5.1.5. Digging in Dirt

One of the exercises that was shared with me, years ago when I first ventured into the rural environs of Minnesota, came from the Rev. Dr. Mark Yackel-Juleen (2021), who put down a hula hoop on the ground of the "prairie pothole" in which we were standing at the time, and helped us to see more than 100 species (grasses, insects, small animals) present in that small space. Learning that dirt, that the earthen soil in which our food is grown, is itself a widely varied ecology, is itself a profoundly powerful counter story. Far from the "dirt" which I learned as a child must be swept away, cleaned off, hosed down, not tracked into the house, "soil" is a living organism upon which all of our lives depend. This is actually an example of a practice that begins in "confirmation," by inviting people to be present to the land upon which they stand, but then builds into "contradiction" by asking participants to wonder about our living relationship with this dirt/soil.
