Lectio Divina — Day 19 of the Season of Creation
PARABLE
Living Water for All
1. Lectio — parable
> “…but to the rest, they are made known through parables so that they may look but not see, and hear but not understand.”
— Luke 8:10
Today Jesus gives me a parable and then warns me that simply hearing it does not mean I understand it.
That is uncomfortable.
I prefer a Gospel that explains itself immediately. I want the lesson neatly attached at the bottom: Here is what happened. Here is what it means. Here is what you should do.
But Jesus often gives me a seed instead of an answer.
A parable must be received, carried, questioned and allowed to germinate. Its meaning sometimes appears only after it has been buried in my life for a while.
During this Season of Creation, perhaps creation itself becomes such a parable. Soil, seed, sheep, dogs, pigs, drought, rain and living water are not merely things surrounding my spiritual life. They can become the vocabulary through which God speaks within it.
But that does not mean I immediately understand what he is saying.
Today, I certainly don’t.
—
2. Meditatio — The parable of the pigs
Today the parable of the pigs at The Glenn comes to an end.
And I cannot say that I know what it means.
I have always liked pigs. They connect me with my Grandpa Jesko, who raised them as so many farmers did in the early twentieth century. They connect me with my own youth at The Glenn, when as a high-school FFA member I raised pigs and showed them at the Randall County stock show.
So when I returned to The Glenn roughly fifty years later, pigs seemed almost destined to return with me.
There was memory in them.
Family in them.
Agriculture in them.
And eventually I imagined there might even be something of Laudato Si’ in them. When I began developing my Laudato Si’ Action Plan for The Glenn, I knew pigs would have a place.
Or so I thought.
A couple of years later, I find myself giving a decidedly less theological answer:
“Not!”
There are several reasons. Practical experience has a wonderful ability to revise romantic ideas.
I explained those reasons to Kim, probably preparing my defense rather carefully.
She listened.
Then she said:
“You don’t have to convince me. I never wanted the pigs.”
There may be an entire second parable hiding inside that sentence.
So today I am loading the pigs and taking them to the auction in Muleshoe, not far from where, on my granddad’s farm, I first encountered the animals that would wander in and out of my life for decades.
There is something almost circular about that journey.
And something a little sad.
Was bringing pigs back to The Glenn a mistake?
Maybe.
Was it wasted?
I don’t think so.
Perhaps one danger in developing a Laudato Si’ Action Plan is imagining that because I have placed the words Laudato Si’ in front of an idea, God is therefore obligated to make the idea work.
But ecological conversion requires something more difficult than making plans.
It requires listening.
The land speaks.
The animals speak through their needs and behavior.
The availability of living water speaks.
My time and physical limitations speak.
Economics speaks.
Experience speaks.
And, occasionally, Kim speaks rather clearly.
Stewardship requires me to listen to all of them.
A plan for The Glenn should therefore be alive enough to change.
The failure of one idea does not mean the failure of my vocation to care for this place. Sometimes caring for creation means adding something. Sometimes it means keeping something. And sometimes it means recognizing that something I wanted no longer belongs here.
Jesus explains that the seed in today’s parable is the Word of God.
But before a seed grows, it disappears beneath the soil.
Maybe that is where my pigs are going spiritually today—not merely to Muleshoe, but beneath the soil of memory.
Grandpa Jesko.
FFA.
Randall County.
My return to The Glenn.
My Laudato Si’ Action Plan.
And now goodbye.
I do not need to dig the seed up this afternoon to see whether God has explained it yet.
Perhaps my task is simply to let the parable remain buried for a while.
—
3. Oratio — Prayer
Lord Jesus,
You told parables
and sometimes left Your hearers wondering what they meant.
Today I give You my parable of the pigs.
Thank You for Grandpa Jesko
and for the memories that first taught me to love these animals.
Thank You for the teenager I once was at The Glenn,
raising and showing pigs.
Thank You even for the older man who returned decades later
and thought pigs should become part of this land again.
If I was wrong, give me humility to admit it.
If the experience taught me something,
give me wisdom to recognize it.
If I still do not understand,
give me patience to wait.
Protect these animals as they leave my stewardship
and pass into the care of others.
During this Season of Creation,
keep converting my plans for The Glenn
so that they serve Your creation
rather than forcing creation to serve my plans.
Teach me to conserve living water,
to respect the limits of this land,
to listen to the creatures entrusted to me
and to recognize when love means holding on
and when love means letting go.
And Lord—
thank You for Kim,
especially when she understands the parable
before I do.
Amen.
—
4. Contemplatio — Who writes the parable?
My pigs make me hear the appeal of Magnifica humanitas to AI developers in an unexpectedly personal way.
I am not an artificial-intelligence developer.
But I am, in a much smaller sense, a developer of The Glenn.
I make choices.
I put up fences. I move animals. I select breeds. I decide where water goes. I decide what grows, what gets removed, what gets purchased and what gets sold. I introduce things into an existing ecosystem and then discover consequences I did not completely foresee.
Every choice reveals something about what I believe The Glenn ought to become.
That sounds remarkably like the responsibility described in Magnifica humanitas.
A developer never merely builds a tool. Hidden within the design are assumptions about the human person, relationships, efficiency, freedom, work and what constitutes a good life.
In the same way, my Laudato Si’ Action Plan cannot merely be a collection of projects.
It embodies a vision of creation.
And that makes today’s word—parable—particularly useful.
I thought I was writing pigs into the story of The Glenn.
But after a couple of years, the story has answered back.
Perhaps technological developers need precisely that humility.
Human beings create systems, but once those systems enter communities, workplaces and homes, consequences emerge that their designers may not have anticipated. Transparency and responsibility therefore require more than saying, This is what I intended.
The more difficult question is:
What is actually growing from the seed I planted?
Jesus makes exactly that distinction in today’s Gospel.
Seed is scattered.
But intention does not determine the harvest.
Soil matters.
Conditions matter.
Roots matter.
What happens afterward matters.
And during this Season of Creation, I can say the same about The Glenn.
My intentions were good when I brought pigs here.
But stewardship cannot stop at good intentions.
I must look at what actually happened.
Did they fit the land?
Did they fit the other animals?
Did they fit my resources?
Did they fit the amount of living water available?
Did they contribute to the good I was trying to cultivate?
And when experience answers no, responsible creation sometimes requires revision.
That is not necessarily failure.
It may be discernment.
Perhaps that is one of the lessons I would offer anyone developing artificial intelligence: love what you create enough to listen when reality tells you that your design needs to change.
And perhaps that is what the pigs have been teaching me.
I wanted them partly because they connected me backward—to Grandpa Jesko and the boy I once was.
Now, strangely, letting them go may point me forward.
Today I drive toward Muleshoe carrying pigs whose meaning I still do not entirely understand.
That’s all right.
Jesus never promised that every parable would surrender its meaning immediately.
Some seeds require a season beneath the ground.
Some questions need living water.
Some plans need pruning.
Some creatures stay.
Some leave.
And sometimes faith means allowing God to finish a story whose meaning I was too impatient to write myself:
I planted.
I tended.
I learned.
I let go.
Perhaps someday I will look across The Glenn and finally understand the parable of the pigs.
Day 19 of the Season of Creation
