Good Soil: The Education of an Accidental Farmhand

by Jeff Chu

One venerable form of Chinese storytelling orbits its subject. The story unfolds in a series of observations. Sometimes it might feel as if the details are sketchy, even scant. Digressions are common, particularly as fragments of memory emerge in the light of new information, and thus the storyteller can seem to be going in circles or meandering around their subject. Slowly, though, a body of data accumulates. You never get a thesis statement and then an array of proofs, because you’re imagining and discovering and putting the pieces together alongside the storyteller. Your conclusions will rarely be identical to theirs. But (one hopes) coherence builds. In traditional Chinese philosophy, life is seen as cyclical. We move again and again through the moon-marked seasons, again and again through the twelve animals of the zodiac, all the while recognizing that change is inevitable, perspectives differ, and only through community and conversation do we get a fuller picture. In honor of my ancestors, this book moves through the seasons, both metaphorical and literal.

It often takes effort to perceive what matters. It sometimes requires perspective to glimpse beauty.

In dire circumstances, we might even find ourselves listening for God in new and different ways, because of our acute awareness of our vulnerability as well as our need for salvation. (I don’t mean salvation in that grand cosmic sense so much as in that intimate need for a steadying hand in the midst of grief, or a whisper of solidarity in the throes of trauma.) Who can afford the pretense of independence then? We quiet ourselves because there may be nothing left to say, because we have prayed all the prayers we know how to pray. We do not have words anymore.

As much as we talk in modern society about individuation and autonomy and that wretched concept of self-care, we are communal creatures. We need others to lean on, borrowing their steadiness when we feel shaky.

In Chinese lore, the heron is often regarded as a harbinger of goodness and a sign of a path forward. Its name, 鹭 (“lou”), is homophonous with a word that means “road” or “way.” Some even believed it to be that rare creature capable of flying between earth and heaven, escorting the souls of the departed to the afterlife. As I watched the heron, the thing that I admired most was its apparent ease. It seemed unfettered. It appeared to be free.

In other words, you don’t have to know all that much. But you’re responsible for seeing and trying to see your surroundings. An absence of data is no excuse for an absence of respect, of care, or of heart.