I've been thinking about dust quite a lot these days. Dirt, that is. The fine stuff that trickles through one's cupped hands or cakes them with clinging clay. The elemental stuff in which plants grow, flourish, and live, which incorporates back into itself things that have themselves ceased to be alive.
The USDA has a remarkable interactive map incorporating soil survey data for most of the United States. I've been poring over it eagerly these past few days. Our little homestead here in North Carolina is sandy loam. Our new farm in Wisconsin, at least according to the USDA, is comprised of various types of silty loam (Brinkman, Valton, Elbaville--not that I really know the difference between these). I'm actually a little skeptical as regards the silty loam classification, though, because my own experience mucking around in that soil harvesting garlic last summer has left me empirically certain that it's more accurately ridge-top clay than silt.
At creation, man was formed from the dirt: "And the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul" (Genesis 2:7).
That man's name, of course, is ha-adam, simply the Hebrew word for man, a word etymologically linked to ha-adamah, the word for dirt. My vague recollection from class years ago is that the word is also linked to the word for the color red, making hah-adamah not only dirt, but red dirt, something people down south, say in Georgia, would immediately identify with clay.
Not only was man formed from dirt, but specifically from clay. Why clay? Is it significant? That's what I am pondering today, Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, when the priest traces the sign of the cross on our foreheads with ashes, murmuring, "Remember, man, that thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return."
The three main components of soil are sand, silt, and clay. They are all important, and all liabilities without the presence of the others. Sand allows for drainage, silt contains the organic matter on which new life feeds, and clay--what does clay do? My basic understanding is that clay helps soil to retain its moisture. Obviously retaining moisture can cut both ways. Midsummer here in North Carolina, for example, I was adding mulch in order to emend the soil. In Wisconsin last summer, on the other hand, a lot of the garlic that I pulled from the ground was already beginning to rot from an overabundance of moisture. It was fine for seed, but it wasn't really saleable.
So what of us human beings, clay-people, retainers of moisture? Again, just scattered musings composed in a bit of a rush, so take them for what they are worth:
We immerse ourselves in the saving waters of baptism, dying to ourselves in order to be born to eternal life. We are called to become vessels of God's mercy, pouring out the saving waters through our words, deeds, and actions in our lives as Christians. Historically, Lent was a time to accompany catecumens on their journey toward baptism at the Easter Vigil, a time to recall and renew the promises of our own baptism, an opportunity to immerse ourselves anew in Christ.
Prayer, fasting, and almsgiving are the three-fold traditional means of that reimmersion. Clay-people that we are, perhaps we can soak up the sweet rains of God's grace during this Lenten season, storing them for the periods of spiritual drought and dryness that are sure to come.
I don't know, maybe my simile breaks down: Surely an abundance of grace doesn't rot the soul like water rotted my garlic. Then again, grace is something that by its very nature needs to be shared. Clay-people though we are, we need the irritating sand of difficult situations in which, of difficult people to whom, we can share the grace, love, and mercy that Christ has shared with us.
So the difficulties of daily life are like the sandy component of soil, giving us the opportunity to drain God's mercy into the lives of those who need it; silt is our daily death to ourselves, from which new life in Christ springs.
And we ourselves? Again, we are clay-people, specially formed from the clay of the earth to soak up the sweet rains of God's grace.
Thou art dust, but very special dust indeed.
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