By: Brooklynn Reardon
Have you ever smelled a new compost pile that has been cooking in the sun? If you have, you will know that all the leftover food scraps like moldy bread, leftover spaghetti sauce, and rotted veggies mixed together makes for one…interesting…smell. The best compost has the perfect mixture of worms, leftover food, dirt, and something green, like leaves. If you take too much time to think about compost, your spine might start to shiver—all the tiny bugs and living bacteria just festering in the hot sun. Every day the ingredients get mushier and start to look less like old food, and more like muck. Compost piles are not the most appetizing or appealing hang-out spots—they’re smelly, gross, dirty, and grimy. They’re unclean.
Most aspects of sustainable farming are quite gross. If the soil is healthy, tons of worms and creepy crawling bugs are present, helping the soil breathe and the plants receive nutrients. To make that soil healthy, it’s likely the farmer added some manure and a lot of mucky compost. Sometimes plants get sick, or an invasive bug takes bites out of the fruit, especially on farms that do not use harsh chemicals to ward off bugs or diseases. Sometimes critters come running through the fields for a taste of the growing bell peppers. Sometimes the dirt gets stuck under your nails from pulling weeds. If the farm has animals like goats or chickens, sometimes the goats drop pellets by your feet, and sometimes the chickens leave droppings on their eggs. Sometimes the pigs like to roll around in the mud, and sometimes they roll around in their smelly food. Yes, sustainable farming can be entirely unclean. It’s smelly. Grimy. It’s dirty.
Throughout scripture, the biblical authors write countless stories about the God who meets creation in filthy situations. For instance, a “manger” is a bin used to feed barn animals—Jesus himself was born in an animal trough. In Mark 7, Jesus restores a man’s eyesight with his own spit. Just before his death, in the Garden of Gethsemane, we read about Jesus’s sweat trickling out of his body like blood. Whether through locusts flooding the streets of Egypt or a hemorrhaging woman reaching for the fringe of Jesus’s clothes, we worship a God who meets us in spaces many of us typically think are unclean.
As Christians, God is constantly calling us to reimagine and recenter our understanding of the world and ourselves through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The work of caring for the earth and farmed animals begins with reimagining the world, not as a natural resource or a means of profit, but as God’s beloved creation. Imagine how differently a chicken might be treated if its identity were no longer rooted in profit but in the Creator. How much more would we value healthy soil if we believed God was at work in the dirt?
Perhaps it is hard to imagine a God who works through things often thought of as unclean. Here, I’m talking specifically about the dirty reality that is creaturely life—not necessarily that which is broken or oppressive, but more so what is earthly, which has, in many cases, become disordered and warped by sin (such as industrial agriculture or colonialism), but is not sinful in and of itself. Quite the contrary, in Genesis, God proclaims that all creaturely life is good (Genesis 1:31). So why is finding creaturely commonality so challenging?
Personally, I believe it is difficult for many Christians to see ourselves as truly a part of creation. Indeed, a desire to disassociate from “gross” things is entirely reasonable.
Throughout the history of the Western church, biblical scholars and preachers have emphasized that God made humans “in God’s image.” As a result, I believe those of us in the West have latched on to this notion because it makes us feel like we are more god-like than creation-like. Even now, when we think of “nature,” we think of a world that is entirely separate from human society—a place we must escape to for a weekend—but not neighborhoods we actually live in. We have forgotten that we are ultimately creatures—earthlings. What if more of us began to see ourselves as a part of the muck?
The reality is, our lives as humans are entirely intertwined and dependent on the earth and the meshwork reality scripture calls creation because we, too, are creatures. And as creatures, our lives, our bodies, and our hearts can be pretty grimy, dirty, and gross, too. Like Jesus, humanity sweats, bleeds, spits, and eats dirt. With every breath we take, gulp we drink, and bite we swallow, we should be reminded that we are a part of the filthy reality that is earth.
Fortunately for us, a Christian reimagining of the world and ourselves is made feasible by a God who is already at work in the dirt. As scripture continuously proclaims, sometimes what is holy, sacred, restored, and resurrected is also dirty, grimy, and entirely unclean. Accordingly, I believe there is something sacred about the messiness of compost.
Compost is made up of old food and biodegradable products that would typically be thrown in the trash. Compost is sort of like the farmer’s waste bin. Except in this dirty trash can, God meets us in the muck. After a few months, or maybe a year, the pile of hot moldy food becomes healthy soil. What was once trash meant to be disposed of becomes a source of new life. With the composted soil, the farmer mixes in dirt and fills up her beds as she readies for a new season of crops. The compost makes the next harvest possible. While the process might be entirely “gross,” compost takes something dead and brings about new life. The story of compost is similar to our own: it is one of resurrection. Indeed, God is often at work in filthy situations.
2. Here I am speaking specifically from a Western context, more specifically in the United States, but also all those who operate and live according to the neoliberal hegemonic consciousness.↩