The Reading of Serendipity Part II

Karel Capek's The Gardener's Year is a deceptively simple little book which contains within it many observations eerily relevant to the religious and political climates of our day. In many respects the religious and intellectual leaders of the last century have failed adequately to nourish the soil of common human existence, choosing instead to exalt the fleeting pleasures of consumption, power and wealth. In his three page chapter on the soil, Capek compares the dead and sterile primeval clay with the rich soil of life and notes what it takes to change the one into the other.

"And then you will know that you must give more to the soil than you take away; you must make it friable and fertile with lime, and temper it with warm manure, lighten it with ashes, and saturate it with air and sunshine. Then the baked clay disintegrates and crumbles as it it breathed in silence; it breaks down under the spade with surprising readiness; it is warm and malleable in the hand; it is tamed. I tell you, to tame a couple of rods of soil is a great victory. Now it lies there, workable, crumbly, and humid; you would like to take it and rub it all between your thumb and finger, to assure yourself of your victory; you think no more of what you will sow in it. Is it not beautiful enough, this dark and airy soil? Is it not more beautiful than a bed of pansies or carrots? You are almost jealous of the vegetation which will take hold of this noble and humane work which is called the soil."

At the risk of making too many literal connections to such an allusive piece, my own thoughts turn to the pastoral task of Christian or spiritual formation. To hear Capek from that vantage point is perhaps to hear a call to the church to return to its primary vocation of formation. Vegetation is important but it can only live and indeed, thrive, in a healthy, fertile soil. Have we been so focussed on the vegetation that we have ignored the need to replenish and restore the soil?