We were meant to be in soil.

How strange it is to be clean.

For anyone blessed to have found their soulmate, as I have, you know it is not rare for the two of you to have the same thoughts arise at the same exact time. And so it was for us this morning. As I walked through the golden orb of dawn to gather some leaves from the kefir tree (Citrus hystrix) that grows adjacent the dirt road passing in front of our little wooden shack, it dawned on me how odd it is to live without hours spent daily tending to a garden. Without daily intimacy shared with the source of that which feeds us, life seems a bit off, a bit absurd, abstract, freakish in a way, and dare I say it, uncivilized.

My wife and I know enough about the wild growing plants that we still manage to harvest a bit of our daily meals here and there but for the most part, being far from our home and having to adopt the lifestyle of those around us now, we grapple to learn how best to navigate ourselves in this more modern environment, one that relies on trucks bringing all of ones daily necessities to the market and/or 7/11.

As I entered our temporary home to deliver the smooth citrus leaves to my beloved, right away she took the words from my mouth and mentioned how strange it is to live without having our bodies touching soil each day. In our normal lives we are farmers, spending anywhere from 3-10 hours per day in the dirt. Such use of time shapes ones worldview in considerably different ways than, for example, those experienced by people who purchase say, tomatoes from a grocery store. When all your food comes from the land you have literally grown close to for years, you not only experience taste differently, but you experience life itself in a wildly different way.

In the garden, over time, subtle scents and sounds reorient ones biology, sensitizing ones neurology to a more-than-human mind. And you soon realize that this isn’t our act, we are merely actors in it. Our concerns mean very little to the big cycles that allow fruit to bear seeds, that allow pollen to birth life, that make the rain fall and cause the Moon to alter tides. All of this is understood to a farmer, for all of this becomes their body too.

But here we are, catching a glimpse of what most experience in these strange post-modern days, a life where we know very little of where our food comes from. By my parents standards, and indeed I assume the standards of many, we have a far greater relationship here with our food than most. Because we know who sells it to us. We chat with them each day when we go to the market. We even know some of the fishermen. But we didn’t catch the fish, and we didn’t harvest the greens. We didn’t spend months nourishing the pumpkin we steamed this morning or sing songs with our neighbors when we harvested the rice we ate for lunch. There is no relationship. In the eyes of our meal, we are just tourists.

A teacher of mine once told me that all education should be environmental. He stressed the dangers of our increasingly compartmentalized world. I believe this extends to how we spend all our days, with “specialized” careers taking us away from the most fundamental aspects of being human, resulting in most of us thinking we are only good at one, or maybe a few, specific things. There was a time however, not all that long ago, when on top of our main “job” we were all also farmers, and craftsmen/women, and navigators, builders, musicians, etc., when touching the earth was as woven into the human experience as making love. To live, was to be in harmony with Her, in many direct ways. Oh, some were better at leading and some were better at making maps, some better at building ships and better some at weaving wool, but everyone, for some part of each day, farmed. For it was obvious that all trades came from the soil. We all come from the soil. We are all thus plant people, our ancestors knew this and our bodies still crave to be this way again.

And yet today we are not. Modernity has stripped us of this ancient, ecstatic aspect of being human. We have managed to create a world where most people can tell you the names of 10 corporate logos but can’t tell you the names of ten wild plants growing near their home. We teach kids how to use computers but rarely how to cook. How many of your friends are aware that pineapples grow from the ground and not from a tree? We know more about Mars than our own backyard. How many of you have ever sliced the head of a chicken, butchered a cow? How many of you have grown your own tomato, or allowed a garden to grow you?

There is a lot to unpack here. And it has everything to do with what’s going on in this movie-like era of collapse. Could it be that we don’t need tariffs, but rather a simple return to who we were before we became so dependent on business that we forgot how to grow our own?

I’ll stop there. That’s enough for now. Lest I get carried away and start waxing poetic about all the mythological threads tying current events into our collective yearning to be home again, truly home. Tonight (it’s night over here!) I just want to sit and listen to the sweet sensations in my skin that long to re-member their connection with Land. The almost silent fluttering of lady birds as I prune a Holy Basil bush. The rough skin of okra. The ants biting my toes….

I miss this. To touch the earth, is to be alive.

All blessings….

QUESTION: In what ways do you make a habit of touching eARTh each day?

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#maypeaceprevailonearth