Making Mud Pies

As a kid I made mud pies. And then I grew up, went to college, moved to a big city, and forgot about the dirt. I studied theological anthropology in a metropolis; I studied about how humans are dirt people. Though I knew it was true, it was easy to forget. After all, civilization is marked by Starbucks, Barnes and Noble, and MacDonald’s. Humans may be from the dirt and headed back to it, but in a city, we tend to forget such things. It can be easy to forget that from compost we came and to compost we shall return.

About a month ago, Esther and I moved to South Carolina, and over the course of the past few weeks we have found ourselves pruning trees, trimming shrubbery, and reorganizing flowerbeds. It’s been really great. After living in Los Angeles for a while, it feels humanizing to work on the land and in the dirt. It’s material. It’s meditative. It takes time; it takes patience: one limb at a time, one flower bud at a time. 

Countless times I have heard the pros and cons of social media. More often I have heard it disparaged by people who use it and by people who refuse to use it. It may very well be the case that it alienates us from one another, though of course it can be a really productive way to stay in contact when other forms of communication would otherwise prove too difficult for some reason or another. Social media is convenient, and I rather like it.

However, the meditative practice of pruning, trimming, and gardening has caused me to think yet again about the role of technology in my life. How does technology reshape the theological narrative of my life in connection to others? It may well be the case that it only encourages the addiction to immediacy; however, MacDonald’s has been doing that for a while; we have been primed for impatience and immediacy for quite some time, and this has influenced the way in which we engage others; it also can shape our expectations in relationships, especially if a person doesn’t respond to our post within an hour. Facebook and Twitter didn’t do that to us over night.

I’m wondering if gardening, rather than just refraining from social media, would be a productive way to cultivate healthier relationships in general. It may be that because we have grown so distant from the dirt we have subsequently grown rather distant from each other.

I’m not climbing onto a soapbox. I like living in a city, and I rather like social media. But it has felt right to work on the land and in the dirt. It has felt good to work with my hands and not to just do somersaults on Facebook or in my brain. It has felt human; it has felt theological. And it has reminded me yet again that mud pies aren’t just for kids.