Written by: Jacob A. SanSoucie
Thomas Weatherby had tended the abbey gardens for thirty-seven years. His gnarled hands knew every inch of the soil that fed the brothers who prayed behind ancient stone walls. While not a monk himself, he'd found his own form of devotion in coaxing life from the earth.
In recent years, his back had begun to bend like the willows near the pond, and young Brother Matthew had been assigned to learn the gardener's craft before Thomas could no longer manage.
"You're doing it wrong," Thomas said on a crisp autumn morning, watching the novice turn compost with more enthusiasm than skill.
"I'm following your instructions exactly," Matthew protested, wiping sweat from his brow despite the cool air.
Thomas shook his head. "You're working the soil, but you're not listening to it."
The young man's face clouded with confusion. "Soil doesn't speak, Thomas."
"Doesn't it?" The old gardener lowered himself painfully to one knee, pressing his palm flat against the dark earth. "This ground remembers every footstep. Even His."
Matthew's expression softened with the patience one reserves for the elderly and confused. "Thomas, even our Lord walked in distant lands, not here in England."
Thomas smiled, the wrinkles around his eyes deepening like furrows. "All ground is the same ground, lad. The dust of Adam covers everything."
That winter came suddenly and with unusual bitterness. Snow piled against the abbey walls, and illness swept through the cloisters. Thomas, too frail now to leave his small cottage near the garden gate, lay burning with fever as Brother Matthew struggled to keep the root cellar organized and the winter greens alive in the covered beds.
On the seventh night of the old gardener's fever, Matthew sat vigil, listening to the labored breathing that seemed to grow shallower with each passing hour.
"The seeds," Thomas whispered suddenly, eyes flying open. "You must save the seeds."
"I will," Matthew promised, though he'd already catalogued and stored them precisely as he'd been taught.
"No," Thomas gripped the young monk's wrist with surprising strength. "You don't understand. The old varieties... they carry memories. The mustard seed from the northern field—it's descended from the very parables He told."
Matthew pressed a cool cloth to the old man's forehead. "Rest now, Thomas."
"Promise me," the gardener insisted, "that you'll plant with reverence. The world forgets, but the soil remembers."
By morning, Thomas was gone. The brothers buried him, as he'd requested, not in the cemetery but in the fallow field that would become the spring vegetable garden.
When the thaw finally came, Matthew found himself alone among the beds and borders that needed tending. With each task, he heard Thomas's voice in his memory, guiding his hands.
One clear dawn, he opened the seed box containing Thomas's most prized varieties—plants the old man had cultivated from specimens brought by pilgrims and travelers over decades. Among them, a small packet marked simply "Mustard, North Field" caught his eye.
Matthew hesitated, then did something he'd never seen Thomas do. He knelt beside the prepared bed, pressed his palm against the soil, and closed his eyes.
At first, he felt foolish. Then... something. Not a voice, but an awareness. The ground beneath his hand seemed to pulse with countless cycles of growth and decay, with water's patient passage, with the weight of all who had walked upon it.
"All ground is the same ground," he whispered, understanding at last.
He planted the mustard seeds with trembling fingers. As he worked, a sparrow landed nearby, watching him with bright, attentive eyes before flitting to a branch overhead.
Throughout that growing season, the brothers noted a change in their young gardener. Where once he had approached his tasks with methodical precision, he now worked with quiet joy, sometimes speaking softly to the plants or pausing to place his hand upon the earth as if in greeting.
The mustard grew tall—taller than any in living memory—its yellow flowers attracting clouds of honeybees. And beneath its spreading branches, other birds came to rest, just as the parable foretold.
On the anniversary of Thomas's passing, Matthew gathered the monks to bless the garden. The abbot, seeing the bounty before them, asked what secret the young gardener had discovered.
Matthew smiled. "Not a secret, Father. A remembrance. The dust that made Adam made all of this too, and bears the footprints of the One who walked among us. Thomas taught me that our work is not just cultivation but communion."
The mustard seeds from that year were shared with pilgrims and travelers who carried them to distant lands, each containing the memory of a gardener who understood that all ground is holy ground, and that faith, like a seed, needs only good soil and patient hands to transform the world.