Getting Spiritually Dirty

Spirituality is similar to religion, but different. Religion is a bit like BigAg, spirituality is a bit like gardening.

Many people love the idea of spirituality, as do I, much like people might like the idea of gardening. Some people they don't feel the deep angst toward religion or BigAg as they embrace their love of spirituality and gardening.


BigAg farmers get all up in their fancy tractors and plough down county after county. They don't have the slightest bit of angst about chopping off the tails of piglets, crunching up rooster chicks in a grinder, stinking up the neighborhood with lakes full of pungent blood, poisoning the rain, endangering species and ecosystems, etc... you get my drift and my attitude about it... and I feel the same about religion in general. They are both nearly impossible to avoid and they both claim to be the only way to feed the masses.


A person can browse seed catalogs, buy seeds, draw up gardening plans, designate a space... they can do a lot of the stages of gardening that are really an upper, but until they get down on their knees in the dirt, until they realize how affected their efforts are by the weather, until they are tempted to dowse the asparagus beetles with poison and fence out the bunny rabbits from the carrots and cabbages, they just really don't understand the downers... Perhaps they even enjoy walking through the efforts of others, the beautiful gardens of the professionals, and they feel so gardenery, but that buzz doesn't make them a gardener.

Spirituality is much like that, seems to me. People can enjoy the thoughts, read the articles, perhaps even pay the fee to enjoy the work of the experts, but until they get down and dirty in their own deep psychological messes and figure out how to balance the nature of things without becoming toxic and fragmented, they are just playing games with their imagination, not that these are terrible games, and sooner or later they probably will grow a potted tomato or scatter about some sunflower seeds, and its all good.... sort of.

And then there is permaculture, learning from the wisdom of nature to create a domestic similarity. I am personally searching for the metaphorical equivalent...