Mouse
People
Have
you ever had a chance to feel the difference between dirt cooled by shade and
heated by sun through the palms of your hands? …The body is a great focuser, whether
the means is pain or pleasure. The body is a great reminder of where we came
from and where we are going, on the one sacred journey that we all make whether
we mean to or not.”
Barbara Brown Taylor (An Altar in the World, “The Practice of Walking on the
Earth,” p.65, Harper One, 2009)
This
time of year, many of us have our hands in the dirt. I planted Gailardia in my perennial
garden yesterday. One of the most thrilling parts of gardening to me is seeing
what comes up from the year before. Most gardeners have sense enough to tag
what they plant so they will know what to expect. I like to be surprised! There
is deep therapy in getting dirt under one’s fingernails.
Native
American lore includes stories about the attributes of the mouse, who lives
close to the earth. Mouse people pay attention to details, they notice the small
intricacies of life that other people tend to miss. They live on the ground,
and so are full of common sense. Since mice are small, they tend to be overlooked
by others until they do something heroic simply because they paid attention and
used their grounded intelligence to solve a problem. Summer is their season.
If one is jogging through
a neighborhood or a park, especially if they are wearing earbuds and listening
to whatever they recorded for the occasion, they are not likely to see what
surrounds them. They will not notice that the camelias are now fading and
dropping their blooms, that the white azaleas are especially spectacular this
year, that a pair of hawks high above is engaged in their acrobatic mating
dance. But if one is crawling on the earth, or kneeling on the earth, details
are much easier to notice. The seeds for chamomile are so tiny as to be almost
invisible. That topsoil is loose because it contains ground-up branches and leaves.
That last year’s pine-bark mulch is mostly washed away. One’s focus is on the
earth, not on whatever is coming from the earbuds.
Whenever you have a
dilemma, a problem, or a puzzle to solve and you don’t know the answer, get
down on your knees and put your hands in the dirt. Pull weeds, churn up the
topsoil, plant a tomato or a squash, or maybe a few marigolds. When you get up,
you will have the answer to your problem, because the details of the situation
will have darted through your mind like a little mouse. You’ll have dirty knees
and dirtier hands, a calm heart, and a clear mind. Trust me on this.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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