Mark 4:14

The sower sows the message.


the farmer in the dell
has many animals
each with its own sound

what is the sound of a seed
on a path among weeds
safely rooted in healthy soil

this is the sound
of a next word
deeper than words

as sin is wider than sins
and life larger than lives
a word of seed portends

a field is disrupted
when a seed broadcasts
realized potential


As this is instruction for new proclaimers of a message of great mercy, the word here is a “Jubilary ‘Word’” (Myers, et. al.). There is revolution here that upsets all the accommodations we have made to systems of power. The time has come to reset impersonal Empire and personal privilege that our relationships might be on the basis of our gifts, not our inheritance.

At this point we begin dissecting the parable of Sower, Seed, and Soil. In so doing we will lose its inherent liveliness. Yet, hope lives that getting through hard-headedness will eventually lead to a reduction in hard-heartedness.

It is the λόγος (logos, “word”) that reminds us to look for places where healing of deafness takes place. By extension, this would also include blindness. These blockages to a reception of a word of new life, of great joy, of belovedness, are extensions of places where growth is either constricted or not available.

Noted here is that deafness and blindness, for the reader, are not related to people who have physical limits on hearing and sight, but to those parts of themselves which automatically dismiss hope and mercy, that begin a change but never get further than a New Year’s Resolution, or whose life has so many entanglements that noise of life-giving light and water being sucked away overrides an ability to hear an Elijah-like whisper to get back in the game of announcing.

If λόγος is not personally dangerous, as well as dangerous to Empires and Institutions, it is not good news. This is a needed corollary to our tendency toward theocracy where we structure our outside lives but fail to ground our internal life in continual growth in the humility of mercy and the integrity of theosis.