Psalm 95
Summer 2019
We have lived in our house for just over six years and, each spring, I am grateful for the matriarch who preceded me. Donna was a wonderful gardener. Her landscaping is timeless and her perennials are a lavish inheritance.
My husband has a green thumb, and my expertise has been limited to spreading mulch, pulling weeds, and complimenting his ability to keep the yard alive. Small children have had me moving the sprinkler and putting away bikes for several years. There has been very little time to fuss over soil and plants before dusk turns to dark. I’ve spent five summers assuming that this tending would feel like one more nagging task on the to do list and was grateful to Matt for watering, pruning, and caring for our little patch of land.
But this season is different. Now all five of us are in the yard. Ten bare feet smell like the cool earth. Fifty fingernails harbor half moons of dirt. Our necks are tanned from the sun because we are looking down underfoot this summer, picking peas and broccoli, smelling for mint and basil, checking for tomatoes and peppers, thanking the tulips and irises for their bygone blooms.
I am learning to tend and garden for the very first time, together with my children; adopting their postures of curiosity, Google Imaging the bugs they are finding, answering their questions with more questions of my own. I am learning now because I was not an earth kid growing up. I was a water kid. so much an earth kid. Waves and washing, oceans and lakes, tides and currents my primary natural language.
I was a neat freak as a child, giving dirt and germs a bad wrap early on. Unfortunately, much of our theological language over-justified that behavior:
wash away my sins,
make me white as snow,
clean and purify me with hyssop, God.
These images of baptism and forgiveness gave birth to phrases like: Cleanliness is next to godliness. And they are not untrue, but they are the whole truth either.
Soil is spiritual.
Dirt is necessary for growing, feeding, and fueling.
The earth is not only location or inanimate matter.
It is life and source, our very beginning and being.
Remember that in Genesis Adam is formed from the dust of the earth. In fact, his name Adam means “earthen creature”. And that formation of earth comes alive and fully human when God’s holy breath fills it with spirit. The first human beings are entrusted with plants and animals, for they are all tied to the earth, all formed from the dust of creation and the dirt that tethers us to particular points in history.
I am prone to forget that, and then rudely reminded each Ash Wednesday when dust is smudged on my forehead and I hear the bluntest of all the blessings:
Remember, you are dust. And to dust you will return.
I have to remind myself that this is, in fact, good news. I am connected to this place, these atoms, taking up room for a generation or so, woven into the compost and fruits of the world God loves so much.
Most cultural and spiritual traditions honor this bond between the earth and humankind. The indiginous people of this land, the Dakota, tell a story about their ancestors, formed by Barn Bluff in Red Wing, women and men carved into creation by the waters that flowed and pushed against the rock, from the dance of fertile waters and the red earth.
Location and land shape our identity in all kinds of obvious and subtle ways. And so it’s no wonder that God led the people Israel through the Red Sea and into the wilderness for a generation. In the waiting and the watching, in the trusting and the hoping, they were untangled from the habits and haunts of slavery and hard labor, of the mind numbing and back breaking work of trying to save yourself.
God knew it would take time to teach freedom, to embed it in their waking and slumber, their work and their play, their family life and table manners, their fashion and verbiage.
When they were hungry, they complained and blamed one another, wishing to go back in time, remembering Egypt with Stockholm syndrome or nostalgia - because when we get frightened and angry, we tend to choose the crummy known over the unknown.
When they were thirsty, they whined and wailed for a future in which everything would fall into place, for a destination that would be a quick fix and a happy ending.
When they were supposed to gather manna and quail one day at a time, they couldn’t resist hoarding more, for fear that God might forget them one morning, that, in the end, this wilderness journey was every man for himself.
And so our Psalm today recalls the ways we have long disconnected from the earth, mistrusting its goodness, longing for greener grass elsewhere, and storing up more than our fair share.
Sing and praise, make a joyful noise to the Lord who is the rock of our salvation. This God is not only far away in the heavens, but buried deep in the earth on which we stand. All of creation belongs to God and bears God’s image, and so we should look for God in the goodness of the earth. We are like God’s sheep, grazing on the land our shepherd knows so backwards and forwards, in daylight and deep nighttime. We are safe and secure in the abundance of this presence and care.
And then the Psalm offers God’s lament for us by remembering the generation in the wilderness, the people who longed for the past and the future instead of dwelling in their present, noticing the ways God was shaping them through location and land, loving the ways God was reintroducing them to relationship and freedom and connection.
God is remembering the decision to keep them in the wilderness for longer than they would have liked, until the myth of scarcity and the fear of abandonment were shed from their load, until they had become the people who wandered and wrestled and trusted God wherever they stood.
If you garden - or if you love people - you know that there is a big difference between not dying and deciding to live.
Not dying is a slow and stubborn decline, inspired only by not being totally gone yet. It’s cautious and risk averse. It asks for a quick fix, but is not willing to let go of anything so there is room for new experiments, failures, lessons, and learnings.
Last fall the city planted a tree in the boulevard in front of our home for the third year in a row. Just like the others, this one was set too shallow and would struggle to survive the winter. But, while the heights of the little sampling struggled, a stubborn shoot came out knee-high, scrappy and eager. Matt chopped the top off before the first snow and we chuckled at our stunted oak, a fraction of the size it could have been but healthy and happy - ready to live.
We all know what decline feels like, but deciding to live is different. It has open hands and nothing to lose. It’s a mess, really, because trial by error require all kinds of growing pains and embarrassment in uncharted, public territory. It is vulnerable and connected in all the best ways, drinking in the good stuff that fuels true life - and being present.
Last summer our tomato plants thrived. We couldn’t keep up with their abundance and they were a snack for the neighborhood kids playing and running through our yard. This summer I found tomato plants sprouting all over our yard, wherever tomatoes had been dropped or squished last season. They were a sign of abundant life all over my yard!
Today is one of the longest days of the year and, if you listen closely, you can hear the soil’s song. It is making joyful noise, calling us back to the dirt, to location and land, to the here and now, to the connections that formed our inmost parts, to the places still helping us discover who we actually are.
There is plenty of noise out there, tempting us to live in the nostalgia of yesterday or the fantasy of tomorrow, but the Psalmist is calling us to a different kind of noise, a joyful noise; a song that teaches delight and responsibility for this day and this place.
So sing to the God who is still making us a people, who is untangling us from the habits and haunts of our disconnection from the earth and the dust, providing manna and mercy one day a time, forming and reforming us for the sacred calling - not simply to not die, but to be alive - like earthen creatures, good stewards, spiritual soil. Amen.