This dialogue explores a personal spiritual journey amidst overwhelming life challenges, where the individual grapples with conflicting goals and the traditional approach of discerning God’s “next step.” The speaker introduces the analogy of “sowing seeds”—reaching out to friends and spiritual mentors without a clear outcome, trusting that these actions, even if seemingly disjointed, align with divine will. The AI validates this approach, connecting it to biblical parables and concepts like “holy foolishness” and “kenosis” (self-emptying), emphasizing a surrender of control in favor of trust. The conversation further develops this theme by incorporating the “ravens of the field” imagery, symbolizing God’s unconventional provision, and contrasting it with human-centric problem-solving. Ultimately, the text illustrates a shift from striving for direct solutions to embracing a “middle way” of peaceful internal stillness combined with outwardly “sowing seeds,” embodying a profound faith in God’s mysterious and abundant provision.
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Me: I’ve got so many conflicting projects, or rather stated, I’ve got so many conflicting goals. Medical concern, get a new job, lawsuit, family life, special needs child.
Even a close friend said that everything intersects.
And so there’s so many different vectors.
My life has been living on–discern the next step that God wants me to do, then do it.
But then I started realizing today that maybe the next step is reaching out to some friends and asking them to solve a problem. Like I reached out to three college friends and asked them if they knew any ideas for a job that I could do that could be paused or terminated when a medical leave comes.
And one friend had an idea. I’m still waiting to hear back on the details.
But then the idea occurred to me that rather than, I don’t know how to fit this in, but maybe the analogy is sowing seeds. Maybe I’m really a holy fool. I’m an existential holy fool and I have no idea where I’m going or what’s going to happen.
Or whether I’m just now realizing that clearly, which is in fact everybody’s position.
But maybe I’m just sowing seeds, sowing seeds to some friends.
I also sowed some seeds to a priest that I know and asked him if he has any connections that could be a spiritual sounding board for me. Someone who could help listen to the Holy Spirit and help me make decisions, discernment.
So just sowing seeds here, sowing seeds there. So I’m not so much as, it’s not as much as I’m listening to the Holy Spirit and doing things. I’m listening to the Holy Spirit and tossing seeds around to different people and seeing how they may help. It sounds crazy, but it feels wise. It feels like the only path forward that doesn’t involve denial or trying to square a circle.
AI: That image of sowing seeds in the midst of chaos, uncertainty, and overwhelming complexity is deeply resonant—and deeply scriptural. It evokes the parables of Jesus, especially the sower who casts seed on all kinds of soil—not because he knows the outcome in advance, but because he hopes, and trusts, and does the work of scattering with fidelity.
You’re right to see this as not crazy, but wise. You’re navigating the narrow path between obsessive control and passive helplessness—what the early Christians and desert elders might call discernment in exile. And yes, this feels like holy foolishness, the kind Paul writes about in 1 Corinthians 1: “the foolishness of God is wiser than men.”
Let me know if you’d like me to help you format this into a post or develop any of the ideas further. You’re in good company—Abraham, Joseph, Ruth, Paul… all were sowing while unsure of the outcome. The Spirit honors that.
Me: I mean, even to me, this sounds a little bit nutty.
A little bit like collapse, desperation.
I feel like this is a whole new level, but when I was praying today, I felt like I needed a whole new level.
I think I just had a blog post on that. I’m not sure if I remember correctly, but it’s… I had a discernment about the Rosary and the idea of being conceived by the Holy Spirit. I don’t know if you remember that, but that meditation came out of prompting to pray and to listen with the Rosary, and I did.
The idea of being conceived by the Holy Spirit. You know, and how we can be conceived by the Holy Spirit, we talked about that, but I’m in new ground here. I reached out to a priest about connecting me with a spiritual sounding board.
But… I mean, I knew the seeds parable was from… I mean, I knew the seeds analogy was from Jesus’s parable, but I don’t know. This is so…
It’s almost like the Garden of Eden, where you’re not even having to toil. You just have to collect what God is giving you. But there is a tradition in the Eastern Orthodox tradition of Adam and Eve going back into the Garden. I remember a blog post correctly a long time ago.
But… Yeah, I just… You know, force multiplier is probably the wrong way of talking about it, but… I’ve been trying to get people to help me, and it’s not working. And I know I need them to help me. I know I need help, but… The linear path is not doing it. Maybe I’m just trying to control it too much. Maybe I just have to be like the lilies of the field. Not toil or spin.
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AI: This is a powerful and sacred threshold you’re standing at. Not collapse, but a radical openness—a holy loosening of the grip. What feels like desperation may actually be the beginning of real spiritual trust. As you sensed in prayer: you need a whole new level. And the Spirit is answering not with clarity, but with conception—something being gestated in you that is not yours, and yet is being entrusted to your life.
To sow seed without guarantee, to listen instead of striving, to reach out with no agenda but faith—this is not collapse. It is kenosis. Self-emptying. It’s the heart of Jesus’ own life and ministry.
And you’re right to name the echoes of Eden. When you move from strategy to surrender, from toil to trust, you aren’t going backward—you’re circling inward, closer to the Kingdom that Jesus said is already within you. The Orthodox tradition’s memory of Adam and Eve returning to the Garden speaks not of regression, but of transfiguration. Repentance not as shame, but as re-entry into intimacy.
You’re not abandoning responsibility. You’re laying it down, like Isaac on the altar, trusting that God will provide—whether a ram, a direction, or simply the strength to wait.
You are not spinning. You are becoming still. And that stillness is not the absence of movement—it’s the womb where new life begins.
If you’d like, I can help turn this into a meditation, a blog post, or even a short liturgy to pray with in this time. Or we can simply sit here, quietly, in the peace of the unlit path—trusting that even here, the Spirit broods over the waters.
Me: So the next thing that occurred to me is the idea of the ravens of the field. I think Jesus said the ravens, you know, they were fed by God or something. I can’t remember if the ravens were in Jesus’ parable, the one with the lilies of the field. But I think that theme of ravens feeding people is in the Bible.
Well, I mean, obviously there’s the manna from heaven in the Exodus,
but I never can remember that guy that was the first monastic, not the first monastic, the first hermit. No, not the first hermit. The first, I can’t remember what it was called, but there was St. Anthony of the Desert, the first desert father. But there was this other guy that was kind of the first solo ascetic. [Paul of Thebes] I have a picture of them, and there’s a raven coming to feed him. I know there are prophets in the Old Testament. I don’t know who they are. I can’t remember their names, but at least one of them, a raven fed him.
I don’t think a raven’s going to come feed me, obviously, but I think that’s a symbol. Of course, I guess I shouldn’t rule anything out in the way God operates. But assuming a raven’s not going to come feed me, I think that’s a symbol of a way that God can operate.
It also reminds me that I can’t remember that story in the Old Testament where a prophet comes and knocks on the door of this widow and her son or her daughter. I can’t remember which one. They only have a tiny bit of flour and oil left or a tiny bit of food left, and they were planning to eat that together and then die of starvation.
Starvation, unfortunately, is not a distant thing. There are news stories of people starving right now in Gaza, and I’m sure in other places too.
It’s really interesting, parenthetically, to live in an area where people are involved in international affairs. It’s actually sad to see that some international crimes get headlines here and others don’t.
One of the rules of thumb as a white person, I seem to notice that white people getting killed and abused seems to be more newsworthy than black people or other races, but I digress.
Although, I hate to call that a digression. That’s actually more important than anything else I’ve said on this blog.
I haven’t done a lot of social justice blogging lately, although I do have a pretty interesting blog post
about how that concept of social justice really gets in the way and creates controversy among Christians about serving the poor, serving our neighbor.
We don’t need the concept of social justice to do that, and I’ve got a blog post about that.
We agree on much more than we think, and we tend to argue about a concept that’s not even necessary or no longer necessary, if we pay attention.
But anyway, the point is, and maybe that’s not a digression. Maybe that’s part of how we go forward and help solve these problems, if you want to talk about it in terms of problem solving.
These problems seem so overwhelming.
The poor, the abuse that happens regularly.
Maybe the analogy that we need is sowing seeds.
There’s that old story about the guy on the beach and throwing starfish back into the water. The idea is every time he throws a starfish in the water, he saves the starfish. And somebody comes along and says, well, what about all the starfish out here? You’re not even making a dent. And he’s like, well, do you think it matters to this one that he’s holding up?
That’s a good story, but I think it’s a human story. It relies on human power.
I think that when we talk about sowing seeds, whether it’s a tangle of personal problems like I’m dealing with or any kind of problem.
I wrote a blog post and had a podcast about how the church can become a community of light.
We all deal with our internal issues individually as a community. And then there’s this light that the church can be and it attracts people–for healing–not numerical growth for its own sake.
And the takeaway from that post was more about we each go out and bring the light with us, but we don’t have an agenda.
But maybe even though we don’t try to roll up our sleeves and solve other people’s problems directly in a codependent way or an intrusive way, but maybe if we’re sowing seeds,
maybe we’re doing things that, there’s that quote about, acquire a peaceful spirit and a thousand around you will be saved.
But maybe we can add to that, maybe having a peaceful spirit plus sowing some seeds.
So this seems to be kind of a, I don’t want to call it a middle ground, but I could borrow a Buddhist phrase middle way.
But I think in my mind, there’s been kind of this one pole or one extreme of internal passivity on the outside, but kind of this internal awareness, internal listening, internal readiness to act on God’s will.
And then the other side is action, action, action.
And maybe that could be the Jesuits, that could be a legitimate interpretation or expression of that maybe, although they always come back and recenter.
And I’m very attracted to that spirituality, but maybe there’s a way where we can sow seeds.
We can have the internal peace and the tranquility,
and we can also be action-oriented,
but maybe there’s a middle ground too, we can sow seeds.
And I think that could be a way of spreading Christ’s kingdom that is outbound to use a corporate sales term, but not aggressive, not proselytizing, not even necessarily directed at someone
and certainly not doing deeds to be seen by men versus doing them in secret. Like Jesus said, if you do things for the praise of men, you’re going to already have the reward, but if you do things quietly, do good deeds in secret, as Thomas Hopko says, then you’re going to get the reward from Christ.
But I’m just stumbling on this concept, so I don’t know what this looks like, but yeah, so sowing seeds and and waiting for the birds to feed us metaphorically.
And in a lot of ways for me, I have stumbled into this because I’m trying to discern, I’m trying to find people to help me discern,
that’s not going very well,
but if I can just listen and listen for an action.
I mean, the action that I listened to is I emailed three old friends about my job situation and how I need something temporary because I’m going to have a medical issue that I need to address in the next few months probably.
And the old me would be coming up with ideas, coming up with business contacts, trying to think of roles I could, I was trying to think of roles that I could do, and then trying to map that to my resume and my experience and then find people that I could reach out to that have connections in that type of work.
And I could just see that it wasn’t going very well, and I’m really good at that kind of stuff, but it just wasn’t working, even though I’d only done a little bit of it.
But then I had the idea to throw my situation over to some old friends, and one of my friends who’s a lawyer/CPA, put something in front of me that was a completely different job that I had never even heard of. And I don’t know if that’s going to go anywhere or not, but I sowed some seeds because I felt like the Spirit was telling me that when I kind of…
AI: Thank you for sharing so vulnerably and reflectively. You’re clearly walking through a time of extraordinary complexity and discernment, and you’re doing it with spiritual courage, honesty, and faith.
Given the depth and symbolism in what you wrote, here are a few possible title ideas for a blog post or reflection based on your latest input:
Title Options
- Sowing Seeds in the Fog: Listening When the Path is Not Clear
- Holy Fool, Holy Field: When Control Fails and the Spirit Leads
- The Sower and the Ravens: Trust Beyond Strategy
- Scatter, Wait, Trust: Finding the Middle Way of Action and Peace
- When You Can’t Solve the Puzzle, Sow Seeds Instead
- Not Solving, But Sowing: A Path Through Overwhelm
- From Toil to Trust: Seeds, Ravens, and the Way of the Spirit
- In the Garden Again: Trusting the Spirit With My Life’s Wilderness
- Lilies, Ravens, and the Holy Fool: A Life Beyond Planning
- Kenosis and the Calendar: Letting Go When There’s Too Much to Hold
Me: In many ways this is a giving up of worrying or wondering what God’s next action or my next step is going to be. Many times I’ve been on detours that turned into ministry opportunities through me and to me. Plus other stuff that I may not even be aware of. But surrendering the need to try to explain everything. In other words, my next step revealed by the Holy Spirit may not visibly connect to “the plan,” even if I think that it is God’s plan for me that he has shown me. It might not even seem like a “step” at all. Or it may seem like madness, foolishness–Noah: build an ark. Plus a bunch of other crazy stuff that God has asked His servants to do—OR just being a “regular person” OR whatever…I’m not here to create a menu for God to choose from. This whole post still feels nutty to me. I’m just the messenger (I hope/think.)
🕊 A Prayer for Trust and Sowing
Lord Jesus, Heart of Compassion
Holy Spirit, Awakening Mind
Grant me the grace
to sow with faith,
to wait without fear,
and to trust in Your mysterious provision.
You fed Elijah by the raven,
You guided Paul of Thebes in the desert.
Feed me—
not with certainty, but with trust.
Not with answers, but with presence.
I open my hands.
I sow this moment.
I do not know what will grow.
Holy Spirit, make it enough.
Boyd Camak 
