It seemed like the natural thing to do. It sustains us and yet what do we know about it?
What makes it tick?
Do we do anything that hurts it?
The least we could do is get to know it better.
We should listen to it.
The soil said nothing.
The lorries rumbled down the N4.
Padraig Harrington and Co. landed their planes at Weston. Diggers pounded at the Newcastle Rd  flyover.
They thumped the living daylights out of the soil. 
They tarmaced the soil.

My mind started to wander.
Why am I doing this?
My friends from school are out changing the world or at least buying a home.
I am working part-time in a DIY shop.
The rest of the time I am sticking a microphone into my lawn and trying to pick up the sound of passing earth worms.
I wanted to listen but all I heard was noise.
Noise!



Noise.
Then I heard it. Humble soil. It doesn't flash its credentials about, but it doesn't have to.
We would be screwed without it.
We can live without cars but we can not live without the soil. The N4 is noise, but you can not grow potatoes on it.
Man shall not live by tarmac alone.
Martin Luther is meant to have said

Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.

I say that even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still try to record the sound of soil.
Soil, air and water seems to me to be a gospel issue.

Yesterday I harvested 47 shallots and set them out to dry on the picnic table.
It's pure grace this whole food business.
OK, so I had to buy the bulbs but apart from that I set them in the soil and nature did the rest.
If I wanted to I could plant my 47 shallots and by grace I would have maybe 5 times that amount next year.
That is if the rains fell and my soil remained fertile of course, things which we take for granted but are not perhaps the case- we rely on things that are outside our control

Its scary how disconnected we all are to the things that really matter. Here is the deal.
You can eat money but it is not packed with vitamins.
It will not keep you healthy eating money.
In fact most of us are reliant on a type of virtual money that comes out of back machines, theoretical money.
But we need the actual physicality of food and clean water.

That's one of the reasons it is good to grow your own food if you can. It grounds your faith in a good way. We depend on grace.


How do we get our water? It's pumped to us.
How do we get our food?We take our virtual money from the bank machine and drive up to Mr Tesco. There we have faith that the big lorries will have brought in the goods in the middle of the night and that we will be able to get the stuff we need.

But what would happen if the lorries stopped rolling into Tesco's tomorrow night for a month?
We would go hungry.
We would have to grow our own food if we knew how on land which we don't own---

Not that it would be a bad thing either.
We seem to have belief that getting our hands dirty is a bad thing. Growing our own food?
I've a degree don't you know. I didn't spend all that time in school and working up through the company to have to grow my own food. Thats for farmers, the guys in school who didn't really have brains but could drive tractors. I'm smart, I'll use my brain.

But we're not really that smart if we don't see that getting our hands dirty is a good thing. We are linked to the physical world, we are formed from dust and return to dust-literally. We eat food that comes from the land and water and air then crap that same food.

And dust is not a bad thing.
God made dust. Jesus made dust. Holy Spirit made dust.
And they said that it was good-good like the most beautiful thing and then some more.

So we can not turn our nose up at dust and soil and be afraid of getting out hands dirty. The soil is part of our hands.
The soil gives us what we need to live-what did you eat for breakfast?Or lunch?
It was from the soil.

Ever since I started planting some vegetables I have found the internet a foreign place-it does not seem like reality even though I lived there for a long time. I am living there now. But where is the physical, earthy aspect to it all? If you have read this far something is going on in your brain but there is a physical aspect missing to our relationship.

It is dishonest or something because I can not shake your hand or read your face, in fact you may be faceless all together-it is abstract.
And I'm not sure thats the best way to conduct our friendships. I have 206 friends on Myspace but can you call some a friend if you have never physically met them? Perhaps a virtual friend is not a real friend-I just don't know.

Is it a hyper-post modern world?Secular? Can art  make a difference? How do you write a good song?
Don't know-but I do know (yet not enough) that was it not for the soil and air and water I would not be here. And neither would you.

So respect the soil.
Go and get your hands dirty.
Ground your faith.

oh my goodness, what is that mighty sound  i have never heard before in the village?
it appears that someone has decided to add an authentic water fountain to the mighty river griffeen that flows past courtneys pub.
Now we will be able to enjoy our summery Bulmers to the sound of water gushing out 4ft of copper piping.
The Fountain of Courtneys-8th Wonder of the Western World

One day I was in the new Costa coffee shop in Liffey Valley when I heard an old man say these words with utter disbelief to his daughter.

'They wouldn't do roast beef and carrots?'

out the door
past the orange hall
straight through the crossroads
great uncle tommy cuts his hedge
the old quarry to the right
a rabbit rubs his ear

left at the crossroads
over the bump-wheeee!
the lane that leads to our old mushroom farm
the place where we panned for gold
into ballynagilly-'town of the woods'
where is the town?
where are the woods?
we laugh

up the snails walk
the lane where we cut turf
the rock the hen harrier sat on
the road to lough fea
why did they leave those tree stumps?
hear the skylarks
hear the skylarks
hear the skylarks

round lough fea
two men fly fish
lights in the quarry
old claggan church
'I played here'
'They knocked down our house'
the beech trees look stretched
the rolling hills are lovelier than clondalkin

left on the road
a house with a pub
into the rainstorm
the puddles are red
'Why are they red?'
'I don't know'
a woman sells cakes
left up the mountain
and up
and up
and into first gear
and up
look at the view
thats lough neagh
thats lough beg
where did the view go?
'look at that mist'
'thats not mist, thats the clouds'
'no its the mist'
'no its the clouds'
our heads in the clouds
down into churchtown
drive past a funeral
drive into cookstown
out the orritor road
back to the house
ham and cheese toastie

I live in a wood cabin at the end of a muddy lane some place west Dublin.
This wilderness terrain has proven too much of a challenge for Eircom and so we have survived without a phone for the past year but at the insistance of family members we are going to try and get hooked up.
I was thinking about getting wireless broadband from a mobile network but I would like to know if you can use Skype or some such other phone type thing with that.

Gay men like to go shopping for paint and gardening stuff on Friday nights.
That is something I would never have known had I remained a youthworker.

Hold on a minute,my boss is always putting me on the rota on Friday nights....

Yesterday afternoon I had to go into art college in town and hang some of my drawings up for an exhibition. All of us on the course got a piece of white wall to go hanging, except that the hanging was to be a tense affair. There where 2 specialist men there with a spirit level and hammers carefully hanging fancy photos and pictures.
Being an virgin hanger I had foolishly brought my own hammer and grip adhesive. A tense man looked worried that I might try hanging my bird box myself, in case I didn't hang my bird bx in the appropriate artistic manner. So I asked the men to hang my bird box on the wall, they carefully lifted it and gently levelled it, then screwed it in with 2 screws.
A rightly so because my bird box made in 10 mins from a broken pallet outside the house is beyond price.
Next I put my lump of soil in a Tesco bag and added some shallots I had ripped from the garden in the morning before randomly sticking drawings all over the wall like a student before sticking an ipod into the bag.

Anyway, if any of you are passing by Thomas Street on the weekend you might want to pop into NCAD and take a look round the CEAD exhibition-there is some nice stuff. Mine is the one with the shallots and scibbles and spirit levelled bird box.