Spirituality of the Readings

Coming to Pieces

A tiny grain plants itself deep within the soil. It is tucked into complete darkness. It is fearless, comforted by the tough, safe shell that is its home. It belongs there, and knows it. In quiet. In growth. Home.

The growing seed’s former peace is replaced by shock. Its earlier great protector is now opposing it, holding it back. Crushing it. Then, suddenly, as if planned from all eternity, the protecting shell cracks right open, letting in the outside. “Wait, wait, I need you,” shouts the seed.

Nothing doing. The shelter is going to pieces! Moisture trickles in, and bits of dank, cold soil. Anything and everything can now wriggle right into the heart of what was a quiet, pure place.

The seed goes crazy.

But it copes somehow, wildly extending a new, thin arm outward, then slithering out its whole self. “Steady by jerks,” it says, through the cracks in its shell. It had to get out of there, so it dares its way into the rough, cold mud. How foolish and how shaming. Stay where safety is, you fool! *

But the transforming tiny self seems to take on a new life. Is this its new home now? Buried in the slippery soil? Ok, it moves with caution.

Too much is in its path, including a huge, unyielding rock. A jagged, rough, uncaring rock, heedless of tiny green shoots.

And so the story ends.

But not yet. The former seed appears to have will power. It is seeking something—urging itself toward some pressing objective, rooting its way by intuition. Along the under-edge of the rock it goes, brutally, fearfully and with rending pain. After what seems like years it achieves the far under-edge of the gnarly rock and, guess what.

It starts upward again.

Now there are hard clods it has to press through, and plenty of pebbles. The higher it goes the more dry the surrounding soil. Finally, the top crust. But it too forbids penetration. It is an ultimate, intractable, stupefying barrier.

And so the story ends.

Except for one voice from deep within. Push, push, it murmurs. I am with you.

Now just a thinnest lesion in the tough crust. With a certainty that might have been written on its heart, this vine-to-be squeezes through and gets to the place it was meant to be all along. In a haven of light and warmth, bathed in the sun’s astonishing rays. It is now a plant and it relaxes and stretches and yawns in the wafting breezes of Spring.

This is just like our own journey, isn’t it? Of course, dark mud can take a chokehold on our life.

But, Jesus says, do not worry, child, trust me. “Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit” (Gospel)

John Foley, SJ

**From Saint Louis University