We have forgotten, haven't we? Let it rot. Let it root. Let it begin again.

but they forgot to mention
dirt is where the mycelium sings.
where seeds dream in the dark.
where god got on her knees and played.
where our ancestors buried their prayers
and still listen
with their mouths open
for the moans of the living.
— christopher sexton

We have forgotten, haven’t we?

Forgotten that dirt is not just the stuff we wipe from our shoes.
It is memory, mystery, and the medium of rebirth.
It is not clean, nor is it tidy. It is gloriously alive—made holy by decay,
by the slow alchemy of loss and transformation.

In order for soil to become fertile,
it must be fed by what has come before—
the rot and the ruin, the leaf litter of last year’s hopes,
the bones of old beliefs.

Only then do the underground ones—the beetles, the worms, the sacred fungi—
begin their work.
Breaking it down.
Singing the silent songs of becoming.

You cannot plant new seeds in sterilized earth and expect life.
Perfection is not the path to growth—compost is.

When we get down on our knees,
fingers sunk deep into the moist earth,
we join god in her play.

We turn over the remnants of our former selves—
the failures, the doubts, the things we thought would bloom but didn’t—
and we feed the soil with it.
And lo,
our gardens thrive.

I can feel it in my body—
as the rain seeps into the soil, and the smell of petrichor lifts—
that sacred scent of earth drinking deeply,
and my nervous system softens into something ancient.
The plants exhale.
The ancestors sip the moisture from the air,
tears and prayers braided into root systems
so intricate we can barely comprehend them.

You can bring it all to the garden.
The stories that never found their ending.
The grief woven into your muscles.
The joy too big for your chest.
Let the soil hold it.
Let the mycelium digest it.
Let the biome remember who you are.

Because this is the truth:
We are not separate.
Not from each other,
not from the worms or the weeds,
not from the ones who walked before us
or the ones not yet born.

We are one,
and we are many.

And we have forgotten.

We have forgotten the sacred dirt.
The holy mud.
The blessed mess of it all.

We have forgotten that the path back to wholeness
may require getting our knees dirty again—
digging with bare hands,
sinking into the softness of the soil,
listening for the songs beneath the surface.

We are not here to stay clean.
We are here to remember.

To play.
To pray.
To decompose what no longer serves
so that something new might rise.

So let it rot.
Let it root.
Let it begin again.