Community of Voices
Embodiment is the resource because it helps connect us to the greater resource, which is the earth the ground...what resources us most: the breath, the body, the ground. Embodiment is tapping into that resource that exists underneath and around us. - Prentiss Hemphill, For The Wild Podcast
Recent research has shown that the smell of humus exerts a physiological effect on humans. Breathing in the scent of Mother Earth stimulates the release of the hormone oxytocin, the same chemical that promotes bonding between mother and child, between lovers. Held in loving arms, no wonder we sing in response.
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When I dig my trowel under a grass patch, the soil is different. The waste below is no longer pure white and slippery, but dark gray and crumby between my fingers. There are roots all through it. The darkening of the soil is humus mixed in; the waste is being changed.
- Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass
The Sovereign God crafted the human from the dust of the humus and breathed into its nostrils the breath of life. and the human became a living soul. - Rev. Dr. Wilda Gafney, Interpretation of Genesis 2:7, A Woman’s Lectionary for the Whole Church, Year W
The message was absolutely primordial in nature and equally as humbling. I was dumbstruck the whole day after the dream, living in a contemplative state between embarrassment and true humility. They, the plants, were healing me. - Dr. Randy Woodley, Becoming Rooted
Humifying Humility
Have you heard of humus (pronounced Hue-Muss)? It’s glories were brought to my attention in Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book Braiding Sweetgrass, and Wikipedia helped me dive deeper. Here's some of what I found:
In classical soil science, humus is the dark organic matter in soil that is formed by the decomposition of plant and animal matter. It is a kind of soil organic matter. It is rich in nutrients and retains moisture in the soil. Humus is the Latin word for "earth" or "ground"
In agriculture, "humus" sometimes also is used to describe mature or natural compost extracted from a woodland or other spontaneous source for use as a soil conditioner.
Fully humified humus, on the contrary, has a uniformly dark, spongy, and jelly-like appearance, and is amorphous; it may gradually decay over several years or persist for millennia. It has no determinate shape, structure, or quality. However, when examined under a microscope, humus may reveal tiny plant, animal, or microbial remains that have been mechanically, but not chemically, degraded.
There is little data available on the composition of forest humus because it is a complex mixture that is challenging for researchers to analyze. Researchers in the 1940s and 1960s tried using chemical separation to analyze plant and humic compounds in forest soil, but this proved impossible.
I can't remember where I first heard this, but when I heard that humility is not thinking too highly or too lowly of yourself, I was stunned. Humility was always offered as the requirement of holy shrinkage. "Become an insignificant spec in a world full of three dimensional beings and you'll be closer to God." Now, thankfully, that sentiment doesn't even make sense to me. Heather MacFayden said "True humility is to occupy your God-given space," and that too rang true and offered expansion. I felt like I could breathe into the space her statement created. I desire to be humble, but not the false kind that forces me to be less, different, or a mutilated version of who I was created to be.
Inspired by what MacFayden said, a grounded, whole expression of self and interconnection is a way I might describe humility.
As I nerded out about humus on Wikipedia and at the library, I found myself asking is humility the humus? Is humility what makes our souls viable for growth and flourishing? Is humility a conditioner to our soul? Like humus, humility is a process. It takes passing through many season cycles to experience full-grown humility.
Often, the journey into "a grounded, whole expression of self and interconnection" requires death. And it's not like death happens, you have a funeral, and humility is served at the repass. There has to be death and decay for humility to form.
My own sense of wholeness was preceded by the death of many things that were, at the time, informing my and some of my community's way of being. One death that stands out to me starkly is that of Certainty. Certainty said it addressed my fears, but really it just lied about them. Certainty said it was keeping me honest, but really was torturing me with self-hatred. Certainty, among other ways of being, had to be killed, buried, and allowed to decay so my soul-soil could be enriched unto wholeness.
Can you relate?
Please for the love of peat moss tell me you can relate.
Here's the thing about the death of the organisms that create humus and humility...they don't completely dissipate. In the humification process, it's described as "tiny plant, animal, or microbial remains that have been mechanically, but not chemically, degraded."
I haven't blocked out the presence of Certainty in my story - short of a case of amnesia I couldn't. But it has been composted down to a point where it’s a memory that contributes to rather than hinders the breath of Humility in my soul.
When humus becomes its complex self, there is no separating out the parts of its whole (they tried; see Wikipedia ref. above). Similarly, in the midst of the degradation and decomposing of what we *think* we know, often we acutely feel when these things are in the process of dying. Usually it's painful, sometimes extraordinarily so.
However, in being transformed, brought low to the earth, and integrated into the place of growth, many of the details become imperceivable. Chemically, everything is still there, but the mechanism of each part has given way to the collective function of the whole. This, I think, is the space where our humility is rich, fertile, and beautifully intact.
The alchemy of humility lies in the transformation of what is dead into a rich, conditioning composite for our soul-soil.
So what happens when things die, but they don't fully decay? Can there be a mummification of Certainty and other contracted ways of being?
Rather than letting Certainty break down so it becomes useful, life-giving, and alchemized into something rich and nourishing, Preserved Certainty may become asphyxiating nostalgia. No life, no air, no transformation - and every memory is tethered to something dead.
If you need it, take this as permission to let it die - whatever "it" is that has convinced you it's holding your hand when its fingers are actually wrapped around your neck.
And while humification isn't resurrection, it is the process and promise that nothing is wasted, that the seasons still cycle, and that even over the course of millennia, there is hope for life-giving growth after death.
Ritual of Connectedness
Put your hands in the dirt.
No really.
Find some dirt, some soil, some ground where things grow and put your hands in it. Consider the seasons of death and life and growth and decay that have come together at this time to create what your hands are touching. Remind yourself (outloud if you like) “I am of this Earth”.
Put your hands in your dirt.
You can contemplate, write, draw, dance - whatever feels right to you - your own earthiness and the earthiness of your story. Consider what has decayed in order for humility to be possible in your soul-soil. Remembering the seasons of death and life and growth and decay that have brought your experiences into a nourishing composite, express, “I am of this Earth.”
The Earthly Ones
I'm a BIG word person, so let's get into some etymology! Below is documentation of my Dictionary.com rabbit hole journey:
human 1350–1400; earlier humain(e), humayn(e),Middle English <Middle French humain<Latin hūmānus, akin to homō human being (cf. Homo); spelling human predominant from early 18th cent.
homo First recorded in 1590–1600; from Latin homō “man, human,” literally “the earthly one,” derivative of humus “earth, ground, soil”
humble First recorded in 1200–50; Middle English (h)umble, from Old French, from Latin humilis “lowly, insignificant, on the ground”; see humus,
humus 1790–1800; <Latin: earth, ground; akin to Greek chamaí on the ground, chthṓn earth, Sanskrit kṣam-,Lithuanian žẽmė,Serbo-Croatian zèmlja ground, earth;
I'm bothered that the word humble carries connotations of being insignificant while also speaking of being on or close to the ground.
There is nothing insignificant about the ground.
Ground is the tangible expression of place. Many believe certain ground is so holy that in order to honor it, the only proper contact with it is to have nothing between our feet and the place. In this, holiness beckons us closer to the ground, not away from it. And what made the ground holy is often a significant event in spacetime that changed us forever.
There is nothing degrading about being close to the ground.
This earthiness calls us not just closer to the place but to be rooted in it, to be grounded. It is honorable to move through the world with a groundedness, with a rooting into place.
Humility isn't about lowliness. It's about knowing who, whose, and where you are.
Knowing who you are is about not having a deflated or inflated view of yourself. It's knowing you are made of stardust and that you are utterly dependent on water. It's being in awe of the night sky and in misery if a microscopic germ puts you in bed for a week. It's the marriage of your bigness and smallness, the truth of your connection to the cosmos and to the earth while grounding in the reality that you have no control over either.
Being of the earth confirms that you are also of the stars.
Remember when I talked about The Name of Imago Dei in Of Earth & Of Stars, Iss. 1? What of being named the earthly ones? What inextricable connection is made when we are named directly after our place - our place in the cosmos, our place on this blue dot, our place in nature and her cycles? The Earthly Ones. Even in sci-fi B-movies we are called after our place: Earthlings. Let it not just be because this planet is where the green aliens would find us. Let it be because the Earth is our home and our humility, our name and our origin on a cellular level.
What of honoring the holy by touching the ground - this ground where a profound occurrence happened which we insist on remembering it. Why? So we know there is something great than just us at play. So we know we are interconnected, often in ways unimaginable.
Some of us are very familiar with red clay. It's the kind of "dirt" that stains whatever it touches. When that red clay makes a permanent home on your clothes, the iron of that place will forever be with you. Interestingly enough, when a star goes supernova, we currently know that one of two things happen: it either transforms into a black hole or a neutron star. You know what is at the core of a neutron star? A super dense ball of liquid matter with a crust of smooth...iron.
If this isn't your first time reading this publication, you know how exiting this is to me.
The same element in our clay, our humus, and our bodies is often present in the cosmos after the death of stars. When you name yourself an Earthly One, you also name yourself a Cosmic One.
Being of the earth confirms that you are also of the stars.
There is nothing insignificant about the ground.
Humility isn't about lowliness. It's about knowing who, whose, and where you are.
You're Gonna Want to Listen to This: Imagine Humility
For Rebekah
Listen to me read this section to you or read through it below!
Imagine humility being of the earth, known by your Earth, and embracing the Earthiness of every being.
Imagine humility not being a shrinking, but an expanding.
Imagine humility not being a cutting off, but a rooting down.
Imagine humility being the nutrient-dense, soft, dark, spongey material of your soul.
Imagine humility as the necessary iron in your blood, the fortifying calcium in your bones.
Imagine humility as permission to take off what other's have dressed you in that was never yours to begin with.
Imagine humility as the way to truth and life.
Imagine humility as the result of you taking up all, all, ALL the space you've been given simply because you have breath (hint: it's probably more space than you think).
Imagine humility as a quality in you that recognizes itself in others and calls them to come play in the freedom and warmth and embrace of abundance.
Imagine humility alive in you.
Imagine humility as the one who was always told, "no you can't" laying hold of The Great "I CAN".
Imagine humility as individual and as collective.
Imagine humility being the softened, smiling eyes of the elder who adores you.
Imagine humility being a whisper, like the breeze, or the breath of a sleeping child, or the sigh that follows an inhale of awe.
Imagine humility being dance, being song, being food, being language.
Imagine humility being the lessons and Love from beings who aren't human.
Imagine humility as your people and their people and their people being of a place where there are roots, growth, blooms, and seeds.
Imagine humility as the knock on your door - gentle but firm, persistent and patient.
Imagine humility as confidently embracing your gifting, talents, and calling without apology.
Imagine humility as the wisdom of affirming the gifting, talents, and calling of others without supremacy.
Imagine humility as the refusal to regret your existence as you are.
Imagine humility as anger at ‘closeness to the earth’ being used pejoratively.
Imagine humility as accepting your wounds and revealing them to those who are ready, able, and willing to help them heal - because you know you are worthy of healing.
Imagine humility as accepting who you know you are, and who you are lovingly affirmed to be, and in turn offering that same invitation to others.
Imagine humility as the embodied expression of your full story - the story that has been written, is being lived, and has yet to be told.
What Has My Attention
If you are in the Atlanta area, you have to come try this seasonal drink from Gilly’s Brew Bar. It’s called Casserole Latte and it literally tastes like a liquid slice of (Really good) sweet potato pie. And yes, that is a toasted marshmallow floating at the top. I think about this drink often. Yum.
One of my current pleasure reads is Rebecca Roanhorse’s sequel to Black Sun, Fevered Star. I can’t recommend the audio book enough.
These James Webb Telescope photos have me actually drooling. Well…almost.
I blew the dust off of this song that is basically an anthem for the education work I do. I hadn’t listen for a while but put it back on and it was a glorious return. “I would like to introduce you to someone we might like…”
I’m joyfully gleaning from the wisdom of Prentis Hemphill whenever I can, and their multi-post IG explanation of embodiment is really beautiful and worth your attention.
Do you know Ursula Carmona? Apparently she’s works with HGTV but her 16-acre property with garden, SheShed, and more has got me imagining a future in deep. tangible relationship with beauty, land, and place.
A dear friend shared this, and #ItMe. I am the friend who does all the things when an NSYNC song comes on and YOU BETTA NOT CALL SOMEONE TO COME GET YOU!
This was nurturing to my soul, dear friend. What beautiful encouragement your excavation of humus and humility hath wraught!
needed this.