What is this atomic gift of a body, hands, eyes, feet and ears, a seed of? We’ve inherited the cells that make up our being as a mysterious gift from the universe: what we give back in our lifetime can be the fruit of that seed, the fruit of the seeds sown by the parents who suffered to bear and raise us. And now, our free acts of love and reconciliation might bear fruit that we might not even imagine. This is the tiny seed of faith that can grow the enormous mustard tree.
The Way governs all things, so whether we love others or not, whether we like it or not, nature will turn us back into a new gift: blades of grass in which the grasshoppers rest, or branches from which birds proclaim their songs. No matter what we do, the universe will extract its once invested love back from us. But we all have the freedom to increase the yield, not just yield a zero sum game. Therefore the call to love one another is not a choice among many. Rather, it is the inevitable course of all things. Our submission to the Way, then, produces an abundance of good things, not just a sustaining of the status quo of biological life, but the presence of the resurrection here and now.
To quote Hieromonk Damascene from Christ The Eternal Tao :
"What was this course that all things followed? No thing existed for itself. Each thing humbly, patiently fulfilled its designation, without thinking, without possessing, or rebelling, or complaining, or laying blame, or taking credit, or seeking honor. One thing dies, without thinking, that others may live. A seed falls to the ground and dies, and from it comes a tree bearing fruit and more seeds beyond counting. If the seed is preserved whole, nothing will come from it. Only if it dies will it give life. This is the Way, the Pattern that all things follow...If each thing that is made serves another, And all things serve the whole, Does not the Way serve, also? If all created things (save man) humbly, patiently fulfill the designation of their existence on earth, Should not the Way ['Christ' the 'Logos'] do the same?"
painting: Doroga (translated, The Road), by Konstantin Kryzhitsky, 1899.
Jonathan Peasley
didn't know that he loved poetry until he heard Bjork sing "i will wade out" by ee cummings when he was a sophomore in high school. Since then, he has been on the hunt for those who capture in words those lightning flashes of the liminal and sublime that a moment presents. He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, with his wife, two children, and an idiosyncratic cat and dog. He teaches junior high and high school humanities classes at a private school.
