A few years ago I wrote a short little essay on dirt and several people have asked me about it recently. So, since I haven’t posted it here before, I thought I’d do so (minimally edited from the 2003 version). Enjoy!
A Thought on Dirt
Until recently, I had never really taken the time to think about how amazing dirt really is. In the last couple of weeks however, as my church (and place of employment) broke ground and started construction on the second half of our facility, I’ve begun to see the beauty of this, the most basic, and yet infinitely complex of elements.
Of course, the modern world doesn’t consider dirt to actually be an element. We reserve that title for substances that are impossible to discern with the naked eye. Fortunately however, our propensity for making everything more complicated than it really should be didn’t stop the ancient world from recognizing the immense value of this unique substance.
As a boy in northwest Iowa, I was raised knowing the worth of good dirt. And even though I now live in Michigan, where the dirt will require another million years or so to reach the moist warmth of the black gold my homeland produced, I have yet to forget the lessons of my childhood.
We had a pile of dirt in our front lawn. Actually, it was my Dad’s pile of dirt, not mine, but in line with the traditions of most children, I quickly took ownership of it. I don’t know where it came from, but eventually that pile of dirt was to end up insulating one of the three walls of the house we built. (Of course, my Dad actually built it, but as with the dirt, that didn’t stop me from thinking it was mine either.) One day, as I bathed myself in the elemental beauty of that black playground, my hand broke through into a nest of baby gardners. It was amazing. Hundreds of green and yellow snakelets hissing and squirming burst out onto my lap like a clown’s peanut can at a birthday party. With the swiftness of animal instinct, I hurled myself away from the roiling mass, but not without learning a very important lesson: Dirt is the root of all life.
God knew that. The book of Genesis tells the story of God creating dirt, and then, as if he had created it just for that purpose, on the sixth day, he played in it. You don’t believe me? Check it out. Genesis chapter 2, verse 7. Just a couple of pages into the sacred scriptures, God is playing in the dirt. Imagine the tiny divine sand castles God might have built on the shores of Lake Michigan or the gourmet mud pies carefully crafted from the best the world has to offer. Then, as if growing bored with inanimate objects, God built an adult. Knees, feet, fingernails, earlobes, nose hairs, lungs, appendix – everything but a bellybutton (if childhood jokes are to be trusted) and liking it, God took a deep breath and blew into it. The dirt became a man, and humanity was created.
Jesus liked dirt too. One apocryphal story from his childhood tells of him making small birds in the soil of his childhood homeland, and upon being chastised for playing during the Sabbath, he breathed into them and they flew away. Later, in the course of his public ministry, he healed a blind man with dirt and a little spit. Not to mention, the famous incident where he stooped to the ground and wrote the mysterious words that would set an adulterous woman free and silence her accusers.
Unfortunately, as humanity has “progressed,” dirt lost its position of favor among those of us who were created from it. Now, as if denying our own history, we participate in innumerable personal and familial rituals to rid ourselves of this primal element. Although perhaps providing a certain degree of freedom from disease, the side-effects of a germ-free society are devastating. Why? Well, it can all be sifted down to one very simple equation: E=D.
Enjoyment = Dirt.
The level of enjoyment one has in his or her life is relative to the amount of dirt one encounters. In other words, the more we play in dirt, the happier we are. The opposite seems to be true as well: the less we play in dirt, the less we enjoy life. As a matter of proof, let me direct your attention to two groups of people: Lawyers and 3-year olds. Lawyers encounter a minute amount of dirt in their daily lives, while 3-year olds practically sweat the substance. Let me ask you, who seems to enjoy life more? Is it the executive lawyer with a multimillion dollar office and a cleaning staff to protect her from dirt, or, is it the 3-year old who pulls of his shirt in the summer heat and paints “war-strips” on his chest after tracking down a “hippopotamus” in the grove?
The answer is simple: the child.
Jesus told us to be like little children, which according to pastors and scholars, was in the context of teaching about faith. Could it be possible, though, that faith is only part of what Jesus was talking about. I think so.
I think Jesus was talking about dirt too. Of course, I probably won’t mention that on Sunday morning. After all, if everyone ran outside to play in the dirt during worship, my Consistory might not be very happy – let alone the people who are signed up to clean the church next week. But maybe – just maybe, it’ll happen some other time. Hours after everyone has gone home from worship, and hours before anyone might call for a visit or a counseling session. In those quiet moments just before the moon rises or shortly before the sun peeks its face over the eastern horizon. Maybe, I’ll throw on some old blue jeans, a T-shirt and some sandals and carefully sneak out to the pile behind the church to explore what’s hidden depths of one of God’s most popular playgrounds.
Of course, you’re welcome to join me. I’ve gotten over my childhood need to pretend everything is mine. But please don’t tell the Consistory or the people signed up to clean next week. It’s a lot easier to explain if they think the kids did it.
(c) 2003, 2010 Tim TenClay
Grace and Peace,
`tim
