Sermon 4-19-2009

Sermon 4-12-2009

Sacred Mud

When my children were young, I would excuse myself and say I was going out to play in the mud.  Many years later, they realized that it had something to do with gardening but I maintain I like to garden because I love to get my hands in the earth.  I love the way it feels and often peel off my gloves just so I can be one with the dirt.  I love the way it smells and often put a handful to my nose to drink in the fragrance.  I have learned to look for the castings from earth worms and the foot prints of animals.  I love to rescue it from bad weeds and rejoice in the lovely plants (like poppies) multiplying in it.

Touching the dirt makes me feel literally grounded.  When I preside at funerals, i dislike the bottles of sand offered by the funeral directors and go looking for a handful of real earth to throw on the coffin at the time of saying "ashes to ashes and dust to dust." To me the ideal of dying and becoming one with the earth is comforting.  I feel I came from the earth, was made in God's image and that my body will return to the earth and live on in other life.  I believe that my spirit will live on with God.   I will pass on this poem by Robert Service about Mud.  And I'll be in the garden with my hands in the mud.

Blessings, Karen

Mud is beauty in the making,

Mud is melody awaking;

Laughter, leafy whisperings,

Butterflies with rainbow wings;

Baby babble, lover's sighs, Bobolink in lucent skies;

Ardours of heroic blood

All stem back to Matrix Mud.

Mud is mankind in the moulding,

hjeaven's mystery unfolding;

Miracles of mighty men,

Raphael's brush and Shakespear's pen;

Sculpture, music, all we owe

Motzart, Michael Angelo;

Wonder, worship, dreaming spire,

Issue out of prima mire.

In the raw, red womb of Time

Man evolved from cosmic slime;

And our thaumaturgic day

Had its source in ooze and clay...

But I ahve not power to see

Such stupendous alchemy:

And in star-bright lily bud

Lo! I worship Mother Mud.