The Seed of New Life

In Seeds of Contemplation, his masterful description of the spiritual life, Thomas Merton, the twentieth century monk and mystic, says that ‘every moment and every event of every person’s life on earth plant something in the soul. For just as the wind carries thousands of winged seeds, so each moment brings with it germs of spiritual vitality that come to rest imperceptibly in the minds and wills of human beings. Most of these unnumbered seeds perish and are lost, because we are not prepared to receive them: for such seeds as these cannot spring up anywhere except in the good soil of freedom, spontaneity, and love’ (Merton, Seeds of Contemplation, 12)

Of course, Merton goes on to acknowledge that this is not exactly a new idea. Our Lord told us long ago in the parable of the Sower that ‘The seed is the word of God.’ But he goes on to interrogate what we mean by this word. We can very easily think of this word in terms of the preaching of the Word in the context of a Sunday Sermon. Nice to think that the preacher has such an exalted role in the divine economy. 

We may think of this word in terms of the proclamation of the gospel. Some pithy sentence which reduces the gospel to a nutshell. But so often when we do this we limit and restrict the scope of divine revelation – so that the Church rather than the world becomes the principal means of divine communication. And instantly we find ourselves working with a much smaller canvas, which serves only to magnify our churchy concerns.

But Merton invites us to think about the pattern of divine communication in much broader terms, by placing it in the context of the human search for truth. Thus the word is an intimation of the truth about ourselves, about our fallibility, about the world we live in. The telling of this truth must give space to the language of poetry and paradox, which is why so much of Jesus’ teaching is in the form of parables. We discover a description of our lives that gives space to the meaningless as well as the meaningful, that enables us to acknowledge the absurd as well as the beautiful, that is even ready to acknowledge the reality of pain and grief, as well as those intimations of joy and love, which give us life. We find the resources to describe our lives in all their complexity. 

And so Merton tells us that every moment and every event in our lives plants something in our souls. This seed is the word of God. And that word may sometimes be unspoken – for as Merton suggests, ‘every expression of the will of God is in some sense a ‘word’ of God and therefore a ‘seed’ of new life. The ever changing reality in the midst of which we live should awaken us to the possibility of an uninterrupted dialogue with God. By this I do not mean continuous ‘talk’ or a frivolously conversational form of affective prayer which is sometimes cultivated in convents, but a dialogue of love and of choice. A dialogue of deep wills.’ Merton is describing the character of true prayer – an uninterrupted dialogue with God. This is not about compiling an extended catalogue of petitions or complaints. It is about discerning the will of God for our lives. 

I find Merton’s description of the word in Matthew’s parable rather helpful. Rather than thinking of the word in this parable as some sort of special revelation, he is alerting us to the fact that every experience we face in the course of our lives plants something in our soul. For as Merton goes on to say, ‘In all the situations of life ‘the will of God’ comes to us not merely as an external dictate of impersonal law but above all as an interior invitation of personal love.’ And when Merton speaks of ‘the will of God’, he is at pains to disabuse us of the notion that God’s will is some kind of sphinx-like and arbitrary force bearing down upon us with implacable hostility. Some misfortune crushes us – and someone tells us (or worse, we tell ourselves) that it was the will of God. As Merton says, such an understanding of God’s will only leads people to lose their faith in a God they cannot find it possible to love. 

Instead, we learn sometimes falteringly, sometimes haphazardly, sometimes when we are least expecting it, that the love of God seeks us in every situation, and seeks our good. We discover in God’s will everything that it good, everything that is beautiful, everything that is true. And if the parable of the sower teaches us anything, it is not that all those rocky paths and thistles describe other people in their abject failure or their wallowing in sin while we look on with a sense of superiority. Each of the scenarios recorded in the parable where the seed falls by the wayside describes an aspect of our own soul: sometimes we are too distracted and overwhelmed, sometimes we simply cannot bear the truth, sometimes we cannot bear to receive the word.

And yet Merton reminds us that there is grace. There are moments when our hearts are stirred and we recognize our need of God. Then the seed falls on rich and fertile soil. And when the love of God takes root in our soul, when we recognize in that small seed, a sign of God’s promise, a glimpse of hope, an intimation of divine love, our lives begin to change. As Merton puts it, ‘If these seeds would take root in my liberty, and if His will would grow from my freedom, I would become the love that He is, and my harvest would be His glory and my own joy.’

‘I would become the love that He is’ – that is the transformation at the heart of the parable of the Sower: that is the seed of new life.