Stillborn Seeds

How hope resides in death

Vased flowers sitting on the printouts of our liturgies

Every year, we start seeds indoors. It began as a simple thing, really. Over the years, I’ve purchased a few extra accoutrements (like growing lights), but I don’t exactly have an ideal space in my home for cultivating hundreds of baby seedlings. Someday I hope for a greenhouse, or at least a spacious basement nook to dedicate to the task, but for now, my “space” consists of a few trays on my living room floor, snug against the warm radiators – their growing lights clipped to the trays like mothers hovering lovingly above a nursery bed of sleeping babes.

Despite these unideal growing conditions, there is one thing my children and I never fail to do after settling the seeds into their little soil beds: we pray over them.

Years ago, a friend suggested I write out that prayer in the form of a liturgy to repeat every year. I was hesitant at first, having grown up in the liturgical Christian tradition and uncertain that I had the clout to pull it off. But I decided to try, and I’m glad I did. It was published in Cultivating Magazine five years ago, and in both the writing of the prayer and my habitual recitation of it, my heart has been gently molded (into what I hope is a maturing wisdom) at the advent of each new gardener’s year.

But back in autumn of 2020, when I set out to write the liturgy for the planting of the seed, I realized that a single prayer couldn’t encompass the full import of the seed-growing process, because as life brutally teaches us, things don’t always turn out the way we hope. Likewise, some of those little hoped-for seedlings never emerge and their earthly womb becomes their grave. Some do emerge, but their root systems aren’t strong enough to meet the wind or the withering heat of the sun. (Or the growing lamps, as I learned when I began using them for the first time!) The life of a seed is cyclical, and that pattern is mirrored in our own lives. Sometimes our hope is met with grief, and too often we greet must birth and death in a single breath.

So I decided to write a trio of liturgies: a prayer for the planting of the seed, a prayer for the emergence of a seed, and a prayer for the death of a seed. (Or a seedling.) And every year, without fail, my children and I inevitably pray all three before spring is over.

Getting ready to pray the last liturgy before saying goodbye to the unborn seeds

We’ve been using these liturgies for five years now, and the first time we prayed the prayer over the death of the seed my little son cried as we dumped the barren soil of the seed trays beneath the lilac bush in our backyard. I didn’t blame him. Sometimes tears pool in my own eyes as the dirt falls to the ground. It’s a ritual, a goodbye. But just as a funeral is meant to ease the sting of our grief with the assurance of the resurrection, the ritual of acknowledging the death of a seed ought to do likewise. Death is inextricably entwined with life when met with the loving hand of God.

Preparing to dump their barren cups of soil for the first time

So as we prepare for dawning of Easter Day, I am sharing the last of my three liturgies here for you, below. I will also post a link to the entirety of the three prayers, available in PDF format for download straight from Cultivating Magazine should you want to print them out for your own use.

Meanwhile, I pray your own hearts are buoyed by the hope that hides in the smallness of a stillborn seed.

FOR THE DYING OF THE SEED

Lord of Heaven and earth, you are the God of the living and the dead, and in you all things hold together. Help us to trust that, as this young plant dies the death of all living things, its glory is held in your loving hands, and as it withers and curls its tendrils towards the earth, it yet holds your favor and is looked upon with your love. Though it passes from life to death, your pleasure in this little seedling and its faithfulness to your design upon all the greenery of the earth, remains. We, too, like this little plant, are creations of your pleasure and people of your favor. May we remember that we are held in your hands even more tenderly than this plant, and just as your touch of creation and redemption rests upon this earth, so does your promise of restoration. For embedded in death is resurrection, and in resurrection is the restoration of life. Help us to understand that, even as this little plant dies, the earth trembles with the hope of the whole world.

Link to all three prayers, HERE