Holy Compost!

Preached at Church of the River in Memphis, February 26, 2023. If you would prefer to watch the spoken version, you can click here and it begins around the 35:00 mark.

Remember back in Spring 2020 when nearly everyone in the world seemed to be taking up a new hobby to coincide with their new reality of this thing we labeled “social distancing?” Well, my family, the Lammers family also decided to try something new. We didn’t learn to bake sourdough. We didn’t build a Crossfit gym in our garage. And we didn’t start a Zoom movie club. What we did do was start composting. We joined a program here in town called The Compost Fairy, now called the Compost House. Some of you may also be members, but they have a program where you get these two big, white buckets that you are supposed to fill up with compostable items you are discarding, and once per week, they swing by your home and pick up the buckets that you have filled and drop off new, clean buckets. 

I had heard about how composting was better for the environment and since we were spending a lot of extra time in our home with our three very young children, we decided to take an intentional step as a family to help further minimize our footprint on the planet. This involved a lot of education about which items would still have to go in the trash, and which could go in the 10 gallon bucket situated next to the trash. It was a learning curve. We had to retrain our brains so that every time our hand would move toward the trash can we would pause, consider whether the item we were holding could be composted, and make the intentional decision – bucket or trash can?

It was an interesting journey. We’ve even taught our daughters, the oldest of whom was 3 at the time we started, which items can go in the bucket, and which can’t. And then, a couple months in, we received our first bag of compost soil to use on our vegetable garden. The soil operates as kind of the bonus reward for participating in the program.

The soil returned is made by putting together all of what is collected in all of those individual buckets from all of the participants in the program. So composting was both a solo activity, but also a communal activity as what we collect is joined together with what other homes and businesses all over town are collecting. We focus on our household’s part, knowing that so many others are out there doing the same. It’s kind of cool to feel like we are part of a team in this composting game.

So why am I telling you all about my family’s adventures in composting? Well, because three years ago, my rapid education in composting happened to coincide with the Christian liturgical season of Lent, a season that kicks off with Ash Wednesday, which was just 4 days ago this year. Ash Wednesday is that kind of solemn day in the liturgical calendar where Christians mark the beginning of the Lenten season, the 40 days that culminate with Easter Sunday.

Ash Wednesday is characterized by deep reflection and prayer and often a commitment to devote extra time toward introspection and even sacrifice something until the celebration of Easter. The imposition of ashes on foreheads on this day is supposed to remind believers of their own mortality to help them move into a posture of humility during the season.

I grew up as in a progressive Baptist church and like most Baptists, we didn’t do Ash Wednesday. So I want to tell you a little about my first experience with Ash Wednesday and what I have come to appreciate about some of the elements of the Lenten season in the years since.

29 years ago I was a freshman at a Dominican Catholic high school in Chicago. As one of the few non-Catholic students, I was used to not participating in the Eucharist when the school gathered together for mass. They still made me walk to the front but I was supposed to walk on by where the wafers and cup were being given out. Trust me that I had all kinds of feelings about that. So you can imagine my excitement when Father Gambro, my religion teacher, invited me to come forward for the imposition of ashes on Ash Wednesday. This was going to be cool. I was nervous and excited and curious, and as I approached him he made the sign of the cross on my forehead in ashes, put his hand on my shoulder, looked me in the eye, and said, “Lillian, you are nothing but dust, and to dust you will return.”

I walked away thinking, “Um, yikes! Was I just insulted? Did he say that to everyone or was that just for me?” I was so confused.

I later learned that yes, some version of that is usually what is said to individuals as they get their grayish/black smudge on their forehead, because that’s the point of the liturgical day – to assume a position of utter humility as you enter the 40 days of Lent, a time when we are supposed to come to new or renewed understandings of why we need God.

Flash forward to two years ago, 2021, and as a pastor at a church, I am in charge of the message for our first-ever virtual Ash Wednesday service, where folks are to impose their own ashes on the foreheads from home over their Zoom. As I reflected on how I was supposed make this new way of doing the service work, I came to realize that we didn’t necessarily need a symbol of ashes placed on our foreheads that year to remind us of our mortality and the fragility of life. Every time we stepped out of our own front doors, we were affixing to our faces a symbol of our own mortality as each and every one of us would pop on a facemask in order to participate in life outside of our homes. So I didn’t have folks use ashes that year in their homes. I had folks use soil.   

I get the use of Ashes. I understand using burnt remnants of something that used to be green, alive and beautiful as a demonstration of mortality, and a reminder that our lives are fleeting. I see the utility in reminding us how small and insignificant we are in comparison to how big and important and timeless whatever notion of God we hold is. I really do.

But the last three years as a composter has given me a different metaphor that I have been using these last couple of years as I begin my own season of Lent, and I want to share it with you as I think it offers some helpful ways to think of how people of faith can understand impermanence.

Instead of ashes, I find myself drawn the thinking about compost soil. What if instead of thinking of ourselves as dust or ashes, we thought about soil - as a representation of our beginnings and endings, and as a representation of those parts of you that you cannot see. Instead of ashes representing the fleetingness of our physical bodies. What if we think of soil as a metaphor for our souls. Our spiritual beings.

Why do we need to attend to our souls? Well, because just like our physical bodies, they are exposed to plenty of harmful stuff in this world, and just like our bodies, I believe that our souls can get sick, can get weak, can get confused, and can even get overlooked and forgotten. There are parts of ourselves and our spiritual beings that get neglected, or even worse, that we intentionally ignore and suppress, because it would be too hard, too painful or too inconvenient to attend to these parts.

Carl Jung used the language of “the shadow.” Parker Palmer used the language of “the divided self.” Both brilliant individuals identify that it is a near universal experience to suppress parts of ourselves we find undesirable. I think we do this in our spiritual lives as well. But as Dr. Ingrid Clayton wrote in Psychology Today, “Spirituality is not an eraser for our problems. It is a container.” This is why I believe that I have found some divine wisdom in my amateur lessons in composting.

One of the things that my composting journey has taught me is that it is far better to expose things to air than it is to bury them deep in the ground – out of sight and mind. Rather than bagging up trash, about a third of the waste my family creates now goes into those two, white compost buckets. Think about that, a third of the waste, rescued from burial in the ground.

Just like with the physical “stuff” in our lives, so often it is our first impulse to bury those things that we feel we have no use for, or that we want to get rid of. Our fear. Our doubt. Our insecurities. Our inconvenient characteristics. If we label something about ourselves that is unwanted as “trash,” we then seek to put it in a place where we will never have to see or deal with it again.

But here is a lesson I have learned from composting. Burying things underneath the soil, with no exposure to air or light actually prevents them from breaking down at all. Burying them keeps them intact and can even create toxic greenhouse gases, which are bad for our planet and all of the creatures that call it home, including us.

Burying our spiritual “trash” doesn’t do what we think it does. Keeping that which we do not like about ourselves under the surface only keeps those things alive and can even make them worse for us. Just because we can’t see those things as easily when we bury them deep down inside, they are still just as present.

What composting has taught me is that instead of burying, if we take organic material that would normally be dubbed as undesirable trash, and expose it to air, tend to it by adding some water, the source of all life, and mixing it around occasionally, those things we would have buried are able to break down and become something new and useful. They can become a rich soil which holds the possibility of fostering new life and growth.

Whether we observe the Lenten season or not, we all benefit from some regular seasons of introspection and reflection. Winter is a common time for this. There’s more night, more darkness and more time inside, sometimes in isolation.

If we pay attention, we all have seasons in our lives in which we are invited to reflect on our own shortcomings, our own struggles in being people of faith, and people who seek to shine God’s light and do sacred work in this world. These times of reflection and introspection often lead us toward doing some work on ourselves so that as people of faith we are continually engaged in a process seeking the divine and seeking deeper connection to one another.

In my tradition of Christianity, Lent is a personal journey, but it is one that is taken communally. Much like composting, where each individual bucket is filled by a given person or household, everything is then gathered together so that the fruits of what is cultivated are shared.

So, I invite you to think about what it would look like for you, this community here, to tend the soil of your souls together. We have been through a lot globally in these past three years. We’ve been through a lot in Memphis in the past year. And we are still going through all of it. It is hard to argue that this seems like a time that lends itself toward some reflection, individually and as a community.

While each of us take the journey inward by ourselves, when we find what’s there, whether we like it or not, what if we brought those things to the surface. Rather than burying those things about ourselves which make us nervous, or which are a source of shame or discomfort, what if we did the soul work of composting this year. What if we bring those things we would bury to the surface, before God and before one another – giving them air and water. What if we move our soil around, exposing every bit of our spiritual selves to that air and water, allowing those things which are not serving us to be broken down so that they may become something useful – a source of new life. Because so many of those things we would discard and bury will be made new if we just bring them to the surface. Holy composting. Let God take the old and create a new possibility.

So, how you can tend to the soil that is your soul? How can you, as Beloved Community, compost together? How can you support one another in unearthing those things that can be transformed and given new life – your hurts, your griefs, your insecurities, your religious baggage… These things can be transformed and made into something new that serves you better and brings the gift of something new to this community. Composting together, so that all may benefit from the rich soil, full of possibilities, that will be produced.

We all are still in a process of coming back together after several years of varying degrees of being apart. We are more grateful for community than ever before after what we have been through. We need each other now, especially in Memphis. There is work to be done in this world and in our city. May the work that we do personally, benefit this community collectively.

Composting the soil of our souls together. Amen.