Matthew Aucoin offers a generative metaphor: “History is not a dead weight . . . but rather a still-living, ever-mutating compost heap, a fertile ecosystem within which we forage, hunt, build.”26 History is alive in us and in our institutions. Because our history is never past, discernment is a core virtue of temporal faithfulness. We are growing in this compost of history that needs to be sifted: there is certainly refuse to leave behind, but also transmogrifications of our past that are now fertile soil for a different future. Some seedlings are emerging that we might transplant.
