God is.. |
I had a general unsettled feeling last week. Initially I couldn’t put my finger on
its cause until I realized, since my yellow-lab Ben had been sick, a few days
had passed without us touching the earth.
We had gone for brief leash walks on concrete sidewalks, but actually
feeling the ground under our feet had not happened for days. Knowing that the cure for my general
funk was not far away was a relief.
There is a magnificent 17-acre wood, one side bordering on a
river, with 100-year-old plus trees that would minister to my need. Just the sound of my footsteps on the
broad wooden plank bridge crossing the river began to elevate my mood as I
watched multiple goose families, with their young, trolling on the water’s
current. But the real elixir came
when entering under the high-canopied trees and feeling the well-worn earthen
path under my feet. Sparsely
spattered dapples of bright sunlight provided dramatic contrast to the deeply
shaded forest floor. A few of the
biggest trees were laid down and were on their way to return to the soil. It was the end of my malaise.
The fact is soil supports all life, including us. There was a nutritionist on UWM public
radio recently who said, “We are literally made of dirt.” The elements found in soil are the same
elements in us. And she suggested
we not treat sick plants, but rather treat the soil in which they grow. What if the same is true for us? And I remembered a statement from my
former Teacher Naturalist training materials at Riveredge Nature Center,
“Almost everything on earth can be called by another name—‘temporarily not
soil’.” A hundred years ago that
would have been an easier concept to grasp for the world was not so full of so
much permanent looking stuff that we created--from what? The earth.