A Old As Dirt: Sacred Soil

“Respect your elders,” my mother would say whenever we’d get in a hassle over some issue where we didn’t agree. A non-capitulating roll of my eyes would eventually end our discussion.

In spite my mother’s plea, the respect for elders here on Turtle Island declined rapidly beginning with my generation, the “ME” generation, and has continued unabated to this very day. This is not by accident. It has been brought about by way of calculated social engineering by the captains of our mercantile system via the educational structure and the propaganda media. The young have money and the system wants it.

Youth worship is now the norm. The shift occurred to take advantage of the young’s lack of experience, the ease at which they can be manipulated and influenced, and how easy it is to get them to follow trivialities such as fashion, pop culture and disinformational idealism. I know. I’ve been there, done that.

That is why respect for elders should be reinstated. That’s not to say that older generations have all the answers, that the young should simply accept the ideas of the old. Elders simply have perspective, the perspective of having lived a long time and seen many things. One needs to listen and consider and not just dismiss this knowledge out-of-hand.

Topsoil is one such elder, an elder few people have any respect for. We do not listen to its wisdom, nor respect its long history. This is far more than a shame. Our very existence depends on healthy soil and the amazing diversity of life it contains. The ancients knew this. The name of our planet is homage to soil. Earth.

A few billion years ago, it was planet Ocean. There was no earth. The exposed parts above the waterline contained no life whatsoever. Life existed only in the seas.

While the primeval oceans were teeming with life including jawless fish, arthropods, squid relatives, jellyfish and more, the land was barren and void.

Mark Dunham

Approximately 440 million years ago, at the end of the Ordovician and Silurian mass extinction event, when our planet was completely frozen from pole to pole, this began to change.

For 3 billion years our planet's surface had eroded. Rains cut gullies, glaciers ground rock to dust. There was dirt, but there was no life.

Miraculously, algae formed a symbiotic relationship with a fungus and formed a new organism, the lichen. This new organism could handle the intense light and dryness, intense cold and heat of land above the sea, could use the sun's energy via photosynthesis and produce chemicals that dissolved the rock upon which it fed. No form of life is tougher than a lichen.

The European Space Agency discovered that lichen can survive unprotected in space. Two species of lichen were sealed in a capsule and launched on a Russian Soyuz rocket. Once in orbit the capsules were opened. Two species of lichen were exposed to the vacuum of space, to cosmic radiation and huge swings of temperature. After 15 days the lichens were retrieved and were found to be in full health: no damage was found.

Wikipedia

But lichens are not immortal and when they died new opportunity arose. Decay organisms could now colonize the land. The seeds of soil were sown.

There are more living organisms in a teaspoon of soil than there are human beings on Earth

Soil-Net

Healthy soil is a living, breathing organic collective of competing and cooperating flora and fauna; of fungi and bacteria, protozoans and annelids. Soil creates the perfect environment for rooted plants. The activity and residues of living soil residents break down dead material to provide nutrients for higher order plants that are in turn consumed by higher order animals; all of which eventually return to the soil and enrich it.

Scientists estimate that it takes between 500 and 1000 years to generate 3 centimeters (1.2 inches) of topsoil from solid rock.

This is a very slow process. We humans do not respect it. According to the World Wildlife Federation, due to deforestation, cattle grazing and industrial farming, fully half of all the topsoil on Earth has been washed away. Think about that. It took 440 million years to form and half of it has disappeared in 150 years!

As the topsoil erodes into the rivers of the world, dead zones, devoid of oxygen form in the oceans at the river mouths. Some of these lifeless zones are many thousands of square kilometers in size. Some alarmists maintain that by 2075 all of Earth's topsoil will be gone.

According to William H. Koetke in his book, The Final Empire all civilizations collapse by destroying their environment.

This news is not new and it's doubtful that the psychopaths in charge will change their evil ways before tragedy strikes. If some of us are to survive, we, as sovereign individuals have to learn to respect the earth after which our planet is named, respect and listen to our elder, soil, and learn from her the process of how to grow our own fertile land, to create islands of fertility in a world that may become barren.

We can do this. It's a time-honored tradition. It is dancing with Nature. Soil is wise and she is our mother and sustainer. Listen to her.

And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

Genesis 2:7

Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust

Funeral service in the Book of Common Prayer

From the soil we arise and to the soil we shall return. In the meantime let's regain a respect for our elders.

Image source