"Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” (John 12:24-25 NRSV)
“So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions. Salt is good; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; they throw it away. Let anyone with ears to hear listen!" (Luke 14:33-35 NRSV)
Tumbledown recalls these words of Jesus as he looks through brightly colored seed catalogs on gray days in January and February. In fact, he is behind on such thinking this year. The seed order ought to be in the mail by now. Soon, even in Indiana, it will be time to start the tomatoes and peppers inside under the lights to give them a head start on summer. This year the Burpee catalog sports the New Porterhouse Beefsteak Tomato, “sure to beat any record in the neighborhood.” (But I’ll bet Burpee never went up against any real tomato growers. The tomato competition is fierce in this neck of the woods.)
The picture on the cover is of bright red, perfectly shaped, 4 lb. tomatoes. These purveyors of seed know better than to put pictures of the shriveled up seeds on the cover. They are selling us the plump and juicy fruit at the apex of life, even though it is the tiny dry seed that will arrive in our mailbox. Tumbledown always seems to buy more seed than he can possibly use, because he is sold on these pictures of its potential. His eyes are bigger by far than his garden. But he also never plants quite enough of the seed he over-buys. Sometimes seed packets go unopened, unused. Sometimes they keep until next year, but mostly they must be discarded, lifeless, the potential for 4 lb. tomatoes wasted. Better--even in a Tumbledown garden, where not much reaches its full catalog potential--to put the seed in the ground than to keep it sitting on the shelf.
There is another substance coveted by gardeners that works the same way. Tumbledown gets his from a farmer friend. Tumbledown's mother-in-law reminded him of it this Christmas with a famous quote by Thornton Wilder from “The Matchmaker,” “Money is like manure; it's not worth a thing unless it's spread around encouraging young things to grow.” (Actually, my mother-in-law attributed the quote to the title character of “Hello, Dolly!” … but from Wilder the quote sounds more literary and highfalutin.) The quote has also been famously attributed to the likes of Francis Bacon and John Paul Getty, who may have had a nodding acquaintance with the attributes of money. Whoever said it, the quote is widely used, so the resemblance must be remarkable. The quote is usually concluded—usually by a politician—with the comment that manure, if piled up in one place, just stinks to high heaven.
I doubt that Burpee sells much manure, but if they did, they would probably try to sell it like they do their seeds, with pictures of ripe red berries and tomatoes.
You’ve often heard what Jesus said about seeds and manure piles, and about money. But mostly Jesus was talking about life—his and ours. To convince us, he reminds us of the “much fruit” that will result from our death. Better to spread the wealth and lose our own life, better to plant the seeds and watch another generation of green things grow up, than to leave the seeds to sit on the shelf and store up the manure in stinky piles.
Now, where did I put that order form?
No comments:
Post a Comment