We become a parable of untamed grace
If Jesus lived today, we might be surprised by how often he uses the ordinary metaphors of our lives to repair our imagination about God.
This week marks Canada’s National Day of Truth and Reconciliation, a time set aside to honour the survivors of residential schools and to remember all of the children who never returned home. All week long, the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation is running a series of free “lunch and learns” virtually. You can find those here. If you’d like more info about Orange Shirt Day in particular (and to donate!), here’s that link.
Every child matters. Then, now, always.
Hi friend,
I saw something I haven’t been able to shake, so here I am, writing to you about it today. (I suppose this is how most of my missives to you unofficially begin: here is a thing I keep thinking about and so please think about it with me?)
If you’ve read my books, lakes and bodies of water often show up in the prose at pivotal moments. I’m a well-established lake rat. I grew up playing in and around rather humble and small lakes, nothing too majestic or noteworthy like an ocean or a great lake, but still: happy, free, cold. A freshwater lake is still a sacred place for me. Brian and I cherish dreams of retiring near some sort of water - which would be quite a feat as prairie kids, but don’t bother us with facts when we are dreaming, eh?
As I mentioned a few weeks ago, we took our four kids on an epic family road trip over the summer, which culminated in a week at a rented off-grid cottage on a small lake in Ontario within the traditional land of the Anishinabek Nation. As part of the rental agreement, we were allowed to use the owners’ kayaks on the lake so we did. Our teens in particular logged many a paddle out on the water, exploring and enjoying sunsets together.
One evening near the end of our time there, Brian and I headed out on the water in the kayaks on our own for an hour or so, right at sunset.
As we slowly paddled across the lake in the evening light, my attention kept returning to one of my favourite features of that area: how the trees grow right out of the rocks in scattered islands across the waters.
It’s an iconic phenomenon in the lakes of the Canadian Shield, right along with the evening cries of the loons.1 Being out on the water brought us closer to the island rocks with their unlikely forests.
As we paddled our way around the islands of rock with their craggy, leaning trees, I took a few pictures, wanting to remember this peculiar against-the-odds beauty. It’s a wonder, really, how these trees thrive and survive here, especially to someone like myself who somehow manages to kill even hardy IKEA houseplants.
Later, I learned that these kinds of trees are called “lithophytes,” the botanical word for the trees that root in rocks and use whatever sunlight, rain, and minerals they can extract in order to grow.
Their root systems are different than typical plants in traditionally good-for-growing dirt. If typical trees root deep and wide and unencumbered, these stalwart survivors root instinctively follow any crack and break in the rock, pushing further and further, deeper and deeper into/around/through the rock. Their roots connect and intertwine literally within a rock, winding back and forth, in a deeper and more tangled fashion than their counterparts, as they search for nutrients and water. That complicated root system ends up serving as their own private anchor, holding them steady in the face of every adverse element.
These trees grow wild and untamed in what should be considered an inhospitable environment. In other, hotter regions with similar stories, the trees have evolved to be extremely drought tolerant, too, rooted in rocks and still growing, still standing. They’ve all adapted in order to survive.
No, not just survive: to flourish, in their own way, holding fast in every storm meant to destroy and uproot. They are creating their own kind of undomesticated aliveness.
When we turned towards home in our kayaks, I thought of us, of our stories, perhaps because at our first Evolving Faith gathering in 2018, Rachel Held Evans gave a beautiful talk about evolution and adaptation. She wisely noted, “An evolving faith is simply faith that has adapted in order to survive,”2 which is clearly where my mind went.
It all reminded me of the Parable of the Sower. Jesus told a now-familiar story of a farmer who scatters his seed on all sorts of ground.3 The seeds that are scattered on rocky soil, are described as springing up quickly but dying just as soon because the soil is shallow. In his parable, he later explains to the disciples that the seed on rocky soil is a metaphor for “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.”4 For what it’s worth, the seed that fell 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.”
I’ve often said that God hides in plain-sight in our right-now lives.
So of course I think the geography and stories, people and histories of our places are singing a psalm to us, if we pay attention in our own context and moment.
We returned to the dock, storing the kayaks away along with our life jackets but some part of my soul has stayed there on the expanse of water, watching the trees rooted in the rocks ever since with that sense of wonder.
I have wondered if perhaps the story of the sower would have been told differently if Jesus were sitting at the shore of a lake on Anishinabek land, rather than the Sea of Galilee.
I think so. I hope so.
I’ve always liked to baptize my imagination when it comes to Jesus and the stories of scripture - it helps me interpret and understand, sometimes redeem and otherwise expand.5 I think there is something lovely to that sacred work/play, the openness of letting the Spirit move and breathe into our lives through these re-imaginings or retellings from others, too. When we’ve been taught one way of understanding the stories of the Bible, it can be an unsettling experience to realise that whole cultures and social locations and experiences read the same stories completely differently. (It’s unsettling, then it’s thrilling.) Sometimes our own imagination also lets us play a bit, like children exploring with wonder and possibility.
I say that because the tenacity of these unlikely parables reminded me that so much of Jesus’ teachings were rooted in his every day life. He looked around his place, his people, his time and told their shared stories. The widow looking for the lost coin, the farmers, the shepherds with wandering sheep, the patching of old clothes with new fabric or decanting wine into new wineskins, the labourers out for a day’s work, weddings. He knew his world and his people, he told his stories from their shared lives.
If Jesus lived among us today, we might be surprised by how often he uses the ordinary metaphors of our lives to repair our imagination about God.
So perhaps good soil could include this northern place. Perhaps the Word can take root and flourish in the unlikeliest of places and people. Perhaps if the parable’s sower scattered seed in rocky soil here, they might be surprised by what takes root against the odds.
Perhaps there was a parable there, hiding in plain sight, about those of us who come from places that were unforgiving and harsh, receiving the good news and somehow taking root and flourishing in an unstoppable faithfulness.
Perhaps there’s a parable of how we are shaped by the wind, by evolution and tenacity, by the cracks in our certainties, even by our own hunger.
Perhaps Jesus would tell us of the ways, even in the rockiest of places, in the most inhospitable of environments, some of us adapt and evolve. We receive the word and against the odds, despite the harshness of our environment, we push our roots down through rock, through every crack and crevice, searching for any water and mineral that will help us. Our roots become our testimony of faithfulness. We persevere and survive through resourcefulness in adversity. We become a parable of untamed grace.
Lately, though, I’ve been wondering if perhaps I was thinking of the wrong parable after all. Maybe it’s not about a “good soil” vs. “rocky soil” parable after all.
Maybe it’s actually a humble Canadian glimpse at Jesus’ teaching to build our homes on the rock, rather than on the sand: “The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.”6
Perhaps we’re the house built on the rock. Perhaps we’re the tree rooted in the rock, a different sort of home, one meant for birds and bugs, bears and imagination.
Perhaps every part of you that is searching, searching, searching means you are actually being rooted and anchored by that very search.
Our spiritual homes maybe aren’t domesticated and suburban and traditionally considered lovely. Perhaps our spiritual homes are rooted deep in a rock, anchored in unlikely places, always searching, still surviving, clinging to the Gospel against every wind that seeks to tear away.
Either way, I’ll probably keep wondering what kind of stories Jesus would have told if he had been here in Canada. Where is God hiding in plain sight on a kayak, on a walk, in an office cubicle, in a bus shelter, in a garden, in a clear-cut construction site, in a convention centre in Minneapolis, in an online chat room?
I wonder what stories he would have told from your place, time, people. I wonder if there are parables hiding where you are rooted, too.
I wonder if you know how tenacious you are. Have you honoured the parables of unexpected faithfulness and flourishing?
I wonder if you know how hopeful it is to keep holding on, to let the wind sweep through your branches, to keep clinging to the rock of ages?
Holding on,
S.
And in case you missed these recent Field Notes:
Speaking of avoiding things, let’s get to the Internet!: A round-up of interesting links plus a little personal catch-up
A blessing for your evolving faith: God’s love has never been dependent on your right opinions, you can take a deep breath now.
My favourite genre of television is best described as “kind people who are very capable at their jobs engaged in a gentle, affirming competition”: Sharing autumn faves for movies, some music, delicious recipes, the organizer saving my sanity, my favourite slippers, and more good things
Back to School Benediction: Go forth with the grace of a learner's heart
👀 Book Cover Sneak Peek: Preorders are open for "Field Notes for the Wilderness" now!
You can listen to that message on Season 1, Episode 1 of The Evolving Faith Podcast.
“…Jesus went out of the house and sat by the lake. Such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat in it, while all the people stood on the shore. Then he told them many things in parables, saying: “A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. Whoever has ears, let them hear.” Matthew 13:1-9, NIV
Matthew 13:20-21 NIV
For instance, in Jesus’ first miracle - when Jesus turns water into wine - at his mother’s request at a wedding in Cana, I’ve always read that story a bit differently than a lot of other folks, perhaps because I’m a mother myself but also because of my own relationship with my Mum. So when Mary tells him the wedding is out of wine, I read it with the raised eyebrow of every mother everywhere that communicates exactly what she means to her kid. And when Jesus says, “Woman, what does that have to do with me?” I always read it with a laugh in the line, it reads like a son who loves his mother and enjoys teasing her a bit. She doesn’t say anything in return which makes me laugh over whatever expression was on her face. To my reading, the whole exchange is a sign of their intimacy and perhaps playfulness, not correction. But again: we all read into the text what we bring to the text, don’t we?
That’s in Matthew 7, for the curious.
I’ve always struggled with that parable, my question being: “what fault is it of the rocky or weedy soil that they are what they are, or what credit does the good soil deserve for being more seed-friendly?” I like your view better, Sarah. It seems to me that God’s care of us is all about ways to help us find God. If we’re rock, God makes the roots stronger or sends water to wear away a path. If we’re choked with weeds, God sends a cultivator to make some breathing and growing space. And if we’re soft and rich with nutrients, someone already worked us up in the ways of trust and openness. God will find a way to make God’s love accessible and real, no matter what material we are made of or how life has either nourished us or hardened us. I hope that’s true. On good days, I believe it is.
This whole wondering/imagining inspired by Spirit in water’s fluidity and rock’s stability — nature, the first Bible of Great Creator — filled my entire soul. Matter matters. I felt Love quicken and stir and move even in the evolution of your reframe from one parable to the next. The invitation to see and experience the transparency of the divine in our everyday as living parables feels especially poignant. Thank you for inviting us into this moment to consider and wonder and imagine with you.