Luke 8:5–15
“A sower went out to sow his seed…”

The chill arrived overnight.

There’s a whisper of wind through the maple trees, a handful of leaves burnished gold, and a sky rinsed clean after rain. It is fall in the Pacific Northwest—our season of wool blankets, candlelight, and naps whispering their siren song by 5 p.m.

French onion soup simmers on the stove. Apples sizzle in cinnamon and butter, waiting to crown homemade vanilla ice cream. It’s the season of filling food, thick socks, and the primal longing to be full—body and soul.

And somehow, it is also the season for seeds.

Yesterday’s morning’s Gospel gives us the Sower. No commentary. No preamble. Just a man throwing seeds into the wind like mercy: unmeasured, unpredictable, absurd. The soil is rocky, thorny, beaten down.

And still—He keeps throwing.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not always good soil. I’m distracted soil. Tired soil. Sometimes resentful, often resistant, and just occasionally open—usually by accident.

Last month, at my dad’s care center, I was taught a card game by the “card shark ladies”—a fierce and holy crew in polyester pants and no-nonsense shoes. Veterans of life and loss.

Widows, prayer warriors, gentle instigators of humbling. Between rounds of King in the Corner, they ask after my father, send cards to residents who are ill, and visit the veterans on the honor wall.

Their coffee is weak. Their faith is not.

I lost, terribly. Twice.

And in my defeat, I sulked like a kindergartener who’d dropped her juice box. Then laughed. Then—strangest of all—felt grateful. For the laughter. For the humbling. For the gift of being seeded with joy by women who have outlived children, buried husbands, and carry their grief like a rosary.

It made me think: perhaps the soil is most receptive after it’s been broken.  Theophan the Recluse writes:

The Sower is the Lord Himself. The seed is His word. The ground upon which it falls is the soul. The soul becomes good soil through inner effort—through humility, attention, and prayer.

There is a reason we till the earth before planting. A reason autumn makes us ache. A reason rest and stillness matter. The soil of the soul must be softened—by tears, by laughter, by time.

Some of the best things God grows in us come after long dormancy.

This week, as we pack for travel and prepare to board our little dog (our family’s tiny theologian), I find myself worrying more than I’d like to admit. Will she be safe? Will she feel abandoned? Will she forgive us?

These are not trivial concerns. Not when they reveal how little control we have. And how much we long to love well.

But part of being soil is trusting that the Sower knows what He is doing—even when we cannot see what is growing.

We worry, and we rest.
We receive, and we resist.
We scatter, and He sows.

Mornings and I have always had a complicated relationship.

In kindergarten, I was a proud member of the “Late Birds”—the second-shift crew who arrived long after the industrious Early Birds had dutifully guzzled their milk (all of it, so as not to offend the starving children in China), assembled their puzzles, and were already elbow-deep in finger paint.

I’d shuffle in tousled, trailing the scent of cinnamon toast and hot cocoa, clutching my felt square like a sleepy pilgrim arriving late to the feast.

Not much has changed.

The dream persists: to rise at five, jog through pre-dawn mist, light a candle in the hush of morning prayer, and answer emails with monk-like serenity.

But if I'm honest, my rhythm still leans more Churchill than Franklin—Winston, who famously stayed in bed until ten, dictating state dispatches from his bathtub in silk pajamas. Not the worst model of productivity, perhaps.

Just… a different one.

Still, now and then, I wake early. I light a candle, wrap myself in a wool blanket, sip my coffee slowly. And I try—haltingly—to pray.

Because I am learning: the seed takes root in silence.

And sometimes, the silence sounds like cinnamon apples and snoring dogs and prayers said not because we feel holy—but because we are human.

Let us be human this week—tender, fallible, in need.

Let us receive the Word like the earth receives rain: not by effort, but by openness.
Let us remember: the Sower is never careless.
He knows where the thorns are.

And He keeps throwing the seed.

Perpetua

 “He is truly the Sower of all that is good, and we are His farm. The whole harvest of spiritual fruits is by Him and from Him. He taught us this when He said, ‘Without Me you can do nothing.’”
— Cyril of Alexandria