The "Grain of Wheat" and More About This Site

The Perfection of Charity, Mimesis, and Why I'm Writing

The title of this site, the symbolism of the logo, or even the purpose of my thoughts on topics of faith, philosophy, and politics contained herein, has, I’ve realized, not yet been explained. So, as I haven’t finished any deeper thoughts today, I thought I’d take a moment to explain a little, especially now that we’ve hit a couple hundred subscribers, what this site is all about.

The short answer: I don’t know yet.

The long answer is something like this:

Around ten years ago I read a novel about the life of the early Christians during the Roman persecution entitled Grain of Wheat. The titular phrase, a quote taken originally from Christ’s statement in the Gospel of John:

“Truly, truly I say unto you, unless a grain of wheat fall to the ground and die, it remaineth alone, but if it die, it bears much fruit” - John 12:24

This verse formed the novel's central theme as, while the verse in one sense refers to Christ’s sacrifice, it is also nearly equally applicable to the early Christian martyrs. Like Christ, rather than live and seek to preserve their life for life’s sake, and not come to anything, they instead chose to willingly fall to the ground and die, to die that their life might be worth more than merely their life. For as one of those self-same martyrs himself adapted the verse:

“I am the wheat of God and am ground by the teeth of the wild beasts, that I may be found the pure bread of Christ.” - St. Ignatius of Antioch

The phrase stuck deeply with me, and over the last decade, I’ve begun to see the imagery of the verse, and the meaning behind its metaphor, everywhere.

In Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, in thinking about why God created the world, in a college theology course on creation vs. evolution, in Catholic social teaching, in St. Benedict’s Rule, and more explicitly in the Cistercian Charter of Charity, everywhere…

Having encountered it, again and again, I think it is truly the way to understand everything. I make such a bold—and easily laughed at—claim, because I think the grain of wheat is a definitional metaphor.

Words of and by themselves seem to have no intrinsic meaning, except as signs.

As signs, they refer to images, metaphors, experiences of ours, or abstractions from thereof.

This means that to truly understand a word like charity, you need a story, a metaphor an image, something else behind it in order for you to get it right.

The metaphor of the Grain of Wheat is, I think, the definition of charity, the meaning of love, and the key to knowing what it is. And the simple poignant answer is—everything. The love of charity is everything because everything comes to be from it, everything has meaning and significance through it, and the demand of charity from you is all—everything.

The demand of the message of the grain of wheat is, somewhat terrifyingly, also our calling in ways either small or perhaps complete.

The metaphor of the “grain” here reminds me of the parable of the mustard seed, and, perhaps, is also meant to. Our “grain”, that in us which we were meant to offer back to God in charity, could be a total gift of life like that of the martyrs. We could be the grain. It could be total in another sense, that of giving the duration of our life back to God through a religious vocation, etc. Or it could be smaller like the mustard seed, through something like the constant but omnipresent little acts of love that formed St. Therese’s understanding of the life of charity or the related view of “prayer without ceasing” common in the East.

We’re all trying to figure this out. And, therefore, in particular, so also am I.

After a year or two of thinking I was headed somewhere, down one particular path of life, I learned, much to my surprise last August while making a longer discernment visit to a Benedictine monastery, that this wouldn’t be the case—at least right now. There was, as a primary reason too much tension in me between being drawn towards the contemplative way of life that constitutes their order’s charism and more active, intellectually and politically focused interests, that I am not able to easily eliminate from my mind/will.¹

Being told to resolve this dichotomy within myself somehow before taking further steps towards them or any similar vocation, and not sure of what I was doing, I thought I’d try some writing on the side, the opposite of where I thought I was headed recently, to see if there is any intellectual ability left in here, and if I should pursue something in that direction.

That’s what this site has been, then, and will for the near future, probably continue to be. It could become something more someday. It could prove that writing or anything similar is not my path. Hilariously, my resurrection of a past satire project on the side over the last few weeks has already proven far more popular than my attempts at more serious writing on this site.

I’m not sure how satire is congruous with growth in charity, except perhaps as a tool for self-examination, so that’s yet another topic I need to spend some time thinking and writing about. But for now, in an unexamined way, check it out:

Grain of Wheat will thus, for now, continue to be, an experiment to understand the things that interest me while relating them all to what matters most, understanding charity better and growing it within ourselves.

This has led me frequently to run into some other recurring themes, Rene Girard’s theory of mimetic desire, the subjective nature of our understanding, and the problem of free will, but every book I read or topic I investigate seems to return me again and again into the image of the Grain of Wheat and the topic of charity.

For now, thank you for reading my attempts to figure out charity, the world, and my own life, and please pray for me to figure out the latter to a greater degree than I have at present.

In this then, lies the title of this site, and my symbol, an angled red cross with a grain of wheat and the Chi-Rho symbol. The subtext of the design’s shape is trying to colonize and recapture the mimetic aspects used by perverse movements like the Communists. More on that, someday…

Practically speaking I’ve been alternating between more theological and more political or philosophical topics on this site. Practical politics is far more removed from charity, than the direct questions I’ve tried to look into free will, proper intentionality within prayer, and the physical effects of the Eucharist and icons upon us. But of course, it still must be ruled by charity indirectly.

Both directions interest me to an equal degree and are equally popular in terms of readership, even as they attract very different audiences overall, so I will probably continue to alternate between them. I haven’t recorded anything audio-wise in a while mostly due to difficulties with audio quality but I have a few potential things in the pipeline there.

Due to the popularity of my satire posts on my sister publication under my pseudonym

Everett Polinski

, and particular encouragement that I write more of that, I’m also splitting effort and attention with that enterprise over on Irkutsk Ice Truckers, so I will probably post over there a bit more frequently than here, but again it will all depend on what I discover about my abilities or lack thereof through this writing experiment (but more importantly also through prayer, which is of course, as an avenue of grace, a primary way of receiving and thereby growing in charity).

So, you will get more of what you have gotten so far. This site will continue to be a mix of things with a unifying purpose that is there, so please don’t worry if I jump in some future essay from “Were the Nazis and the Communists Left or Right Wing?” to “In The Throne Room: Why A Personal Relationship With Christ Shouldn’t Be Friendly” to “Solving the Practical Problems for Integrating Canada.” All of which are articles I am in the process of writing. No, the newsletter and the site did not change ownership or start hosting paid Russian propaganda, or anything of that sort. It just has been and will continue to cover a mix of topics from a Catholic, conservative,² and in many places, Girardian perspective.

Thank you all for your comments, for reading, and for sharing this effort,

James Green

(I’m giving it up for a while, probably until after Easter, but I’m also on X at @jamesgreenWY with mostly political content and thoughts, and also a bit of Catholic apologetics stuff, even if often mostly on a meta-level)

1. Nor, they told me, should I.

2. Although perhaps conservative is not always the best word for it.