Let Me Sow Love

My cat Pippin is an excellent spider catcher.  He will chase after a spider a millimeter wide … across the kitchen floor … in complete darkness.

Recently, though, I noticed that a spider, a medium-size spider about an inch wide—and if you’re thinking that sounds like a large spider, let me just warn you it’s all about perspective—but this particular spider was hanging out under my bathroom cabinets, just in front of the toe kick, and she was fast, too fast for Pippin—too fast for me even.

I had resigned myself to having to live with this spider and hope it didn’t have babies.

But then last week, it disappeared.  I thought maybe Pippin had finally caught it or chased it out.

Finally, though, my bathroom was spider-free.

And then Monday night, I noticed something under the bathroom cabinets.  It was large and brown and about the size of a small mouse—only it wasn’t a mouse; I would have preferred a mouse—it was the largest spider I have seen since moving back to Ohio.  And it was busy eating something—I don’t know what, but perhaps we know what happened to the previous spider.

I didn’t waste any time—I killed that sucker.   I squeezed it tight in a paper towel and then I unrolled about half a roll of paper towels and wrapped the dead spider in all of that, and then I put it in a Ziploc bag and then I threw it away in the kitchen garbage.

And then, I confronted Pippin.

“Where have you been?  How did you miss that spider?  How did it even get in here without you seeing it?”

And Pippin looked at me as if to say, “You mean that tarantula in the bathroom?  I don’t do those.”

I have a complicated relationship with the natural world.  Anyone who knows me knows how much I love nature photography, how contemplative photography in the natural world has made some dark days more than just bearable—the natural world has reminded me how to breathe, not just to breathe—but how to breathe.

And so some days ago, a friend of mine sent me pictures of the redwoods and the ocean from a trip she was on.  And recently, a Florida friend, sent me pictures of Sandhill Cranes and their baby.  That particular friend actually made her husband turn the car around so she could go back and get those pictures just for me.

But as much as I love the natural world, I don’t want it crawling through my bathroom in the middle of the night.  Even when I’m outside, I don’t even want to touch nature.  My primary camera has a long enough lens to see the rings of Saturn, literally. 

Lately, though, I have been trying new things.  Last week, I told you I had planted the world’s tiniest boxwood—after two weeks, I can tell you it’s still living.  And last weekend, I spread grass seed and straw over barren patches in my yard.  Before I spread the seed, I first tilled the soil, which mostly involved excavating what little dirt there was and bringing it to the surface above all the rocks.

As I was doing this, I chuckled to myself, thinking that in that moment, I was a living, breathing, walking incarnation of Jesus’s Parable of the Sower.

There are four parts to the Parable of the Sower if you remember.  First the farmer goes to sow his seeds, but drops some on the path where the seeds are quickly eaten by the birds.  Some seeds fall on rocky ground.  The seeds sprout quickly but with little soil the roots are not deep, and the plants wither in the sun.  Still other seeds fall among the thorns and the plants are later choked by the thorns.

And then, of course, some seed falls on good soil and produces a good crop.

Like many parables, Jesus then has to explain to His disciples what He’s talking about in Matthew 13:19-23 saying, “When anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in their heart. This is the seed sown along the path. The seed falling on rocky ground refers to someone who hears the word and at once receives it with joy. But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. The seed falling among the thorns refers to someone who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, making it unfruitful. But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.”

Here's what’s interesting to me—if this parable was only about the seed, wouldn’t it be called the Parable of the Seed?  Or if it were only about the soil in which the seed is thrown, wouldn’t it be called the Parable of the Soil or the Parable of the Seed and Soil?

But no, it’s called the Parable of the Sower because it is about the power and agency the sower has in spreading the Word of God.  We are the sower. 

If we tell someone we are Christian and then we behave in horrible and ghastly ways, the Word of God cannot grow and spread and take root in healthy ways.

We are the sower and we must prepare the land to take the seed.  To sow the Word of God is to sow love.  Today’s reading from Luke 6:27-38 is all about love.  Loving when it is hard to love.  Doing good.  Showing mercy.  These things create the perfect environment for the Word of God to take root and grow. 

I love my little house and the little plot of land it is built on.  In a neighborhood that is sometimes filled with the sound of gunfire, I have committed myself to sowing love.  And sometimes that is as simple as picking up the trash from the yard.  It is planting the world’s tiniest boxwood.  It is scattering literal seed on literally rocky ground with the hope that the figurative seed of God’s word will take root.  It is speaking to the house finch once again nesting on my front porch and speaking softly to her and encouraging her.  It is answering the door to the children who knock and giving them books to read.

We must sow love.  It’s the prayer of St. Francis, right? 

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:

where there is hatred, let me sow love;

where there is injury, pardon;

where there is doubt, faith;

where there is despair, hope;

where there is darkness, light;

where there is sadness, joy.

O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek

to be consoled as to console,

to be understood as to understand,

to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive,

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

 

Amen.