The German mystic, Meister Eckhart, wrote,

The seed of God exists in us…
Pear seed grows up into pear tree.
Nut seed grows up into nut tree—
God seed into God.

What might we do together if we remembered that each of us has the seed of God inside? Antoine de St. Exupery, in The Little Prince, tells us “it is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

Each one of us is like Jack and the Beanstalk. Each one of us has within us this spark of divinity, like a Mystery Seed, a seed of what we might become, fully alive. And we also have some husk that tries to keep it contained and hidden. We have to plant those seeds, let them break apart, tend them, and help them to grow. If we let those Mystery Seeds grow, like Jack with his beanstalk, we will become much more than we ever imagined.

I can’t help but think of one of the elders I knew in the congregation in which I served on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. Her name was Ellie. Ellie died at the age of ninety-four. She had always suffered from a stutter. As a child, she was sent to all the specialists that her prominent father could afford, and nothing cured the stutter. But in the midst of this, Ellie was able to find her voice.

She became a writer, both in her career, and in her passion for politics and social justice. She was a speechwriter for several political campaigns and an active member of the League of Women Voters. She was also active in the nuclear freeze movement. Somehow, she didn’t need to get rid of her stutter to bring forth her voice. It was almost as if her stutter helped her to find her voice. It was like an old husk, long ago cracked open, lying almost unnoticed around the bright flower of a plant that had grown from her heart. She had brought forth her latent divinity.