Soil.  Dirt.  Earth.  We walk on it.  Eat from it. Build upon it.  Depend upon its fruits.  The Judeo-Christian scriptures remind us that we are dirt creatures with the Divine breath blown into us, humbly formed and shaped from dust to which we will return someday. (Genesis, chap. 2 and 3).  

And yet, we take the rich plentitude of soil for granted. We can’t even imagine the whole universe that inhabits one cubic foot of soil under our feet.  We can’t even conceive of the centuries it has taken for top soil to become nutrient rich from rock and rain and shine, capable of growing living things.  An article by Edward O. Wilson in the February 2010 National Geographic, says it well:

“immediately close at hand, around and beneath our feet, lie the least-explored parts of our planet’s surface.  It is also the most vital place on Earth for human existence … the entire ground habitat is alive … tiny beetles hide from the sudden light, and pill bugs curl their bodies into defensive balls. Centipedes and millipedes, the armored snakes of their class, squeeze into the nearest crevices and wormholes.  It may seem that the whole icky lot of them and the miniature realms they inhabit are unrelated to human concerns. But scientists have found exactly the opposite to be true.  Together with the bacteria and other invisible microorganisms swimming and settled around the mineral grains of the soil, the ground dwellers are the heart of life on Earth.”  (p.70)

Yet we have lost our wonder, our sense of interdependence and respect for this most humble servant we call soil.  Humans have abused her, destroyed her and rendered her impotent, taking from her, and giving nothing in return, so soil can continue to provide the very stuff of life we depend upon.   We have lost our original vocation of serving the earth with respect and tender care and deep gratitude.   

Our food system is compromised due to our mistreatment of soil.  Our market economy is predicated upon exploiting and exhausting the land and the soil in order to make a profit.  We have by and large allowed industrial farming techniques to overtake care-ful stewardship and husbandry of the very land that feeds and nourishes us.    

No longer do humans work in concert with the soil to grow our food and celebrate all the fruits of her labor.  No longer do we observe the cycles and rhythms of her seasons.  No longer do we  impose limits on overuse of soil.  We have become disconnected from the land itself, seeing sister soil as a commodity, to be wrestled into submission, drenched in pesticides and fertilizers, overfarmed, paved, dissected, and degraded.

May the following Lenten reflection inspire some new tenderness inside of us for humble sister soil. 

ENRICHING THE EARTH

by Wendell Berry (Northpoint Press, San Francisco, 1985)

To enrich the earth I have sowed clover and grass
to grow and die.  I have plowed in the seeds
of winter grains and of various legumes,
their growth to be plowed in to enrich the earth.
I have stirred into the ground the offal
and the decay of the growth of past seasons
and so mended the earth and made its yield increase.

All this serves the dark.  I am slowly falling
into the fund of things.  And yet to serve the earth,
not knowing what I serve, gives a wideness and a delight
to the air, and my days do not wholly pass.  It is the mind’s service,
for when the will fails, so do the hands,
And one lives at the expense of life.
After death, willing or not, the body serves,
entering the earth.  And so what was heaviest
And most mute is at last raised up into song.