What grows in summer

"The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree." — Matthew 13:31-32

The children have been gone from the class for six weeks now and I am thinking about them this morning the way I think about the garden, which is that you do the planting and then you let the summer do what summer does and you do not stand over it asking if it has taken.

I told them on the last day that they should listen for their names this summer. I do not know if any of them remember that. I do not know if the boy who said prayer was talking to someone you could not see but who you were pretty sure was listening has thought about that since he said it. I do not know if the girl who always sits in the back has opened a Bible since May. I do not know any of that and I have decided that not knowing is part of the work.

My mother could wait. I am learning to wait. The garden teaches me every year that the thing I planted is doing something underneath the dirt that I cannot see and do not need to see, and when it is ready it will come up and I will know it because it will be there. And if it does not come up then I planted something else next year and the year after that and the planting was never wasted even if the harvest was not what I expected.

I am going to say their names this morning, quietly, the way I say the names in the back of my journal. Not because I think the saying changes anything for them. Because the saying changes something in me. It keeps them close. It keeps the planting alive.

Ruby keeps a collection of prayers at her kitchen table. You can find them here.