Seed

Community sermon (4.12.2026)

Don’t speed the seed of you.

Does a seed wish it was the fruit, the flower, the towering oak? Does a seed long to just be there already, not here, not this.

Can you imagine, a little squash seed, all bummed out, getting down on himself, and you’re like, “Hey bud, what’s wrong?” and he’s like, “I feel like I’m not fully realized,” and you’re like, “What do you mean?” and he’s like, “I just know there’s more to me than this and I feel like I’m missing something, or I’m not doing it right or not doing enough maybe. I don’t know, I just wish it would happen already whatever it is, but maybe I’m making it all up and this really is just who I am, alone down here in the dark, and if that’s the case well then shit.”

Why do I do that? Why do I spend so much time dreaming, and scheming, and praying and planning, and worrying, definitely worrying, about becoming, or getting to, or getting…what, exactly?

I can be a very fraught seed sometimes. The Anxious Seed, someone should write that children’s book.

No, the little squash seed is not freaking out about becoming the butternut squash. It’s just doing its thing, being a seed.

Our little squash seed is now a big butternut squash who is starting to walk. He’s fruiting before our eyes, and it’s amazing of course, and everything you hope for and pray for, but it’s also sad. I wasn’t expecting that, the grief of watching him grow. Because he’s not my little squash seed anymore. And when he realizes just how awesome walking is, he’s gonna go all in on walking and walk away from that little crawling baby forever. He will never be that baby again. I loved that baby. I love that baby.

And I know, I know, it’s supposed to go like this, he’s meant to fruit, to flower, to tower among us. But dang y’all, it means letting him go, letting him die, from who he is today in order to become, unstoppably, who he will be, who he must be, tomorrow.

We are all unstoppably becoming. So why do we rush? Why do we long? Why are we so anxious to get a move on with it?

Don’t speed the seed.

Don’t miss the seed part of yourself, because there’s always a seed part isn’t there? Yes, you are a glorious butternut squash, prizewinning, look at you, but you are also a seed for what’s next, whatever it might be. And yet, forget about what’s next, is what I’m saying. Slow down into now. Crawl a little longer, even when you know you’re just about ready to walk. That’s where Valor’s at right now. He can walk, and he knows it. But he’s crawling a little longer, maybe for us.

Can I cherish my own crawling as I cherish my son’s? Can you be here, right here, at this stage in your life, in your development, in your healing, your awakening - and not rush it, not miss it in anticipation of the next stage, the advanced part, the bigger, the presumably better…I guess, somehow?

Love the seed. That might not be easy some days, most days maybe, especially when you know there’s something unblossomed within you, just waiting, fit to burst. Or it might not be easy to love the seed of you, when you lose touch with the fruits readying themselves within you so you lose hope that there’s anything more for you here, anything other than this disappointment, this loneliness, this this.

This. Yes, yes. This. Is. Not always easy. To love. But love, we must. Seeds need particular conditions to germinate and sprout up out of the ground and grow, my God, and blossom. Love is the condition, for us.

But how do you love the seed stage when it hurts so bad? We, humanity, are in the seed stage. How do I know this? Easy: because we are killing each other, starving each other, because we’re unkind to each other, to ourselves. That’s not the flower of who we are, the realized, blossoming expression of our essence. That’s seed stage stuff. We are inside the seed. And it’s dark in here. And tight. And painful for most of us. Shouldn’t we kinda speed this thing up a bit? Rush through this nasty patch that’s lasted a few thousand years and, you know, get to the good part ASAP? Why would we love this?

Some seeds wait thousands of years for the right conditions to then, at last, in an instant, germinate. One seed from a Judean date palm waited over 2,000 years. But get this: 32,000 years ago, some Ice Age ground squirrels buried a bunch of narrow-leafed campion seeds in the Siberian permafrost, and then, lo and behold, in 2012, some curious homo sapiens came along and sure enough that flower blossoms her white petals once again. 32,000 years.

Humanity’s flower is love. But love is also the necessary condition for that flower to blossom. That’s our dilemma. In this gnarly seed, buried deep in the permafrost of this dark age of forgetting, we create situations for ourselves that are unloveable - the unkind word, the mass genocide. And yet, we only prolong the Ice Age by relating to these situations, and to each other, with anything less than love. So, what is love? Baby don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me, no more. But seriously, what is love? That is the question, isn’t it? What is love? In this moment. And then in this moment. And then onward and forever into this, and this, and it’s always this moment.

So, don’t rush it. Love it. As it is. The seed. And your rage against the seed. Your loneliness inside the seed. Your longing. And if you can’t love it right away, as it is, whatever it is, ask for help. We can’t love alone, though it is love alone that will do, what is needed, for us to become, who we already are.