The Soil of Desire

Composite Models and the Parable of the Sower

“Sower” woodcut print by Ruth McCahon

On considering the role of God’s grace in the context of having and living with composite models, my ongoing theme, the Parable of the Sower came to mind. It helps that my grandmother, a professional artist in her day, carved and printed a piece she titled The Sower, though I don’t know if she meant just an agrarian image or something calling towards the aforementioned parable. The Parable of the Sower is not merely about belief and unbelief. It is about the configuration of desire, about the kind of composite model that either resists or receives grace.

Gil Bailie has often reminded us that we are not self-contained individuals but interdividual beings, formed in and through imitation. The soil in Christ’s parable is not merely temperament or mood; it is the accumulated configuration of models that shape our desires, what I have been calling the composite model.

I’ve described composite models elsewhere more or less, but the dominant thought in my mind has been to articulate how we can be made in the image and likeness of God, have free will, and yet be wholly mimetic in our desiring. If we are interdividual beings, then the question is not whether we imitate, but why we do not imitate everyone at once. Over time, through memory and mimesis, we accumulate the models we have followed. They do not disappear; they form a present gravitational center — not layered neatly, but refracting and warping one another — until a relatively stable composite model emerges. It is this model that becomes loud and near enough that only a model of unusual authority can draw us into a new orbit.

In Girard’s vocabulary, skandalon names the stumbling block, the moment when a model becomes an obstacle and desire knots into rivalry. Scandals introduce double binds into our composite formation. They distort gravity. They can harden soil, thin it, or crowd it with defensive growth. The different soils of the parable can be read as the long-term configurations left behind by unresolved scandal. There are two primary ways to ward off unwanted mimetic influence: hyperactivity or cessation of activity. Our composite model is not Providence itself, but the field in which Providence works. It is the history of our free responses to models, responses that God, without violating them, weaves into His call.

Some seeds fell along the path and the birds came and devoured them

On the path, the birds eat it. This is the non-action scenario. Shutting out and not letting anything in to prevent influence. The path is hardened soil — compacted by traffic, pressed down by repeated exposure. Nothing penetrates. This is not always open rebellion; often it is simply impermeability. The composite model has consolidated around self-protection. No new model is allowed to disturb it. The seed cannot even enter. The anxieties, distractions, and suspicions of the age quickly consume what never took root. Repeated scandal can compact the soil. The safest response becomes impermeability.

Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they had not much soil, and immediately sprang up, since they had no depth of soil, but when the sun rose they were scorched; and since they had no root they withered away.

Rocky soil, shallow soil. This is the hyperactive scenario where to prevent any one model from becoming too influential, desire is thrown one direction and then another, always to the next available model. One gets the image of Tarzan swinging through the jungle on vines, making him look very impressive and capable, until he runs out of vines. This composite model adopts quickly but integrates nothing. It confuses intensity with depth. Each new model is seized with enthusiasm and then abandoned when the next vine appears. Where scandal has introduced instability, depth feels dangerous. Better to move quickly from model to model than risk another double bind.

I am reminded of the question Jesus asks the disciples in Cesarea, “Who do the people say that I am?” and they answer the many short-sighted but somewhat plausible answers. If we follow the crowd in search of borrowed urgency and second-hand conviction, we never sink roots deep enough to build the gravity necessary to endure a true encounter.

Other seeds fell upon thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them.

Thorns and thistles. The thorny soil is not shallow and not hardened. It is crowded. Competing models grow as protective cover — each promising stability, none becoming central. The result is not dramatic rejection but suffocation, the slow triumph of competing desires over a desire that never becomes central. The thorns are all the competing models in the world, that are ever present and so readily available and convincing that they can overwhelm our encounter with Grace.

Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold.

Good soil is not perfection; it is ordered depth. Ordered depth does not mean the absence of scandal. It means scandal has not been allowed to define the gravitational center.

A composite model formed around stable and worthy models becomes capable of receiving a greater one without fragmentation. When we have a composite model that has been formed with virtues, given objects of desire that are stable, good, and beneficial, we are made docile to the Grace that will come our way. We will be prepared to encounter the non-rivalrous model, Christ, in a personal way that can only be between Himself and the unique combination of models that forms our interdividual self, our composite model. When grace takes root in ordered soil, it does not remain private. It becomes fruitful. The reoriented composite model becomes itself a living mediation of desire. The question, then, is not whether grace is sown. It is what kind of soil our accumulated desires have made of us.

What kind of soil have our imitations prepared?