Ah! The parables! Enigmatic entities whose meaning is not immediately clear, Spirit filled seeds of creation, brimming with promise of life and vitality. Some seem simplistic, others baffling, yet others tiresome. The shorter they are, the more meaningful they seem to be. The longer ones invite unfortunate critical analysis that destroys the purpose of their formulation, the presence of the living God.

Think of The Pearl of Great Price, or the Treasure Hidden in a Field - one-liners that carry a stupendous wealth of Presence. No other words are necessary. One is invited into a liminal space of boundless possibility that is - really, truly, madly - ineffable.

Rowan Williams once referred to Christ as a “riddler”, “one who makes us strangers to what we think we know,” whose “sharp and enigmatic words … oblige us to imagine ourselves anew …”

So, in considering the parable of the Sower, let us not get entangled in the details, but seek the greater truth, the Sower Herself. Forget the possibilities for careful agriculture, husbandry of soil types, farmers negligent or otherwise, weeds and what not; the Sower in this tale is extravagant, reckless,
abandoned, indiscriminate. Seed is scattered everywhere.

The late R S Thomas’ poem
Raptor has in part,
You have made God so small
setting him astride
a pipette or a retort
studying the bubbles,
absorbed in an experiment
that will come to nothing
I think of him rather
as an enormous owl
abroad in the shadows
I have heard him crooning
to himself, so that almost
I could believe in angels.