The Parable of the Sower is probably one of Christ's most known parables.

Everybody has heard that story.

But there's something very interesting about this parable because it is in a way a meta-parable.

It is not only a parable that talks about a specific example of life,

but it is a parable which can help you understand parables themselves and can help you

understand meeting making in general. Basically, the parable of the sower is just like so many

other things that Christ says, is hiding within it the very pattern of how reality unfolds.

So we're going to look at the parable of the Sower and see if we can try to

bring out some of these aspects which connect to the types of things that I'm talking about

in terms of symbolism and how we encounter the world.

Music This is Jonathan Peugeot. Welcome to the symbolic world. Now the parable of the Sower is in all three of the synoptic gospels.

And so I've chosen to use the version in the Gospel of St. Mark, St. Mark, Chapter 4,

1 to 25, because there's a little detail in that version that I want to emphasize specifically.

So I'm going to read the text to you and then we're going to go over some of the elements that Christ talks about.

And I'm going to try to show you how the parable that Christ is giving can be applied to our very perception of reality and how it is in a way very much a meta parable.

And so, and he began to teach by the sea, and a great multitude was gathered to him

so that he got into the boat and sat in it on the sea. And the whole multitude was on the land

facing the sea.

Then he taught them many things by parables and said to them in his teaching,

Listen, behold, a sawer went out to sow, and it happened as he sowed that some seed fell by the wayside, and the birds of the air came and devoured it. Some fell on the stony ground where it did not have much earth, and immediately it sprang

up because it had no depth of earth.

When the sun was up, it was scorched, and because it had no root it withered away.

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