Seamus Heaney's "Digging" and Vocation as Cultivation

Scripture regularly deploys the imagery of agriculture and farming to describe the nature and dynamics of human faithfulness--or the lack thereof. While many might be inclined to explain away the agrarian assumptions of biblical teaching on vocation and human meaning as mere metaphors, others might be equally tempted to confuse the biblical direction of argument with a clear warrant for farming as the highest human calling. The truth, though, is somewhere in the middle, and its appreciation m...