
<p><span style="line-height: 1.3em;">I've been fascinated with the word "culture" for some time, ever since a friend of mine used it in a very specific way, regarding behavior in the school where he teaches. Whatever kind of behavior they allow at the school is forming a culture around it. Is there a culture of hazing, a culture of drinking and drugging, partying, a culture of jocks or hipsters, a culture of prayer and works of mercy, a culture of mutual respect and inclusivity, a culture of intellectual enquiry and creativity? Many children and teenagers come from a culture of violence and abuse and poverty, for instance, and bring that with them. Can they be offered a new culture? As our Br. Bede says, "It's the little things sometimes." If I allow this, what culture will start building around it. Paula Huston's excellent talk at the recent Camaldolese Assembly addressed this same issue. What I took away from it is just this: culture is always embedded and concrete, everything we do creates a culture. So we can speak of a "monastic culture," for instance. I also like the word "culture" in the context of today's gospel (Mt 13:18-23), the third part of this parable about the sower and the seed, because it reminds us that "culture," even though it is used in a lofty way, is really a very earthy word, that derives from the Latin </span><em style="line-height: 1.3em;">cultus</em><span style="line-height: 1.3em;">, which really means adoration. Maybe it means that whatever we say we believe in, whatever we cultivate, is what we really adore; and vice versa: whatever we adore is what we cultivate.</span></p>
<p>We hear all these images in the gospel of the place where the seed can fall––the path where it gets trampled, the rocky ground where it can sink no root, among thorns where it gets choked, and then finally the rich soil where it bears fruit and yields a hundred, sixty, thirty-fold. These are of course all metaphors, but for what are they metaphors? All kinds of things. Certainly the ground is the ground of our being, and I love the word in that context––the <em>ground</em> of our being where things get planted. How do we cultivate our own depths––our minds, our souls (if those words mean something different to you)? How do we cultivate our bodies, too, as the garden of our soul? A human body was a place where the Word is planted as it was deep in Mary's womb and was received with such great welcome that it indeed brought fruit abundantly, it became an embryo, a fetus, a little boy, the man Jesus. What kind of culture are we forming in our rooms, in our cells? Is it a pleasant dwelling for the Word?</p>
<p>But this image could also be spread wider. Families create a culture in their homes, you know it as soon as you walk in the door! Perhaps this is also where we could use the example of Joachim and Anne to remind us that a family too is a culture, as well as Mary and Joseph. These things are not unimportant to us; that is why we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family as well, and feasts of Mary and Joseph, and why it is significant that Joseph's name got added into the Eucharistic Prayers. Sometimes the family is referred to as a garden in which the children grow. Is the family home a footpath, with landmines of passive-aggressive behavior? Or rocky soil of depression, choked with thorns of bitterness and sarcasm when the Word comes planted there? And we can ask the same about our communities. What kind of culture are we cultivating by our little decisions, by our behaviors?</p>
<p>And it could go wider too. The story of the giving of the Ten Commandments, which we also hear today, is poignant in this context; this was a covenant offered to a certain people at a certain time, a culture, and an ethnic group. What was the state of the evolution of their consciousness at the time? To what specific issues were these commandments addressed, and how did they receive them? Was Israel like a footpath or rocky ground or thorny, or was it a rich soil? I suppose as for every culture at different times they were in different places, different states of receptivity, and different states of moral uprightness. This of course is what the prophets addressed and what Jesus came to address, and in some way you could also say that Jesus came to advance, to raise––the evolution of his own people's consciousness, their spiritual maturity and understanding of God, to re-cultivate the ground of the consciousness with a fresh new way of thinking.</p>
<p>So we should carry our microcosm and macrocosm both together today to the altar, and commit ourselves to cultivating in our own bodies and souls, in our individual cultures, as well as in our community (communities), in our state and country, in our world, a rich soil, a pleasant shelter for the Word to make a home.</p>