Good Soil

A friend of mine, David (not Mr. Kline) used to say “If life gives you garbage, make compost!” I’m not sure if the statement is original to him or not? Whether or not it was, he certainly lived into it both literally and figuratively. David had slowly lost his hearing over the course of many years. By the time I learned to know him, he was severely limited in his ability to hear. The loss affected his ability to follow along in worship and to carry on a conversation in a group or public setting. His wife would diligently scribble notes to assist him in following along, but sometimes it was not enough. David’s hearing loss was accompanied by severe headaches and dizzy spells. There were days when he would be totally incapacitated by his physical condition.

What amazes me is that David continues to make compost with the challenges (garbage) he has been given. David is a master gardener. Besides the impressive gardens at his home, David provides leadership and resources for a community garden that raises an impressive amount of vegetables, fruit, and flowers for a local food pantry. He does so with a unique style of gardening where he never tills but is continuously adding leaves and grass clippings and whatever other organic matter he can get his hands on. In the fall David can be seen driving around town picking up bags of leaves from in front of people’s homes to haul back to the pantry garden.

David literally makes compost from garbage. And his gardens are incredible. When everyone else’s garden is hard and dry in August his is moist and loose enough to dig up potatoes with your bare hands. He uses very little, if any, fertilizer because of the richness of the compost and the activity of the worms and other creatures that inhabit the soil.

Jesus tells “anyone with ears to listen” a parable about a Sower (Matthew 13:1-9) who went out to sow wheat. The star of the parable is the “good soil” that brought forth grain (fruit), some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. Wendell Berry has written, “I don’t think it is enough appreciated how much of an outdoor book the Bible is” and I couldn’t agree more. Here’s Jesus sitting in a boat at the edge of the lake teaching a crowd and talking about good dirt. He might as well have been talking about David’s garden.

What you learn when you begin studying what makes up good soil is that it is alive. Good soil is more than just a solid place for the roots to grow. Good soil has worms and bugs and bacteria and fungi. It not only has living creatures in it but, it has a good amount of old, dead plant matter. Stuff that is in the process of being broken down by all of those little creatures so that it’s nutrients can be used by the new plants to produce a hundredfold. This is the stuff that Jesus is talking about, good dirt! Now one might argue that Jesus didn’t know all of this when he was sharing the parable of the sower, after all Jesus was a carpenter, and soil science has only recently evolved. But, when we read (John 1:3) that “all things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.” I think it’s safe to say Jesus knew of what he spoke.

Perhaps if Jesus would have shared his parable today he might have included a description of the soil that has had so many chemicals sprayed on it that the worms, the bugs, the bacteria and fungi, along with the dead plant matter being broken down are no longer present. So much so that the nutrients needed for the grain to grow must be delivered ready-made for the plant to survive. This soil is deceiving in that it produces possibly 150-fold but delivers less nutrition to the humans who consume it. Believe it or not, research has shown that today’s corn, wheat, and oats contain fewer nutrients than they did 50 years ago. In large part, this is because farmers failed to pay attention to the importance of good soil. In the rush to push the production envelope and increase yields they settled for less.

The temptation to produce and have “more” is powerful. I remember growing up with my mom fixing meals out of the “More with Less” cookbook. The truth that more is not always better, bigger is not always better, seeped into my conscientiousness at an early age. This doesn’t mean that I’ve never struggled with wanting more, I do all the time. I’ve found that I could always use at least 10% more income. I am powerless to resist, powerless that is unless my soil, is good soil.

My soil, my heart and mind, must be alive with God’s Holy Spirit. And I must allow God’s Spirit to be at work in there on the “dead plant matter.” Those experiences in my life, both good and difficult, provide the components, the nutrients needed, for me to continue to bear fruit. I can try and do it through artificial means, my own way, ignoring what makes for good soil. But the fruit, though it may be plentiful, will be sub-par at best. I look at my friend David’s life and recognize this truth evident in his life. God’s Spirit has been at work in his soil taking some of the garbage he has been given and breaking it down in a way that has produced some incredible fruit. It takes patience. Compost isn’t made in a day. I’m learning to be patient.