Hope in a Hole in the Ground

It would seem to be a sad thing to have to bury one's hopes in a hole in the ground.  It would seem to be the final recourse when a person had to abandon a long-held hope, trying to put it out of sight.  Even Jesus tells his disciples not to behave like the servant who "went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master's money" (Matt. 25:18, NRSV).  Nevertheless, a hope of a kind is put in the ground and covered over trillions of time around this planet every year. That hope is encapsulated in a seed.

If ever there were a question about whether the earth were good, it would seem to be answered by that act.  As the early 20th-century poet Rainer Maria Rilke poignantly put it:

"In spite of all the farmer's work and worry,

he can't reach down to where the seed is slowly

transmuted into summer.  The earth bestows."

This connection between hope and the ground came to me when I encountered again a one-line quotation by someone much less known than Rilke. The quotation was by Lucy Larcom. Although few people know about her, a fair number of people may have encountered a statement of hers that is used by organizations such as the Arbor Day Foundation.  Larcom succinctly wrote:  "He who plants a tree / Plants a hope."  Of course, in this case, the "hope" is not completely buried, seedlings or young trees being the ways trees are usually planted.  Nevertheless, what dependence upon the earth and upon a tenuous life other than our own is embodied in that act of planting!  A number of U.S. cities are now more aware of how precarious the life of trees can be, because droughts over the past years have killed so many trees, both young and old.  And how even more dependent peoples' hopes must be in countries where water cannot be obtained through a garden hose or a transporting truck.

To be fair to Jesus, I should point out that when he guides his disciples not to put their "talents" in "a hole in the ground," he is using an agricultural metaphor to provoke insights about human behavior (as is often the case).   He is encouraging his followers not to remain holed up in their own houses, but instead to put their "talents" -- both money and abilities -- into circulation. His words could be paraphrased as, "Don't isolate. Interrelate!"

As I return my thoughts to those seeds being placed in the ground and covered over with soil, I now realize that the instructions we are giving them without words are very much the same.  We are in effect saying:  "Don't stay isolated in that sterile paper envelope where you've been. Instead, return to that world your family came from.  Get back in touch with the earth with all its nutrients and microbes.  Interrelate with the life-forms that are in the soil.  And soak up the rain that filters down, letting your life interrelate with the clouds and sun above.  Grow."

And upon that instructed seed, we humans place our sometimes frail hope.  It is a hope that has not been entirely disappointed billions and billions of times.

~~~

Have you ever gardened?  Have you ever thought about the wonder in those seeds?

(Rilke quote from "The Sonnets to Orpheus," XII, trans. Stephen Mitchell, in Ahead of all Parting, © 1995. p. 433)

(The quote by Lucy Larcom [1824-1893] is from "Plant a Tree,"

as quoted in A Dictionary of Environmental Quotations, ed. Barbara K. Rodes, © 1992.  130:8.)

(Both photos by Roger Culos, used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported licenses.)