Time to Sow

When life looms large and my efforts are not enough, you whisper it quiet:

Make yourself small.

Make yourself as a seed, curled in the dark earth, invisible but for the Father’s eye.

Make yourself sown, hurled by another’s hand and abandoned to the death of this dry husk.

Make yourself soft, able to receive the water of your germination.

When life looms large, make yourself small.

From this hiddenness, something radicle emerges.

From this burial, life will swell and root, a life that is stronger than the push of the world, as strong in this small place as any of the forces of nature. Here is the secret of the kingdom of heaven, the mystery of the cross, and the origin of being.

Do you feel it? Futility? Emptiness? The rattle of lifeless limbs? Then lean in close, leave all this striving, place yourself there between finger and thumb.

You whisper:

It is time to sow.

~lg

Kingdom Field Notes: Mother Junco's Secret

Little mother junco knows a secret. The tilt of her head outside the kitchen window tells me so. She knows the place where heaven and earth meet, somewhere in the branches of a great tree. There she will build her nest, and lay her treasures to rest.

She has found a seed. The one that falls into the earth and dies. And it will be her kingdom.

She has a dark eye for the small things, little mother junco.

And how she will sing on the day of new birth, when the pale blue egg breaks open like a morning sky to welcome the sun!

Until then, she laughs at the snow, her faith the evidence of things unseen, and her secret keeps her warm.


~lg

Kingdom Sentry

A raven sits atop the storm-ragged spruce, watching with one gleaming eye turned toward me. She watches through the kitchen window, peering into the mundane events of laundry and email and rinsing blueberries. She watches the seconds tick by as I make my way clockwise around the day. She must hear the baby crying, and laughing, and the songs I sing when no one else is home. She sits, a silent silhouette, a sentry over my thoughts. I leave to go to town, and when I return three hours later she is still there. Black omen or heavenly messenger? She watches, and I imagine I read her mind. The kingdom of God is found in small things. She flies away, blown by a secret wind.

~lg