Managing the mud. Wystan uses very tangible images and experiences of early spring to raise larger reflections on the way life unfolds - often in messy ways. Each phase of season comes with a mixed blessing and a lingering resistance to moving into the challenges of the next. Wystan helps us see this in a broader context through a playful exploration of mud. -Editor.
I am thinking about snow and mud. On the one hand, three plus months of grey skies and wet to icy precipitation falling out of it leave us longing for the sunshine, gardens, outdoor games, and morning walks without a parka that are coming. And warmer temperatures means mud.
During every warming trend this long winter I was reminded of this fact. Every weather shift brought two simultaneous and conflicting emotions: “YES!” and “ohhh noooooo.” Muddy footprints cover the floors, muddy eggs fill the nesting boxes, mud-caked shoes pile up on the porch and are strewn through the hall, muddy drying doggie legs shed dusty sandy stuff in piles all night long.
This morning, as I plowed through my reading for Arcana class, the natural phenomenon of mud banged into a spiritual thought as I read
“A life of faith without love is like sunlight without warmth – the kind of light that occurs in winter, when nothing grows and everything droops and dies.” Arcana Coelestia 34(2)In winter we have light, sometimes glorious sparkling light, and even some heat from the sun - snow melts even in very cold air temperatures when the sun’s angle is right. But all plant life dies or at least is at stasis. Things don’t grow.
And yet, it strikes me powerfully (as I stare at the floors of my house) how handy it is to have everything frozen up solid, compared to the mud of kinder weather! Nice and hard and sterile, with a beautiful coat of powdery white on top. No filth on the dogs’ feet. Clean eggs. Clean shoes. Following my train of thought, possibly heretically, apparently for things to grow, life has to get messy. The sterility of winter is a pause, a time to hibernate. Then earth warms up and with it the soil and mud and we see before our eyes how very unsterile our inner and outer world truly is. To follow the analogy that Swedenborg sets up, the warmth of love from the Lord stirs up an earth (that’s a church and also a human self) to be receptive of growth, loving its neighbor, and so growing. And yet – here comes the mud. The movement from winter to spring has to be a better state – but so messy in process.
Then consider the fact that all mud starts as poop. It all begins as animal, (fish), bird, insect and microscopic creature poop that has been digested and so made useful. Those toxic excretions are made benign by digestion and the passage of time until you have good old dirt. Every living thing makes excretions of these kinds - we must all, to be alive. Every body, animal or vegetable, even every cell of every body, cleanses itself of waste. And that waste has a purpose too.
Humans do dumb and ugly things. We have to really, to be growing. (Not ideally of course, but usually. Humans aren’t even really human until a bit of education and processing.) Note that we also go through painful or ugly experiences that are the result of other people’s poor or ugly choices – dirt happens to us, and we do it to other people. Whether you are doing it, or hurt by it, you could look at this as the poop of life. Listening to the Lord’s excellent advice about life, we wouldn’t have to make the really big and damaging mistakes to be able to grow – but people do them, because how long does it take most of us to listen to the Lord? How long did it take to listen to our moms?? Or dads?? Having raised a few children and puppies, and I would say that listening is not a highly developed skill in immature organisms. It’s a learned behavior.
Wonderfully, even noxious behaviors and mistakes, poor choices, foolish or hurtful thought patterns, can through a process of thoughtful mental digestion become a medium for fantastic, life-altering growth. Something that Good Seed can grow in. Rich spiritual compost even from smelly swamp mud.
But am I ready for spring?
When we aren’t in the growing season down here in Maryland, it’s easier. Snow cleans up easier than mud. I also don’t have to water gardens, fight mold, defend from bugs, or weed those gardens that properly tended will sustain me with food-bearing plants. When nothing is growing out there, that makes things simple. True, I spend those winter months pouring over seed catalogues, dreaming about the shapes, the colors, the flavors of things to come. In order to have my gardens grow, I will have to gear up for what’s coming.
Still, its messy. And snow is not.
In March, it’s a hard trade.
Wystan, an evolving writer, lives in Mitchellville, Maryland, with Edward, her husband of twenty-two years, three of their six children, two dogs and seven laying hens. She enjoys keeping up with her children, whether traipsing after them or gathering around a table for dinner. Besides writing and painting, she loves working together with Edward to make things grow, whether the church, the family or the garden.