Good Soil

What’s Growing Beneath

Almost daily for the past month or so, I have had soil underneath my fingernails. As a “Person of the Tomato” – which my neighborhood garden club leader so deemed the group of us who bought seedlings from the community garden – I now acquaint myself with dirt more often than usually (at least for me). By checking the soil dampness daily, I can respond to the needs of my tomato plant.

If it’s dry, I’ll add more water. Every few weeks or so, I’ll add some seaweed fertilizer to the water for extra nutrients. If there are dead leaves, I trim them off. When it started leaning because of top-heavy weight, I stuck a dowel in the soil and tied the stem to it. Often, these acts in my garden leave my hands dirtier than before, with soil stuck underneath my fingernails.

I’ve been thinking about soil recently, not only because of my garden hobby, but also because of a conversation facilitated by one of our two students in our Houses of Hope Directed Study course. She guided us in a discussion of the book Fresh Expressions of the Rural Church by Michael Adam Beck and Tyler Kleeberger. Just as the book started in an unexpected place – the history of the Methodist movement in the emerging United States – our conversation about it started in an unexpected place. “The authors focus on soil in this book, specifically the soil of rural churches, as a metaphor. So… my question is, when you think of your faith community as soil, what is it like? What makes up your soil?”

A loaded question.

The first person to speak began by naming what I was already thinking, and perhaps what many of us were thinking as well. What makes up my soil? If I’m honest, my soil feels loose right now – scattered – perhaps even a bit displaced. It is a season of transition for me in my faith life; after leaving the congregation and the watermelon, which I served back in December, I still do not feel as if I have landed on solid ground. I named it as such. The conversation continued and deepened.

Our facilitator shared that she took a little bit of liberty in this conversation to bring us from our heads to our hearts, from theory into personal story. Without fully knowing it, she was replicating the offerings of our Houses of Hope process. To focus on the heart. To open space for vulnerable sharing. To center us in stories, one another, faith, and God. If the conversation was compared to the types of soil outlined in Matthew 13, it was good soil. It reminded me of the other good soil in my life, from times past, as well as helping me recognize the good soil of my present time, even with the transitions.

It reminded me of the budding tomato plant on my porch – whose first flowers have turned into tiny green tomatoes. It reminded me about the transformations that came come from Jesus, who can make all our soil good. The rocky soil, the soil filled with weeds, the patchy soil that birds and squirrels pick through to find the seeds before they can nestle in the earth.

It would be inaccurate to say that Houses of Hope can take rocky soil, weedy soil, or patchy soil and make it good soil. That is not our work – that is God’s work. Houses of Hope can be a companion in tilling the soil, in unearthing the rocks and weeds, and in offering some fertilizer through practices.

What is your soil?

What is rooted in it?

What is rooted in you?

If these questions spark wondering, curiosity, and excitement, reach out to us at Houses of Hope – and let’s see how we can be good soil together.

(Houses of Hope works with congregations across the United States, rooted in unique soil and various context. Through our work with these congregations, we have seen good soil in many different ways and many different places. We believe that spiritual practices help nourish our own individual soil, and can be nourishing for the entire soil of a congregation and its surrounding community.)