The Word of life, grown, ground and given...

  You have to listen with all of you 

to hear the white-green shoot 

pushing, rubbing, scraping up through 

cool, moist earth:  wheat being born. 

  

It’s a comforting sound when, finally,   

you hear it and you know the growing sound 

isn’t in the field 

but in your fragile frailty, 

in you… 

Then fear comes over you:

you wil be torn inside, again, until it hurts

and this may be the time

when growing leaves behind

the one you think you are,

harvesting the one you were made to be…

Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies,

it remains just a grain of wheat, but if it dies, it bears much fruit…

You don’t have to listen so closely  

to hear the wind shuffle its way 

through fields of wheat

so you have to look very carefully

to see it’s not the wind after all, but simply

wheat brushing against wheat,

wheat supporting wheat,

wheat enjoying wheat,

wheat embracing wheat.

The rustling becomes a symphony

of meeting, knowing, touching, growing:

wheat reaching out to wheat

not with fear, not with flushed face,

but only with the need to touch

and the sound of reaching 

is strong, enveloping, alive!

Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies,

it remains just a grain of wheat, but if it dies, it bears much fruit…

Grinding grains of wheat:  harsh,

breaking, crushing sounds,

a not soft noise – hard.

And now you don’t want to hear

wheat being crushed:

It just doesn’t look like wheat anymore

and maybe the explosion in you

wasn’t a matter of life but…

water is cool

and now it is all around you:

bubbling and swirling

in flour ground of wheat

and now you’re not surprised to know

you’re listening to blood filling your veins,

flowing all through you:  life.

And just before the fire consumed us, too,

we found bread:  one beautiful brown loaf

of wheat, wind, water

all rising to life in bread. 

Then came One 

who broke himself like a loaf

and we heard

in the crackling and tearing of the crust

the Word of life grown, ground and given

for those who share 

in the breaking of the bread.

Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies,

it remains just a grain of wheat, but if it dies, it bears much fruit…

--A Concord Pastor Comments –  

On Spirituality, Worship and Prayer 

in the Roman Catholic Tradition 

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Poem source