Reflections: What Grows in Silence - I Sepolcri di Grano

Today, as I prepare i sepolcri di grano - those tender shoots of wheat grown in darkness for Holy Week, I’m struck by how much of our heritage is cultivated in shadow.

These small grains of wheat will in time sprout into humble and symbolic tender shoots; grown quietly in cupboards and cellars, much like the family stories carried in silence. They belong to rituals that travelled across oceans with our families, reappearing each year in kitchens and parish halls far from Basilicata.

I remember my maternal grandmother, nonna Carmela preparing them for Good Friday. I watched her soak the grains, spread them into shallow dishes, and hide them away in darkness. She had carried this tradition from her village to Australia, recreating it in a suburban kitchen that bore little resemblance to the world she left behind. For her, it wasn’t nostalgia; it was devotion and continuity; a quiet way of keeping the rhythm of faith and the old world alive in a new one. I didn’t fully understand the symbolism then. I only knew it was something solemn, something that marked time and faith.

The wheat grains are soaked briefly before being spread over damp cotton wool or a thin layer of soil in shallow dishes. They are carefully tended so that they remain moist but never flooded. For most of Lent, the trays are kept in darkness inside cupboards, cellars, or covered in boxes, where the shoots grow long and pale. This deprivation of light is deliberate, a quiet burial that mirrors the tomb.

By Holy Thursday and Good Friday, the pale sprouts are brought into light.  Families carry their trays to church, arranging them around the Sepolcri, the symbolic tombs commemorating Christ’s burial. The luminous shoots, so delicate and fragile, decorate the altar with added ribbons and flowers.

The symbolism is rich and layered. The darkness evokes death, while the emergence into light evokes Resurrection.  Wheat itself gestures towards the Eucharist, recalling the bread of the Holy Host.  Beneath these Christian meanings lie echoes of much older Mediterranean traditions: the ancient Greek “gardens of Adonis”, where seeds were sprouted in darkness as symbols of death, renewal, and the cyclical rhythm of life.

In tending these shoots, I feel I will be tending to both memory and meaning.  The wheat grows quietly, unseen, much like the stories that were never fully told, yet still shape who I am. Each pale strand will be a reminder that traditions survive even when voices fade, that gestures outlast words, and that what is planted in darkness can still reach towards light.

Preparing these Sepolcri today feels like listening to the quiet. The wheat grows without light, yet it grows. In the same way, memories persist even as voices fade. What remains are rituals, tastes, and gestures; small living archives that outlast speech.

This reflection is part of a larger journey to gather what can still be gathered: stories, recipes, village histories, emotional landscapes of migration. Some voices are lost. Some silences are inherited. But each ritual, each dish, each recollection is a small refusal to let everything disappear into quiet.

Perhaps, one day, these fragments will find their way into a book - a quiet archive of memory, food, and migration, shaped by what could be remembered and what could still be gathered.