Good Soil: The Education of an Accidental Farmhand

by Jeff Chu

My desire is to find some hope, some evidence of grace, and some insight into the precarious yet beautiful reality of being human.

a little taste of belonging. Is there any human sentiment more primal or universal?

I was reared by two extraordinarily diligent parents who never complained, at least within my earshot, about a bad boss or heavy workloads or jobs that didn’t align perfectly with their passions.

Plus, my concerns seemed petty and impertinent; so much else in the world deserved divine attention more than my quotidian misery.

Rage is misery that does not know where else to go.

Nearly a decade into our relationship, he understood that love sometimes knows things that are never said aloud.

“Life ultimately gets the last word,” he said. “But the only way you move along the path to the fertile soil is if you go through the cycle of life and death, life and death.”

Honesty, they said, did not require full disclosure.

“What has humankind done to earn rest at this point?” Nate asked. “Nothing.” In other words, according to the creation myth that has defined so much of how we live, humanity’s first full day of existence was rest—pure, unadulterated, unearned rest,

Sabbath was, for us, not an end. It was our beginning.

But when you’re down, you’ll take an auspicious sign wherever you can get one.

“anechoic chamber”—a