DIRT IS MY CHURCH...

And my passionate effort is to grow my congregation...who am I seeking to attract? Worms of course. Growing the family food supply has become way more than growing the family food supply. The truly meaningful things in life have a way of doing that...digging in and growing deep roots that reach out and branch in all directions. Some people tell me I have a dirty mind. I must admit, I do love the bawdy humor of tasteful profanity and sometimes I am critisized for my turn of phrase. I far prefer the twist of wordplay to the other kind of dirt...gossip. At least a profame double entendre doesn't seek to diminish another person the way that gossip does. I need to tell myself this when I feel that rise of redness in my face when I have blurted out something that surprises and embarrasses even me. The risk of practicing bawdy humor is that your efforts can offend the pious. I admit...sometimes I have a dirty mind. I have been mulling over this quality in myself as I seem to have startled a few people with my irreverance. Today as I hiked up the hill behind my house I had a thought.

It went kind of like this. Mmmmm...dirt. Where I used to imagine a T-shirt declaring Earth Is My Church...I think I'd need to update it now to DIRT IS MY CHURCH. How can it be a church? How can dirty jokes be holy? How can a middle age woman in muck boots covered with mud and her fingernails painted with halfmoons of dark brown earth beneath them stand her "appearance"? Look at her clothes. They are dirty too. And her shoes are muddy and her mind is dirty. What is a woman to do? And the more I thought about it, the clearer I was. There is embedded in the dirt...whether it is a garden dirt, a pile of manure, a dirty joke or a twisted take on a word with many meanings...embedded in the dirt and the profane is the seed of the sacred. My God...we all are products of a sexual act and we all sustain our aliveness by eating what grows from the seeds planted in the dirt and we enrich our dirt by heaping on the shit of various birds and animals... and we STILL eat what grows from the dirt.

Why be embarrassed by those who become offended by slightly profane humor? Why not be proud? My dirt is full of life.(and my life is full of dirt) My dirt is fertile. My dirt grows wonderful vegetables and my appearance reflects my employment... I garden. I dig the dirt and rake and hoe and I plant and weed and I make things grow. My mind is obsessed with my dirt. I like to plant seeds in the dirt. To some...my origin began in a dirty act. For heavens sake...why is it dirty if everyone and everything does it? Why would I worship with a dogma that makes a religion out of denying the sacredness that is embedded in the daily dirt of living? Why would I seek to remove all the sexual beings from my dirt? I want the squirmy worms to come forth and multiply. I want them crawling and tunnelling through my dirt. I want to hear a juicy dirty joke now and then and I love to add a bit of spice with a double entendre. I come from a family tree with many limbs that worked as ministers and spread the word of God. I have tied myself up in knots trying to understand spiritual truths from all manner of cultures. The brain can become a flaky leader when attempting to make sense of religion and philosophy. Heaven has no foundation under it unless you begin by building on the dirt. So having become a nearly full time gardener, I have discovered more sense in the poetry of the tree. The tree is a wonderous minister and a kind and gentle teacher. It can only reach upwards as far as it grows downwards. It grasps and carresses the dirt...the soil...the soul. It nourishes from deep within the earth and yet it is always reaching for heaven. Dirt is holy. Dirt is sacred. Dirt is alive...and my heart is clear...I am holy...sacred and alive...and I am dirty. If you find that offensive, I'll take it as manure. I'm a good shit. Ah. Next? A hot bath.