Day 16--Hard Soil and Wind

"And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them."  Matthew 13:4

Vincent van Gogh, Wheatfield with Crows, 1890

This painting may be van Gogh's final painting, but no one really knows.  As is often the case, the experts disagree. Seventeen years ago when we visited the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, Briggs and I disagreed about it too. He wanted to purchase the print, but I found it unsettling. I prefer van Gogh's works from Arles, France, a much sunnier period. But Briggs enjoys pensive things, so he gravitated toward works from the final year of van Gogh's life, 1890.

So, as sometimes happens in a marriage of strong minds, we ended up choosing a third, different painting which I don't think either of us liked as much. It worked as a compromise then, but I think of it sometimes, wishing either one of us had gotten our way instead. You learn a few things after a couple of decades of marriage, after looking at a print on your wall for a long long time.

Looking at Wheatfields with Crows now, I wonder why I didn't concede.  After all, I love the clash of the vibrant blues against the creamy golds. It was more the way the painting made me feel--the turbulent brush strokes and the ominous flock of crows left me feeling restless, unresolved.

detail from Maz Gill-Harper's The Sower

What's wrong with crows? I admire them in ways; they're social creatures and quite intelligent. However, they're pushy opportunists as well--nervy sorts.  In the wintertime, they get right up on our deck and shamelessly steal dog food. They pilfer newly planted seed in our garden.

All gardeners must contend with such a series of undermining forces. The garden and life are not neutral ground.  Despite your most diligent and consistent efforts, there is always push back. Slugs decapitate seedlings. Rabbits gnaw down parsley stalks. Squash beetles leave their hosts as paper-thin skeletons...

So it goes in the Parable of the Sower. The opportunistic birds pluck the most vulnerable seed right off the ground--easy pickings.  The passage doesn't tell us the kind of bird, but I imagine them as crows--stark, dark, swift. We are told they "came and devoured."  It's a sinister image that brings me back to van Gogh's tumultuous wheatfields.

Jesus doesn't soften his explanation of this soil---he doesn't soften any of his words for that matter.  It's one of the things I admire and love about him; He spoke without pretense, without fear of his audience's reaction.  Rejecting any propaganda, His words have the hallmark of truth--hard to receive, but unflinching, as truth is...

"When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart. This is what was sown along the path." -Matthew 13:19

I was once such hard soil, openly rejecting the Christian faith as wishful thinking and myth-making.  Christians can be easy targets, and I readily judged the faith by the weakest and worst.  Raised as a nominal Catholic, the Christianity that I had experienced was an empty shell--full of form but empty of spirit.  When I looked at the Church, I saw hypocrites notching their belts to justify their secret shortcomings and failures. I saw the church as a haven for the weak-minded and deluded.  I saw presumption, arrogance, and ignorance.  

It's not that I am unfamiliar with hard soil.

The Sower, Maz Gill-Harper

However, I also didn't see my own hardness--the presumption, arrogance, and ignorance with which I approached the question of Christ myself. As they say "familiarity breeds contempt,"---growing up as a nominal Catholic, I held a lens of contempt that was heavy and thick. I held my own stacked deck firmly in hand while accusing the dealer.  That's not fair either.   

It took much to loosen my hold on that lens, to break ground in the packed soil,  to arrive at a place where I considered the question of Christ liberally, less prejudicially, than I had before.  It required a softness of ground, fresh eyes. And, it clearly involved a movement beyond myself, of a Spirit, a movement that I can't quantify beyond my own experience.

The process of arriving at faith is a mystery, even to the person who experiences it first hand.  I can step outside myself and recall the way I once regarded Christ and His Church with pity and derision.  I can step inside myself and verify that I now see both completely opposite.  But, I cannot quantify every inch between the two.  Although there are common landmarks in such a journey, each path from doubt to belief is unique, a movement of God in man.  

Jesus likens such movement to the wind:

"The wind blows wherever it wants. Just as you can hear the wind but can't tell where it comes from or where it is going, so you can't explain how people are born of the Spirit." -John 3:8 

Or as Karen Blixen described His ways in Babette's Feast,

 "God's paths run across the sea and the snowy mountains, where man's eye sees no track."