For Wilshire Baptist Church
There’s something comforting about the sound of mowers on a weekday morning during a pandemic. It sounds normal; it feels normal. You can almost smell the fresh-cut grass through the closed windows. It pulls at you, calls you to come out and join the march of life and creation — where the grass is still growing and still needs to be cut from time to time.
I’ve welcomed the need to get out and mow the grass, even to pull weeds during these weeks of isolation. It helps that the air has been cool and crisp and the garden is popping with bulbs and flowers. I mowed the lawn on Friday between the rain showers and I’ll do it again soon. But this afternoon we had another item on the agenda: dirt.
We took delivery of two yards of dirt – garden mix, to be exact – and it wasn’t even our anniversary or a birthday. I say that because my life with LeAnn has been punctuated with deliveries of stone, crushed granite, pea gravel and, yes, dirt, on many of those landmark days. While other couples celebrate their milestones at white tablecloth restaurants, we’re often out pushing a wheelbarrow. But this time there was no special occasion other than wanting to replenish the beds with some rich, fertile dirt — and spend some time outdoors while we can.
We do this every couple of years, and it’s always amazing to look down and discover that all that rich soil we spread out last time has been replaced by the dead, colorless, rocky dirt that covers most of our property. And yet it hasn’t been replaced at all; it has been absorbed and broken down, some of it sifting down through the cracks in the hard gray topsoil, some of it clinging to the roots of the weeds and stray grass that we pull up from time to time, and some of it drawn up into the stems of the flowers and shrubs that it was intended to nourish.
And so the good soil gets depleted and needs to be replenished. And we experience the same in the doing; we get replenished. Especially in this time of isolation when we are feeling empty. We need something that feels hopeful, even if it is hard and taxing. Hauling dirt is just such an exercise. It readies the ground for the promise of new life and growth, and it stretches our sinews and spirits in the process.
Would we feel the same way about it in the deathly heat of July? Probably not. But on a day like today it suits us just fine.