For Wilshire Baptist Church
“Spread dirt.” That’s what it said on our calendar recently. LeAnn and I share our digital calendars to keep up with busy schedules and to make sure we don’t drop an activity on top of something already there. It’s not unusual for us to be miles apart and her phone or mine to buzz and we look down to see another item added to a busy day.
But this particular day was the day to “spread dirt” and it’s something we planned and scheduled together. We were putting in new flowerbeds in the back yard. We’ve been inspired by trips to gardens in Arkansas and Yosemite and especially Monet’s garden in France. We want to fill the back yard with all manner of flowering plants that will come back year after year. We’ve also been inspired by author Robert Benson who in his book, Digging In, documented what he called his “lawn-elimination project.” His goal – and ours – is to spend less time mowing grass and more time smelling the roses and whatever else we plant.
It takes lots of dirt for that so we had three cubic yards of landscape mix dumped on our driveway that morning and we spent the afternoon shoveling it into a wheel barrel, dumping it in the new beds, and spreading it out. It’s slow, repetitive work, and even on a cool day this time of year it makes the sweat run off my face. But it’s good work because it’s full of the hope and promise of new life and beautiful color.
The same can’t be said for the other type of dirt spreading going on all around us. It used to be that most of this dirt was just on the covers of the tabloids and magazines in the grocery store checkout lines. But dirt sells because people eat it up, and so it has jumped from the tabloids to the major newspapers and to the television news panels and late night talk shows. And of course the dirt is distributed in dump truck loads by social media where sources and fact checks don’t matter.
This dirt spreading is deadly. It buries the truth under lies, it suffocates hopes and dreams. It kills the spirit of the people being targeted and in time does the same to the dirt spreaders. And it’s everywhere: in politics, in families, in churches, in schools, in businesses, in neighborhoods.
We had to make time on our calendar to spread our dirt, and it’s amazing to me that people have time to spread so much of that other dirt. Are they not busy like we are with better things to do? Like feeding their families, paying their bills, helping their neighbors? Do they not enjoy the hope and promise of new life and beautiful color?
I suppose if they can make a living spreading dirt and it’s easy to do – telling lies is always easier than telling the truth; spreading rumors easier than checking facts – then the time-payback ratio is pretty good. But even so, have they no shame, have they no sense of decency? Aren’t they tired of shoveling . . . dirt?
As I write this, my Facebook feed tells me that it’s Robert Benson’s birthday. I pray his flowerbeds are bringing up the beautiful blooms that he envisioned and that we hope to have in God’s good time. I pray, too, for a world that needs more color and beauty.