In the caring of the soil
By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo
INDULGE me a bit. At times when I look at the moon in the dead of the night, I wonder if, my life, as little as the lights in the houses from a distant mountain, still matter to the universe.
Perhaps, this is why I am always in the garden, when done with the tensions of daily living. Gardening makes me notice little things, the different life forms in the soil, the birds that pick on the worms, insects that dig deep into my skin, warning me to lay off their sanctuary. The garden reminds me that if I have the propensity to care for plants, insects and stray dogs, it is easy to believe in a caring and orderly multiverse.
I want to believe I matter, despite the huge gaps in my understanding and the reality of the power of nature over human lives. Yes, nature bears itself upon humanity, including the inhumanity of human beings. Everything and everyone comes to an end, to usher another beginning.
And we return to dust, according to Genesis 3:19 which states, “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” That pronouncement did not speak about the soul.
Not long after the death of his first wife, in trying to cope with her death, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote a poem, “A Psalm of Life”, often subtitled “What the Heart of the Young Man Said to the Psalmist”, an inspirational message enjoining readers to to celebrate the past, live the present and embrace the future. In this poem, he says:
“Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal; Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.”
To believe in the continuing life of the soul is to believe in the afterlife especially because life on earth can be challenging. Honest men, fighting corruption, may not see their actions result in good governance, even at the time of their death. These anti-corruption crusaders who perished while doing their jobs or dying of old age, including the young men and women who have lost their lives as collateral damage of extra-judicial killings (EJKs), can at least imagine, a better life. Even those whose personal lives didn’t have a chance to prosper may have a better chance, a reality acknowledged in a poem written by Beau Taplin in Hunting Season:
“One day, whether you are 14, 28 or 65, you will stumble upon someone who will start a fire in you that cannot die. However, the saddest, most awful truth you will ever come to find –– is they are not always with whom we spend our lives.”
In the meantime, we embrace the dust that we are. Astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell, discoverer of pulsars (but denied recognition by the Nobel Prize), said, “There is stardust in your veins. We are literally, ultimately children of the stars.”
Science has confirmed Genesis 3:19, that we are dust. Except for hydrogen and helium, our physical bodies are made of elements created inside stars. “These elements, forged through nuclear fusion in stars, were then dispersed into space when those stars died, eventually becoming part of the building blocks of planets like Earth. Therefore, the statement “Absolutely – you are made of stardust” is a poetic way of saying that we are composed of material that originated in stars.”
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