Earth’s Soil, God’s Soil

Prepared message given as part of Three Rivers worship on Zoom, 4 November 2021.

Well good morning again. I'm going to start by saying that I'm pretty excited about this message because I really love soil. Not dirt -- I need to make a distinction, dirt is the stuff on my kid's laundry, dirt is under the couch, dirt gets swept up -- but soil. In the period just after college I was part of a worker cooperative that owned and ran a large grocery store in San Francisco. And as part of that work I went to visit farms as a component of our organic verification process. And I fell in love with farming. Eventually I took a leave of absence from the store and went to work on a farm to learn about farming myself, and what I learned about farming was that it's not as much about growing plants as it is the process of building soil. My farming teacher was this character named Bob Canard, who grew carrots for a juice company, and fancy vegetables for a restaurant in Berkeley. And he used to have us lie down in the field of carrots and listen for what was happening in the soil. He taught us that the weeds in our garden beds weren't as much a nuisance as information about the quality of our soil. If you grew star thistle it meant that your soil needed more work. If you grew purslane and lambsquarters it meant that your soil was rich.

A few weeks ago i attended a convocation of from the BTS Center in Maine called "We Are God's Soil," and that got me thinking all over again about soil and the incredible wisdom, metaphor, and lessons that are found in soil. So today the text for our message isn't a story from Scripture, or a quote from early Friends, but some facts about soil. And, in fact, soil itself.

Maybe you had the chance to go to your garden or yard and bring some soil with you today. If you did, I want to encourage you to get that; if you didn't, that's okay -- I have some that I'll show you. If you did get soil, I want to invite, you, as you're able, and without spilling it on your computer, to put a spoonful of that soil into your hand.

Feel the texture of it. Is it sandy? Or does it have clay and hold together when you squeeze it? Does it crumble and fall apart?

if you're game, you could give it a little smell.

Does it smell rich? Or does it smell kind of acrid? Are there any little plant bits or roots apparent in it?

Is anyone crawling in it that you can see?

Take a moment and really look at the soil, or, if you don't have any in front of you picture some soil that you have spent time with. Soil in a garden. Soil that you played in as a child. The soil of your home.

Just a single teaspoon -- one gram of fertile soil -- can hold up to one billion (with a b) bacteria, several yards of fungal filaments, several thousand protozoa, and scores of nematodes and other critters. I'm going to put my soil down.

You can put your soil down or continue to hold it, brush off your hands, whatever works for you. I'm going to talk a little bit about soil, and with a disclaimer that the study of soil is -- people get master's degrees and Ph.Ds in soil. This is not a science class. I'm making some generalizations to help us understand some of the really unique wisdom that soil holds. So I'm going to present, and hopefully --

Can folks see that? Great.

I think it's easy to think that all soil is the same. In fact there are many different kinds of soils that are found around the world. Soil scientists group soils into large categories based on things like the parent materials which means the bedrock that they come from, the biological content of them, the climate that forms them, and the amount of time that they've been forming. This map illustrates the distribution of soil around the world. And soil isn't just what's on the top. Soil has different horizons according to the material that makes it up. And the most, the from the top or the O horizon which has the most organic material, all the way down to the bedrock.

Soil isn't static. It's a process. It's dynamic. It communicates. Water, nutrients, animals are flowing through it. Flowing down, water percolates from the surface down to the bedrock, gas deposits make their way up from the bottom through the soil. It may look inert, but it's not. And soil flows around continents. With erosion and fluvial deposition, it moves around large areas of land. Finally, soil has different textures. Scientists talk about soil as being sand, silt, or clay. And the percentages of sand, silt, or clay that make up any given amount of soil define its overall characteristics. The most fertile soil is that bit in the middle that's called loam, which is an equal mixture of clay, silt, and sand. It's most fertile, it's most ideal for farming, it moves water through it, it helps take water up from the soil, and it provides habitat for critters that are key to soil fertility and to soil health.

Oops, trying to stop sharing now.

So there's your science lesson for the day. Now for the meaning-making part. What wisdom does soil have for us? If there's one thing to take away from the lesson of soil, I think that it's this: soil isn't an inert substance. It's not really even a substance. I think that soil is actually a set of relationships: the relationship of sand, silt, and clay, earthworms, nematode, fungi, roots, water, sun, and wind. And time. In the same way, I am not a fixed and bounded substance, but rather a set of interactive relationships. A little aside: I have been fascinated with the notion that I could not live if it weren't for the billions and billions of bacteria in my gut. Probably gajillions of bacteria in my gut. So many, the total amount of that bacteria weighs more than any single organ in my body and is essential for not only digestion but the functioning of my central nervous system. Without all of those critters that live symbiotically in me, I might even die. I'm a cooperative organism. A set of dependent and interlocking relationships, both within and without me. And the oldest, richest soils are products of weathering brokenness, and relationships of distance and time. Though my essence, if I'm comparing myself to soil, comes from my parent material, the bedrock that I came from, I have been weathered by sun, wind, water, experience. I have been transported by rivers. I am most useful when I join with others who come from different parent material, who bring different histories, who have different qualities. I may be smooth and silty, but I am not useful unless I mix with sand and clay. Together we are fertile. Together we are beautiful. Together we are God's soil. Together we have what we need for seeds to grow. I think that fertile soil is a little bit like the Beloved Community, or a Quaker meeting where God lifts up all of the qualities that are needed to make more and more visible the world that God wants for us.

I want to close by referencing perhaps one of the most often-quoted stories about soil, from the Christian scripture. And it's the story of the sower who sows her seeds with abandon. Some seeds fall on a path that has no soil. They don't take root, and become food for passing birds. Other seeds fall on rocky ground. They spring up quickly but get scorched in the sun. Others fall among thorns and are choked out by those same weeds. And finally there are the seeds that fall onto the good ground, and produce an unprecedented yield. So often I feel like the takeaway from that story is this message that if I'm not the right kind of soil, then I'm not worthy, that I won't bear good fruit. But I want to push back against that narrative, as a story of empire, that we operate as individuals. Instead I want to offer that God's soil is a community. God's soil is the people of God coming together to offer their unique gifts and qualities, the ones that you bring and shine into each other's lives. God's soil is our interdependence. God's soil is flow, and process, and like the mustard seed, just the smallest bit. Just a spoonful contains billions of bacteria, yards of fungal filament, thousands of protozoa, scores of nematodes, just what is needed to be the fertile soil to grow the world that God wants for all of us.