Pop 89: We Are the Soil

By Madonna Hamel

I admit to slipping into a style of talking that gives over to unconsidered emotional responses. Sometimes, I attribute it to my astrological sign: hey, I’m an Aries! Or I explain that my psychological and physiological heritage is to blame. 

In fact, when I moved to Quebec City, where I lived for a dozen years, I experienced a strange sense of belonging, accompanied by a sense of relief that I was not a weirdo, just Latin! As my friend Guy explained: “The Quebecois are the Latins of the cold climate! You can’t really understand Quebeckers until you’ve spent a winter here.”

By the same token, I’d say: You can’t really understand Canadians until you’ve spent a full year in Quebec, watching how the seasons are handled and celebrated, basking in the crazed euphoria of that first warm evening when Spring finally arrives. Joining everyone as they rush outside, refusing to go back indoors until next winter.

Then again, when I moved to the prairie, I found another approach, just as Canadian, to life and its challenges and unforeseen circumstances: “Hunker down and get ‘er done.” It’s not like people don’t have opinions or insights; they just don’t feel the need to impress them upon everyone in a state of euphoria!

I arrived and expressed my well-researched opinions at coffee row while the farmers and ranchers silently drank their ultra-weak coffees. I brought my urban-formed itself to the country, claiming to be open and accepting but acting pretty damn smart. 

There is a difference between smart and wise. Between theory and practice, and the longer I live on the prairie the longer I realize, this is not a culture of theory but of practice. 

Many people have no language for their experiences, they just live them. If I ask about any spiritual encounters they might have out on the wild prairie, te response to my unwelcome prying is a shrug. There is almost a taboo against putting such things into words. As one rancher friend said, with much exasperation, after I tried to express my deep sense of relief and release and alignment with some Great Mystery while on The Butte: “We feel things. We just. Don’t. Talk about it.”

I don’t mean to denigrate my own spiritual experience, but I’m learning what prairie people already know: you can chase away these personal encounters with too much talk. This may be due to the reserved nature of this territory’s immigrant heritage: Norwegian, Swedish and German. But the village was originally French. With a touch of Russian and Belgian diaspora as well. Not to mention the ever-present Cree, Nakota, Lakota and Dakota and Metis ancestry.

I’m not about to claim that everyone here is the salt and light of the earth. All the churches that were once here, including the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, are closed. Empty. I can’t say what people do in place of a faith practice, but I concur with the new Pope’s words: “ A lack of faith is often tragically accompanied by the loss of meaning in life, the neglect of mercy, appalling violations of human dignity.”

In his inauguration and at his first general audience, the Pope chose words about words: “Disarm our words, and we will disarm our world.” In his first public address, he retold the parable of the sower. But first, he defined what a parable is! An etymologist pope, how great is that! After all, defining our terms helps us avoid misunderstandings. 

“The term “parable” comes from the Greek verb “paraballein”, he told us, “which means: to throw in front of. The parable throws before me a word that provokes me and prompts me to question myself.”

He then goes on to say that the seed being thrown is the word. “And what is this terrain? This soil?” he asks. “It is our heart. It is us.” How important are words? His answer is clear: “The word provokes every reality.”

In one week the Pope has blown away the notion, enforced and maintained by so many in the press, that to get heard and seen and respected you have to be outrageous, gimmicky, to be a top story “you have to bleed to lead.” But that belief is just a paradigm, and paradigms can be shifted and broken if need be.

But we have to WANT to “break the paradigm of war”, of warring sides. Some people thrive on misunderstandings- their antennae only picks up possible contentious comments, not possible communal moments. Why? Perhaps because contentiousness is less intimate and intimacy is too vulnerable? The words of the new Pope suggest that having faith in something bigger than us allows us to feel safe in our vulnerability. 

One thing is for certain: we CAN shift from tense to relaxed, from negative to positive, from hostile to civil if we so choose. In one week the Pope has changed the tone and raised the tenor of encountering the world with calm, a caring and careful use of language, and unmistakable dignity. 

Maybe the man’s nature or character is calm, even shy, as some say. But more likely, it’s his formation, the habits and vows that helped him train to become a decent, considerate person who thinks before speaking. 

I know I need to ask myself before stating my views: How important is it? I have a few battles in life worth fighting so I have to choose wisely, because life is where I put my time and energy and as I get older I have less of both.

If we are the soil, I don’t want - through watching too many videos and tweets and clips of loose-talking politicians and celebrities - to become a toxic terrain. I don’t want my words or seeds to be cheap and empty. Most of all, I  want the seeds of kindness and love to find nourishment and a place to grow in my soil.