Seeds of Stubborn Hope

Ever stop to think of how stubborn seeds can be?  They are the deadest looking things.  I have a package of seeds for growing sprouts, maybe alfalfa.  Been in my cupboard for years, back when people bought sprouts in the grocery store all the time.  I have a special box for growing them that hasn’t been used in years.  Well, those seeds have been sitting in a cupboard for I don’t know how long and I thought, why not dig them out and grow some greens for sandwiches again.  I soaked them as per the instructions and you know, they are growing already!  They are sprouting as if they were bought yesterday, and next week we will be munching them between two slices of rye.  Seeds are stubborn like that.

So when I was on the Naramata website listening to a poem prayer by Keri Wehlander who first introduced me to liturgical dance and using actions with hymns, her phrase, “seeds of stubborn hope” rang in my heart as much as my mind.  How dependant we are on seeds can be seen by when we go searching for flour at the grocery store.  Wheat is what brought so many immigrants to Alberta so many decades ago.  Not quite as high as an elephant’s eye, but it was the breadbasket of the world, and still helps feed many people.  And almost as stubborn as seeds are the farmers who plant that wheat.  Year after year, they get their tractors ready and you had better bet that they are waiting for the snow to melt and the ground to dry so that they can start planting their crops as quickly as they can regardless of how bad the weather has been these past few years.  Especially now that everyone seems to be churning out home-baked goods from their kitchens because they have so much time on their hands.  Easter is hot cross buns and braided bread, babka decorated with little birds or maybe cooked with a hard-boiled egg in the centre, and dried fruits in the dough.  Some pysanka beside it, carefully hand-drawn not machinery mass produced, and not needing to be 31 feet long to be a work of art.

The stubborn hope of seeds lies dormant, waiting to grow, resting in the dark, looking quite dead and lifeless.  Then something happens.  The sun’s warmth strikes down and shines on the seeds, they are not alone and solitary, they are scattered, sure, but not as unconnected as they thought.  The rain’s moisture softens their hard protective covering, and little by little, the seeds start to sprout and grow until they can ripen.  And seeds can look very similar – the seeds I am growing for our sandwiches look very similar to poppy seeds, but wouldn’t be very tasty if they didn’t start growing.  Sometimes it’s not until they are full grown that we know if we have planted Kentucky bluegrass or crabgrass.  And sometimes it has surprising properties.  According to Wikipedia, some countries take crabgrass seeds and grind them to make an edible flour, so for you folks out there short on flour, wait a little and harvest your crabgrass!

Yeah, but what’s that got to do with you and me and Easter and all this Jesus resurrection stuff which we’ve all heard about and many are weirded out by.  Well, sometimes we too can be dormant seeds.  Many of us are experiencing a time of dormancy, of a new normal we are slowly adjusting to, and for those who still have jobs, a new time of frantic work overlaid with anxiety.  Things are different.  Things are stressful.  Conspiracy theories abound, according to the fellow who waited his turn to get to the bank machine, and snake oil remedies are legion.  And above all, things are lonely.  We cannot hug one another, we cannot go to Paddymelon’s for a cup of our favorite beverage and a chance to catch up with our friends and neighbors.  We cannot go for Easter dinner with our extended family.  We are having to let our personal connections lie dormant.  We have to stay home except for necessary travel to grocery and drug stores.  We are waiting, stubbornly, for hope, for a time when once again we will be able to meet and greet our neighbors, to give a high five or share a jigsaw puzzle and game of cribbage with friends.  We wait for sunshine and rain and new growth.

This could be a time of resting and learning, not just of facts and figures, but a deepening of character, of our ethics, our values, our morals, and our beliefs.  It may look and feel like we are doing nothing, but we can be growing and preparing to put out new shoots.

One of my favorite inspirational stories is the movie, “Invictus”, the story of Nelson Mandela, beautifully acted by Morgan Freeman.  Nelson Mandela was a young man who grew up going to a Methodist Church in South Africa, and the Methodist Church is one of the founding denominations of the United Church of Canada.  As a young adult, he was arrested and jailed for acts of terrorism against the Apartheid State.  He spent 30 years locked down, often in solitude, and he took this enforced dormant time to practise stubborn hope.  He turned to a poem called Invictus, written I was surprised to learn, for a Scottish flour merchant.  It could be a description of Jesus, the ultimate unconquerable soul:

In the fell clutch of circumstance,
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Easter is when we stand in awe at the foot of the cross, the empty cross, the empty tomb and remember the testimony of women and men from long ago that have inspired people for centuries.  Our Song of Faith says that Jesus suffered abandonment and betrayal, state-sanctioned torture and execution.  He was crucified.  But death was not the last word.  God raised Jesus from death, turning sorrow into joy, despair into hope.  We sing hallelujah.

Even when we don’t have faith in our ability to live in this dormant time, even when we feel no hope that we will grow again, even when we feel isolated, alone and suffering, Jesus points out that at the darkest of times, God has faith in us, God has hope that we will grow again, that God knows one day we will be able to sing hallelujah, because God is with us, we are not alone.  In life, in death, in life beyond death, God is with us, thanks be to God.