A person may watch their offering fall and understand that it has arrived.
Another, standing beside them, may urge them to begin again.
They have witnessed the same movement. What each understands of it will determine what each does next.
This is where I begin with Cain and Abel—not as siblings, but as two people standing before different offerings, each answerable for what they have brought.
Cain watches Abel’s offering receive what his own has not. He sees the fire, the regard, the distinction. He sees another person’s offering accepted into the heavens. Surely God approves, for our Lord is in Heaven.
Abel watches Cain’s offering receive what his own has not. He sees the breath of God take form as a whirlwind, the regard, the distinction. Before him, another person’s offering is accepted by the Earth, the same earth from which his sire was formed. Surely God approves, for our Lord is in the Earth as well.
Yet Abel asks Cain to offer again.
What has been received by the Earth appears to him to have been refused by Heaven. He has witnessed the reception. He has not understood it.
Cain understands where the fruit has gone. From the earth it came; to the earth it returns. Within it is seed. Within the seed, another season. The whirlwind has moved the offering from the altar to the ground, and the ground can receive what the altar held.
You see, the way Abel’s offering is received has no bearing on the way Cain’s offering is received.
Cain can regard the fire without asking it to become the measure of his fruit. If he shaped his offering only to obtain the reception Abel’s received, his attention would belong to Abel’s offering. What he brought would become a response to another person’s regard, another person’s distinction.
God has received both offerings. Fire has taken one. Earth has taken the other. Each has been received according to what it carries.
Abel expects Cain to recognize failure. Cain explains the growth that remains.
There is indifference here.
We often ask a person how much they care by watching how much they can be disturbed. We expect their face to fall when the thing before them falls. We expect them to repeat their labor when someone beside them declares it insufficient. Yet a person may be steady because they understand what is happening.
In Abel’s insistence, I see the fallen countenance. He asks his brother to repair what his brother understands has already been received. Cain remains Cain. The fruit carries what it carried before the whirlwind. The seed has found the ground.
Abel’s way forward comes through the ending of an animal’s life. That ending belongs to another circle within the circle of life. Cain’s fruit carries its continuation within itself. The seed returns, and the season opens again. Abel stands before that continuation and asks for another offering.
How often do we ask another to begin again because we cannot recognize what has already begun?
The groundskeeper follows the offering beyond the moment in which it was displayed. Where the fruit has fallen, there is still ground to tend. There will be rain, roots, a season of waiting. Understanding what the seed carries gives their attention somewhere to remain.
For the Black person to whom I am speaking, this earth is a responsibility. There is ground to tend, life to guard, a household to cultivate. The cares and attractions of this realm make their demands upon us. Each would have our attention. We must understand what our attention is growing.
If every voice can turn us from the ground, who remains to tend it?
This question follows the parent home to the garden. Fig has grown. Olive has grown. Each has a nature, a reach, a season. The parent returns to what has continued in their absence and must look long enough to understand it. What has their care made possible? What has their absence required the trees to manage between them?
Fig | Olive holds this question in its branches. Each can bear fruit without making the other’s fruit its measure. Each can receive light without requiring the other to disappear. Their growth asks something of them together, and something of the one who tends them.
Here, indifference remains attentive. The groundskeeper knows that another’s judgment cannot take the place of tending, just as their own certainty cannot take its place. There is life before them. It must be regarded.
Cain speaks to Abel. His understanding reaches toward the person beside him. Abel may need time to recognize what the earth has received. Beneath their conversation, the seed carries another season.
The way your offering is received does not determine how mine must be received. I can witness what yours has become and remain answerable for what mine carries.
This is the indifference I am considering: an understanding that allows a person to regard another’s offering while remaining faithful to their own.
They know what they have offered. They know what it carries. Their attention follows it beyond the altar, into the life still unfolding.
They tend the ground.
“…and there was not a man to till the ground.”
— Genesis 2:5 (KJV)
Father, I will tend the ground. I will regard what You have placed before me, learn what it carries, and give my attention to what is growing.
This was my answer to You.
Then I came to tend the ground.