Soil is funny stuff. After that gospel I feel the desire to be rich, productive soil but soil is funny stuff. Soil is dirt. Soil is muck. How do we get to be soil?
Soil is humble, soil is humus. Humus is what gives real meaning to humility—not self-deprecation but an earthiness that recognises our origins in simple dirt. To be one with the soil is humility. To be one with the soil is to be human. We are called to be soiled, to be soil, to be down-to-earth. Can’t you feel the call?
Soil:
• without soil the planet would die—between bedrock and sky, the soil is a fragile, thin layer on which everything depends
• soil is alive—a spadeful holds more living things than all the humans ever born
• soil is a community—plants, bacteria, fungus, worms; growing, dying, rotting, feeding, breeding; fixing nitrogen; freeing minerals
• soil grows slowly—it takes 500 years to lay down an inch
Here’s the call—not to be rock, not to be sky, but to be soil, rich, living soil. Not pure. Not lone. Not clean. Not strong. Not hasty. But dirt, and earth and humus. The only place where the gospel can grow.