Have you ever bitten into a beautiful, red strawberry only to be like heh. It’s not that it isn’t RIPE, but more like it’s lacking its …well, strawberry-ness. What if I told you that modern day fruit is actually losing the quality of its essential fruiti-ness? Not only is the flavor fading, but compared to fruit grown in the 1940s, today’s fruit has lost up to 40% of the vitamins and nutritional value.

That’s because large-scale farming is market-driven, so success means stocking shelves full of large and perfect-looking fruit which makes farmers produce larger, faster-growing and more durable fruit that can withstand shipping. The downside is that our fruit is also growing tougher, its flavor is diluted, and its life-giving nutrients, diminished.

Most of the fruit at U.S. grocery stores is grown by large-scale conventional farming operations. And it’s remarkable how accustomed we have become to fruit that’s just BLAH. Honestly, I forget how good fruit is supposed to taste until I try a strawberry grown from a carefully tended garden. They are worlds apart.

What is it, exactly, that diminishes that quality of our fruit? Sirach tells us: the quality of the fruit results from “the care it has had”. And science agrees: a fruit’s goodness–or not-so-goodness–is largely determined by the environment where it’s planted and how it’s tended.

In other words, the foundation of good fruit lies in healthy soil. You see, there is a whole secret world underground that contributes to what grows there. Good soil contains a balance of minerals, nutrients, air, and water where tiny organisms live and interact. They shape that environment for new life to take root and grow.

In conventional farming, the soil is over-tilled and it disturbs the balance and depletes the good work of those life-giving microorganisms. That’s why conventional farms then apply “inputs” to their crops as an attempt to replace what was lost. But nitrates, fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides are poor and unsustainable substitutes.

The best fruits grow from protecting the goodness that is integral to God’s creation. Instead, some plant crops to cover the fields during fallow months, which help to nourish and protect the soil’s goodness until the next growing season.

The fruits in today’s Scripture are a metaphor for human conduct and behavior. This has me pondering how I, personally, tend to the richness of my spiritual soil? Because Sirach assures us that there is no separating one’s fruits from one’s character. And that character is revealed by how one speaks. In our Gospel, Jesus affirms that the mouth speaks from the fullness of the heart. In fact, from experience we know that you can tell SO MUCH about a person by whether they will say "thank you" or "I’m sorry" or "please."

• By how they talk about and to others
• By how they talk about …themselves

You see, character is either rooted in a foundation of love or else it will bear bad fruit. Good fruit, we learn from Scripture, is seen in words and acts of love, kindness, acceptance, patience, and humility. Bad fruit grows from entitlement and deception and is easily recognized as it ripens into feigned outrage, violence, scapegoating, mockery and dehumanizing “the other”.

So how does YOUR garden grow?

• Are you over-tilling?  Outrage at the injustices of today’s world is justified. But has the need for retribution become a driving force for you? Are you keeping close tabs and revisiting your outrage? Do you tend to engage with people who “stir the pot” or feed into that sense of violation?
• What kind of pesticides and herbicides is your spiritual soil exposed to? What’s your poison?  Where do you get your information? Are you doom-scrolling on social media? Are you lost in the bramble of conspiracy, outrage, threats and finger-pointing? Are you drawn to sources that affirm your fears or inflame your resentments?

• How do you cultivate the spiritual richness within yourself? Do you tend to those invisible, interior players that do the heavy lifting of God’s work within you? Do you listen for the still, small, inner-voice that nudges you towards deeper awareness of a shared humanity?

The tension we’re experiencing in today’s world isn't between good people and bad people. It's between open-handed people and close-fisted people. Between people who cultivate compassion...or contempt for those who have less or appear different.

Next time you’re watching the news or scrolling through social media, take pause and pay close attention when something doesn’t land right or seems mean-spirited. That is a good seed trying to take root.  

When those in the highest levels of government are perpetuating prejudice, trafficking in tribalism and lies, and dividing our communities, as followers of Jesus, we are called to be people who love on an even greater scale than that.  You are called to be good soil.