Our modern culture worships choice and ‘freedom’
Thus it is highly mobile
The grass is by definition greener, not only on the other side of the fence, but also over the rainbow, to mix the metaphorical palette
A question therefore all for all of us called to the work of abiding and bearing fruit is, ‘do we trust the soil the gardener chooses for us?’
To stay put where we’re put?
Richard Foster in his now classic, ‘Celebration of Discipline’ says ‘The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people or gifted people, but for deep people’
The question is, can such a mobile world, one which has radically (sic) severed its connection with Place ( the Given connection, the Soil ) in favour of an overwhelming multitude of connections bearing little or no relation to geography, produce such people?
Unless we wish to discount much of the significance of the Incarnation, then I suggest that we cannot be deep if our mindful existence is independent of Place, Location, Geography. A plant cannot grow in the virtual realm.
The Internet, texting etc., means we are not where we are . . . Which might in a sense question our very existence as anything other than disembodied consciousnesses. The metaphor of the fruit bearing vine is a physical one, we are not ‘winds’ – we are the planting of The Lord. Place matters
As a deep one of former times put it, ‘stay in your cell, it will teach you everything’. Or as Benedictine insisted in his rule, we cannot grow if we’re always on the move.
Do we trust the soil?
the elves are heading west 