Full of Grace

Dear Eugene,

Last Saturday we were building garden boxed in front of our church, and finally filled them with soil donated by the city.  Part of the condition of this most generous gift is that we'll involve the community in the garden planting, growing and flourishing.

We worked hard non-stop all day, and at the end were left with maybe one-third of what was given us, which is a lot.  I wrote up a sign "Free Soil: Full of Grace" and staked it on the soil.

People told me after I left that in about half an hour the soil was cleaned up.  Some related to me specifics about size of vehicle that came and the enthusiasm in the air, which smelt of PNE farmhouse.

I wonder if Jesus were there, whether he would come up with a parable.  I wonder if it would go something like this (by the way, I was not there; so the following is a complete fabrication on my part):

*******

There was a church at the fringe of a marginalized neighborhood, small in ways more than one but was given a big pile of fertile soil.  It was dumped at their front door early one morning like a heap of rambling nonsense.  The humus emitted odor and vapor, its giftedness waiting to be spoken for and related to.

People in the church worked throughout the day building garden boxes and filling them with the Given, to place order to chaos, vocation to the idle, name to the obscure.

Before sunset the boxes were filled to the rim.  Their shepherd said, "Why don't we bless our neighborhood and give away what was given us?" for there was still much soil left.

So they wrote up a sign with the words "Free Soil: Full of Grace," push-pinned it onto two leftover stakes (now made useful in a different way), and placed it on the mount of witness.

The neighborhood was enlivened.

Some couldn't believe the gratuitousness and asked for clarification, to avoid being caught on camera, embarrassed, even accused.  For they know the worth of the soil.

"Yes, it is free; you read it right!"  The church people added to the sign two characters of a perplexed neighbor's language to give her the blessed assurance.  And the neighbor proceeded with joy and hope.

"Holy luck!" she screamed in her heart. "I was worrying about taking the bus in this rain to Home Depot to get my spring soil.  Now it is delivered right to my neighborhood, close to my door!  And for free!  My prayer is answered, one that I did not even pray!!!"

She took out a red flimsy plastic bag and started filling.

Before her second hand scoop, there pulled in a pickup truck, roaring.  By the time its headlights were dimmed and engine killed, two strong young men jumped out of it, worn shovels in hand, huge tarp bags behind the cargo swing door, now rudely unhinged with a squeak and then a thud.

"What's up with that?!" the lady with a small red plastic bag mumbled. "It's as if they were informed by angels last night to get ready for a bonanza this very hour!  Who gave them a head start?  How do they know?  So very prepared to make a big killing, descending like hard rain to wash up the windfall!  How unfair?"

She tried to get her hands on a stray plastic bag blowing in the wind, but the answer to her longing proved elusive.  Her heart, full of indignation, fought the urge to run home for some bigger, sturdier containers, for the scavenging was now fierce and the survival of the fittest playing out in a blur, much faster than her any possible dashing, even though home is only two blocks away.

"Faraway--so close!" she lamented.

Beside her stood an old man wearing a funny polkadot hat.  He gazed at the sign; the words "Full of Grace" engrossed him.  He was possibly weeping but it could be the rain.

*******

Hope you enjoyed my imitating Jesus, on this day before his dying.

Yours, Alex