. God knows I tried. Tried to be the obedient son. Tried to kiss a girl and not hate it. Tried to pass off not kissing a girl as evidence of purity. Tried to be the tireless worker. Tired to pray and earn and prove and claw and strive and serve and confess and repent my way to goodness.”

But as Jeff gets to know the land, as he turns the compost pile, experiences the lives of the animals and plants throughout the seasons of the year. As he plants and waters, cultivates and harvests, he comes to understand something about that parable Jesus told. Something about what makes the soil alive, what makes it healthy enough for growing.

“What if the parable wasn’t about categorizing good versus bad, healthy versus unhealthy, sinners versus saints? What if the parable were understood less as a prescription—you need to be the good soil—and more as a description of what was actually happening, both in the ecosystem around us in our own lives? What if Jesus was describing the realities of both soil and soul, which were ever-changing and subject to outside forces?”

I’m weak right now. I could only handle digging in that soil for a little before I needed to head back inside to rest. How frustrating a body can be. Pain, weakness, failure.

“None of the soil conditions is permanent—not the hard path, not the rocky ground, not the thorn-choked earth. And nothing is guaranteed. The only constant is change,” Jeff writes.

But also? He quotes earth scientist George Fisher who wrote this of the parable of the sower: “When the harvest is good, the first three habitats seem to have no value, but when the rich soil begins to lose its fertility, the processes at work in those habitats gradually restore fertility.”

He’s saying that the rocky soil, the thorny soil, and even the birds that eat up the seed and leave manure that fertilizes what’s left behind—all of it has a role to play in the making of good soil.

This is the way God works in the world. In the slow, faithful work of transformation. For all of us who were taught to get our acts together so that we could be “good soil,” Jeff has a better story. It’s the story of a gardener of abundance who throws seeds every direction, knowing that nothing is wasted, even when it looks to our eyes like it might be. It’s the story of the farmer who takes old scraps of food and combines it with the pulled weeds and cut stems and leaves dried from autumn—and mixes it all together so that the worms can do the work of making soil that nourishes the ground. This is how death is real and always beside us, but never the end of the story.

I sat on the stairs outside, watching my middle son water the grass seed, and my youngest follow him around, clocking his every move. I was aching, frustrated with the unknown of my weakness and still grateful for the moment of color and warmth and life around me. And I thought of Jeff’s words:

“Nothing is wasted—and everything has value.”

That’s what it means to believe in a universe where goodness will win, despite the suffering. Where seeds will grow, even as this season's soil is growing seeds now, but also being prepared for next season. It all matters because God is making all things good. We are in the process even now, even in these bodies that betray us, among these people who sometimes cause us pain, even in a story where all the seed seems gobbled up along the thorny ground.

As Jeff says, “Surely we will find redemption. Surely what’s broken can be made whole. And what hurts will be healed.”

A Slow Practice

Seed planting time! Wherever you are in the seed planting season. You southerners may be past planting in your garden, but perhaps you can get a plant going inside. Today I hope you’ll join me in planting a seed of your choice. I’ve got some sugar snap peas itching to get into my veggie garden. Some of you may want to sprinkle some wildflowers and see what happens.

However you choose to do it, take a moment first to reflect on Jesus’s parable in Matthew 13:3-8.

And he told them many things in parables, saying: “Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on a 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.

After you read it, take some time to head out to an outdoor space (your own or a pot if you want to plant something for your stoop or window planter). While you’re gathering what you need to plant your seeds, pay attention to the soil around you. Where would this parable make sense? What space around you is rocky soil? Where can you see a thorny path? And what do you notice about the intentionality of finding good soil?

If you’ve known this parable and have carried assumptions about it, what is it you believe about who might be a thorny path or rocky soil? Who are you in this story, and why?

If you have almost always understood this passage as a request that you make yourself into good soil by working harder, what is it you think God might want to say to you instead? What is the role of the gardener and what is your role? How does God perceive you in this story?

Now plant your seeds and pray this sweet blessing over them: “May the sun lift you out of the soil. May the soil nourish your life. And may the rain baptize you with goodness. I bless you, little life!”

Amen.

A List of Things:

• I could have written about 10 different Slow Way Letters about Jeff Chu’s book. What a delight it was to read! I can’t recommend it enough. It’s beautifully written, theologically rich, and gentle all the way through. Find it here.

• It’s May! All you Graduates, Mother’s Day celebrators, Garden-Planters, End-of-Sports Season Players, Exam-Takers, and Musical Theater Performers, Teachers Limping To The Finish, we’re cheering you on! You got this! Nothing is wasted! We bless you.