Sacred Soil
“The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care for it we can have no community, because without proper care for it we can have no life.”
Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture
“I am time, destroyer of all things.”
Krishna, The Bhagavad Gita
“Curving back within myself I create again and again.”
Krishna, The Bhagavad Gita
Out of the deathly silence of winter comes the melodious unfurling of spring. The earth rises up from within herself, having made friends with destruction.
The compost pile out back, bolstered by chicken manure, has broken down and become a sweet earthy mulch. Though it might look like decay, when I look closely, I can see the life hidden there - the small grubs and worms wriggling through it. And I know the microbes have been working hard. Despite not being able to see them, I see evidence of their work - these tiny elves that work through the night, releasing the old material from its prior form, ready to take on a new life.
The sunflower seeds I saved from my garden last year have been planted in my little make-shift nursery. Four days after being put in the soil, they are already blooming.
Sunflowers are such wondrous things. There are millions planted around Fukushima to help draw out toxins from the soil post nuclear meltdown. They take in toxicity and exude radiance. When given good healthy soil, they are even more spectacular. I hope to have a yard full of them this year.
I think I like them so much because they are a reminder that not all flowers are fragile. And that it's possible to survive and bring joy and health to others in less than ideal circumstances. Plants give so much.
They also feel like an embodiment of the fact that we are all borrowed sunlight.
I've been thinking about energy a lot lately.
I spent several years feeling like an old helium balloon, floating through life at half mast.
The more I talked to my friends, the more I realized I wasn’t alone.
There are countless reasons we are always drained. So many responsibilities, so many distractions, so few safety nets.
After talking with my parents about village life, I realized that they had worries, distractions, and hard labor to do too. What’s changed is that they used to live walking distances from everyone they loved. They regularly were working with animals, eating fresh food they grew, and giving back to their small communities. They could see the impact of their work. They could taste it. And they could see and feel the soil that nourished them. The soil they would one day return to.
As Werner Herzog says, “the world reveals itself to those who walk on foot.” The village was built for walking. It was built for people - not cars. No drive thrus, drive bys, or freeways. It was built to go at the pace of life. It was built to connect people and nature. It was built to restore energy.
All life on earth is eating sunlight, whether directly or by eating something that does. Alas, we can’t photosynthesize. We have bacterial cells that have fused with our human cells called mitochondria. They help us convert whatever we eat into adenosine triphosphate or ATP - a fuel our cells can use to carry out their various functions. These mitochondria work best when they are getting proper food and rest.
I tried everything from resting and changing my diet to exercising and cutting out alcohol. I'm sleeping better, meditating and gardening. I even went so far as to only eat bread I bake myself and eating fewer processed foods. I quit several jobs I hated so I could do more things I loved and get new skills so I could live more aligned with my values. I always make time for friends and family because I know how much their energy rejuvenates me.
It's had wonderful effects on my health. But I would still have strange flare ups of skin rashes and lethargy. I recently learned that one of the creams my dermatologist had perscibed to me had hydrocotisone in it. A corticosteroid.
One consequence of using topical steroids is withdrawal (TSW). It can dry out and thin your skin. It can mess up your hormone function as it injects you with cortisol. It can mess up your adrenal response. It can cause red scaly sores on your skin. It can sap you of your energy.
All my flare ups were not my original mild itchy winter skin. It was a withdrawal from the drug my doctor had so cavalierly given me with no instructions or words of caution. At least drug lords have the decency to not hide their recklessness beneath white coats.
I'm not even mad at this point. I'm just so sick of America's health care system. It's not about healing and working with our bodies or understanding people holistically. It's about quickly suppressing symptoms with outrageously concentrated drugs that are often worse than the ailment.
Just like our food system is a synthetic nutrient delivery system that has no regard for animal, human, or environmental welfare.
Any individual can only get so healthy in a society designed to make you sick.
You can only have so much energy in a society designed to drain you.
I'm grateful for this experience because the lack of energy in my body and the lack of meaning in my work led me to reimagine my life and create a more balanced way to move forward. I’ve continued returning to a simpler life. The more I look, the more I see that there are people all over the planet returning to a more mindful life that lives in harmony with both our bodily and environmental ecosystems. It’s nice to see everyone doing what they can to make a difference. We are capable of more than we think once we start living consciously.
People like Alice Waters, Michael Pollan, and Ron Finley really inspire me when it comes to reimaging society. I highly recommend checking out their work if you’re interested. I first heard about Ron Finley a few years ago on Simon Sinek’s podcast. I was so excited to hear about what he was doing. I finally got to see his Masterclass on gardening and loved seeing what he had created.
The city of LA had arrested him for planting a garden in the parkways in his neighborhood and refusing to take it down. He fought the case and got the law changed. Now there are many community gardens all around his neighborhood. He has given away free food out of the gardens to anyone who wants it and has created a way for young and old to come together to create a better more wholesome environment for themselves. He is a soil rejuvenator. A system changer. A reminder that gardening is gangster.
I’m even more determined to seek understanding of the systems we live in and create a more symbiotic and sustainable connection to all that's around and within us. We can choose a different way. We can curve back within ourselves and create something better. Even if it’s just in our backyards.
We must tend to the soil of our society, out of which all of us grow.
Let’s be sunflowers. Let's start over. Let's do spring.
