I had just finished Camille Dungy’s book, Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden and checked out her website because I wanted more. She was going to be in conversation with Robin Wall Kimmerer later that week over Zoom. Enough said. I bought my ticket. During the conversation Dr. Kimmerer told a story about a professor who signed graded student papers with his name followed by Tn.S, like Ph.D. When asked about this unknown designation he said it means temporarily not soil. Talk about a memento mori! Every time he signs his name he remembers his own impermanence.
Last Fall, on a hike with my children we marveled at how the same ground we trod was there from all time, that all living things from leaves to berries to birds, small mammals and even human persons were all still in, had become soil. This knowledge didn’t diminish or make our hike feel haunted. On the contrary, this acknowledgment made the hike sacred.
On a summer solo hike I noticed many dead and alive trees. It was a particularly dry summer. So dry, in fact, that many old trees were releasing branches that they could no longer support for their own survival. In the news, a woman was walking in a park in my city and a tree branch fatally fell on her. The trees I saw on this hike were like seeing the dead and alive parts of my own inner life. Trunks and branches, though they were not producing a life of their own, were supporting the lives of birds and insects and small mammals. Even when it eventually falls and begins to decompose it will still support life in the forest. It is still a member of it.
Death denial is a sneaky trickster. He comes for us all through distraction and numbing, and for some through technology and genetic enhancement with feverish efforts to never meet face to face. Either tactic diminishes what is sacred. All of life is a network of dead persons (plant and animal) nourishing the living. This is a mysterious and grand story.
“If a seed is unplanted, it remains only one seed, but if it dies, falls to the earth, and enters the ground, it will then grow and become many seeds.” –Creator Sets Free (Jesus), John 12:24, FNV
What seeds are unplanted in your inner life? What trees and branches have fallen to the ground to nourish the soil below or provide shelter and care for the smaller bursts of life that roam there?
Lent is a season of long dark and disruption. It begins on Ash Wednesday with another memento mori, “From dust you have come and to dust you shall return,” the priest says at the imposition of ashes on foreheads. The day commences an interior 40 day journey over seven weeks (the Sundays are not counted. They remind us that Resurrection is coming). We mirror and remember both the 40 years the people of Israel wandered in the wilderness between enslavement in Egypt and the promised land, and the 40 days Jesus spent in the wilderness between his baptism in the Jordan and his three year ministry. The ashes are a baptism of humility reminding us that we are temporarily not soil and lead those who claim this story into a season devoted to spiritual practice and self-examination.
As the season of Epiphany ends and Lent begins I am very aware that for many, their long dark may have started sooner than expected. Many have already entered the mysterious wild with loss of jobs and all the insecurity that carries with them. Others fear what will happen next. Take heart, beloved, I pray you will find a whole network of life in the wild soil.
Ash Wednesday Creative Attention
The next Creative Attention is on Ash Wednesday, March 5 at 12pm, EST. We will be exploring themes of mortality, interior journey, and wilderness. You can sign up below. If you are one of the many workers who are experiencing job loss and are interested in coming to explore this drawing practice, I’m making room for you to join us for free. Send me an email and I’ll add you to the list.
A Few Good Listens (or Reads)
Melanie Challenger's book, How to Be Animal: A New History of What It Means to Be Human is a brilliant mix of biology, zoology, philosophy and psychology. It starts with single cell organisms and ends with profound questions around AI. She asks the reader to consider what we loose when we refuse to think of ourselves as animals.
A Love Song for Ricki Wilde by Tia Williams was a fun read. Plants, magical realism, the Harlem Renaissance, romance, music history, sprinkled with a little 90’s pop culture. It was a nice break from the news.
Emergence Magazine has produced some really great episodes lately. One of my favorites is an interview with Paul Salopek, a journalist who is retracing the migration pathways of the earliest humans from Djibouti to Patagonia on foot. He’s been walking for over a decade! At the time of the interview, he was in North Eastern China. Paul discusses his experience of timelessness while walking. He calls it, sacramental time. “Time that bring together mind, body and landscape into conversation.” This conversation made me reconsider my own pedestrian practice. You can follow Paul’s odyssey here.
Until next time,
Lauren Shea Little, TnS