Bless this Poo

While sitting on a humanure toilet bucket, I got to thinking about how common it is for us to give thanks, bless, and celebrate the food that we are about to eat, but wondered why don’t we bless it when it has finished giving our body sustenance?

Taking a Minute

In a culture of high stress, we are blessed to have bodies that need to eliminate wastes to have a few moments to ourselves before we hurry back to whatever maybe less important thing that we were doing.

Our “modern” homogenized tele-envisioned lifestyle is cleverly crafted from advertisements to make us buy stuff to puff up our status at the same time that it cuts us down. It normalizes a lifestyle that slaps cheap prices on pricelessness extracted from nature. We work like crazy to keep pace with that idealized lifestyle. And maybe we have become comfortable with the life that we know. And deep down, we know that we are complicit.

Luckily we are human, with the ability to learn, change, and grow.

https://weblife.org/humanure/default.html — Everything you need to know to process your own poop.

Blessing our poo, and where it goes when we’re done with it, might lead us to be more thoughtful about what we put into our own personal digesters. We might eat more healthily, when remember that it will end up in the soil and water to feed nature. More of us might use systems that makes good use of the nutrients you are cycling.

So, the next time you find yourself on the pot, waiting, pushing, or hurrying, take a moment to listen to yourself. Think about what you have been eating and how you are feeling. Give thanks to your body for its ability to process what you have taken in. And release it with gratitude. Take a look at it and study it’s condition. It’s a reflection of your health. Keep working on your healthy microbiome.

Give Thanks for your Poo

I give thanks to the blessings of nourishment given to my body. I am grateful to the planet that I’ve had plenty to eat and drink to satisfy my needs. And now, I release back into the cycle of life, that from which I’ve taken what I need to continue living and breathing. May what I release be of good use, that future generations can benefit from the nourishment passed through me. Blessings, Amen, ah Ho, Namaste, thank you, gracias.

Bless this poo, that I now do, Love from the dirt, Now cycling through

September 5, 2019September 5, 2019

Deep Listening in the Circle of life

Krista’s notes at the birth of the Holy Church of Dirt

The Holy Church of Dirt celebrates the circle of life. It is about beginning, re-beginning, recycling, re-shaping, and evolving, so we could start anywhere. So, we are here now. We have no time to waste. Let us get to work turning the current course toward the extinction of humans on our planet toward our natural love of life. A livetime of work awaits everyone in a worldwide mission to rebuild soil. So let us begin.

Many hopeful examples demonstrate how we can rehabilitate degraded eco-systems. With good design, we can turn them into lush life-generating ecosystems. (See Green Gold, Greening the desert, and we can have fun doing it. It is empowering to make a difference. It’s enlightening to know and to grow. Deep listening to inspiration in co-creation with nature is magical.

Learning from stones to hear

Although people describe someone as “stone deaf”, stones taught me about deep listening. With zero experience, I decided to build a staircase of stones in a yard rich in stones deposited from a melt at the end of the last ice age. With sand and mortar, trial and error, I discovered that if I asked from my heart which stone wanted to be next, one would stand out, and inevitably fit perfectly into the space that I was filling. I believe that rough stone staircase gave that home character that became a key selling point of that house. It wasn’t up to code, but it felt good.

Chaya plant

Sensitive instruments monitoring plant activity have proven that plants communicate. (See the Secret Life of Plants)

Given that plants have been evolving eons longer than humans, we shouldn’t be surprised. We can learn from plants how to evolve and thrive. When you ask a plant from your heart what it needs, know that it knows your thoughts and is hoping that you will get beyond wondering if you are crazy, to hear the answer.

Like plants, our own connected, truthful nature-self is waiting to be heard. When we touch a leaf, put our feet in the sand, wade in the ocean, watch the sunset, and walk in wilderness. We are one with all of it. We are the power of all that is, in the form of a human.

Our mobility gives us options

We have choices. Some more than others, but each of us can decide to bring about better health and prosperity. In big ways and small, local and global; wherever we have influence, we can act. It will take time, but where will we be in the time it takes if we don’t? So, take care to keep your energy charged so you can get back to this important work, renewed and amplified.

So, back to the dirt. For, it all begins and the ends in the dirt. Zillions of living microorganisms feeding the soil nourish us. Our health is completely dependent upon how we treat soil. Empires rise and fall based upon how people treat the soil. (See the movie, Dirt, the movie)

Making fertilizer from food scraps — Mixing our kitchen waste into life in the soil

I invite those living without a close relationship to soil, to join your friends in dirt. Start by making compost. Leave out the chemicals sold as fertilizer that just simulate life. True living soil; with the bugs, worms, nematodes, bacteria, fungi, and mycelium, feed us real living food. Even if you live far from soil, you can support life by turning your kitchen scraps and shredded paper into living healthy soil. Even someone living in an apartment 30 floors up, can keep a bin in the kitchen. You may need to dig around to somewhere for some worms. Feed your plants with some of that soil, and your plants will absolutely perk up.

.Make your own indoor compost bin

3 indoor bin designs

Apartment kitchen compost design

Come along as we explore how we get down and dirty in the Holy Church of Dirt, transformed and grounded, aligned with all that is.

Can I have an amen-d-ment?!

Magic Rainbow worm — Look closely at an earthworm in the sunlight. Do you see the rainbow?

December 11, 2018December 28, 2018

Humanure in Action

Humanure

A step-by-step demonstration of how we safely process (un-waste) toilets at Patos Suertudos.

We are at a point where human survival on this planet demands that we change behaviors. On every level. Consciousness, culture, economics, technology, justice, health, basic needs; we need to re-vision and re-tool for a future we can live into.

For us to welcome in a new world, we need to be willing and able to see things differently and open our minds to different possibilities. Evolution and survival belongs to those who have the ability to adapt.

Humanure is one example of change of thinking that leads to a sustainable future. It invites us to rethink our ways of looking at our bodies and soil and to rekindle that connection.

This technology borrows from nature’s wisdom. There are as many ways to do this as there are people on the planet. This is just one example.

Here’s to pushing the envelope, because that’s where we need to be.

Much love and pura vida

Humanure Handbook – Free Download

What are Effective Microorganisms?

May 3, 2018

May Day! May Day!

The Holy Church of Dirt

Opening Sermon

Mayday 2018

Warm greetings beloved earthlings, from the Holy Church of Dirt, coming to you live from out of a compost heap in sunny southern Costa Rica.

It seems fitting to air our first podcast sermon on May Day. As you have probably noticed, ecosystems supporting human life on the planet are in peril, and if we could hear them, they might sound like a pilot ready to crash in an old war movie, crying “MayDay, MayDay!”

The impending doom spells big trouble for us humans and lots of our friends, unless we can pull up, pull out, and turn that momentum into patterns that serve life on earth.

At the Holy Church of Dirt, we join with others in expanding that which supports life. We are here to remember our love of life and to re-connect to the dirt that nurtures us. We come to get grounded in the soil, from where we come, and with all living things, where we are nurtured throughout life, and where we all, shall one day return.

We are here in this holy place, to remind ourselves that we are part of nature. And that as we begin to understand and dance with natural forces, we discover our power to generate natural ecosystems. We find that we can grow abundance for our great-grand-children’s great-grand-children. By coming together, and working with nature’s laws, we truly can rehabilitate large scale damaged ecosystems. On a worldwide scale.

The Holy Church of Dirt is nondenominational, non-religious, and without dogma, other than the ethics and principles of nature itself. You can learn more about natural systems through the study of permaculture. However, you don’t need to know anything about Permaculture. You can simply drop inside yourself to find your own nature, and you are here with us. We are one.

Mixing our kitchen waste into life in the soil

The Holy Church of Dirt is based upon truth, love of life, inclusivity, and peace. This church is arising out of the compost, with help from magical earthworms of rainbow colors. And you.

Come along and chime in, as we learn to live in harmony with nature, and to regenerate life. Come with us as we recognize that money creates poverty and dirt creates wealth. There is so much to do, that we will never be done, but we all have a part to play, it’s critically important, and it feels good.

Can I have an AMEN?d ment?

You can listen:

True wealth — Billions of life-giving micro-organisms= true wealth.

May 2, 2018May 2, 2018

We Are One

We are ONE

We are what we eat.

We are what we think.

We are what we do.

We are a rack for bacteria.

We are our bundles of choices breathing in time and space.

And, we are one.

Compost tea. A mix of nutrients to support life in the soil.

We are loved deeply. That deep love and connection can be felt when you touch the earth. You can feel that loving support when you remember the mother from where we came. And to where we will one day return.

The Holy Church of Dirt calls to remind us of our deep connection. Of the loving abundance that has nourished us in life. That she is love in the form of complete nurturance. To remind us, to plug back into our deep knowing connection. To remember our roots. To give back some of what she has selflessly given.

In our mad dash to be “good enough”, we’ve sunken into addictions of consumption. Forgetting that we are beautiful and enough. for more, she has shrunken in her ability to support us. It’s time to wake up and get back to our roots.

Earth is mother, is love, is life, nurturing health. When we feed the soil, giving it nutrients it needs to feed us and work with nature to grow loving healthy food through that love, we grow healthy in that nurturing love. Life radiates and is supported through living soil. That is our important work now.

There is plenty when we realize and tap into our true wealth beneath our feet. Abundance is in our future when we team with nature and each other in dirt, our mother’s love.

For too long, a corrupt, corporate, toxic system lied that they could feed the planet. They have poisoned our mother and us. We have depended upon a corrupt economic system ruled by greed.

We’ve had enough.

Enough greed.

Enough toxins.

Enough war.

Enough manufactured scarcity.

Enough lies.

We are ready to rise from the soil.

To build from the ground up. A new world in alignment with natural laws.

Earth mother has abundance waiting for us to work with her to realize that there is plenty for everyone. Our values shift to align with natural laws. That our mother is worth everything.We are finished parceling out and stripping our mother of her nutrients. We are finished taking more than we give.

It is time to give back to her. And more than we’ve taken, as those before us have taken more than their share as well. So the sins of the fathers are carried by the children. As it has been, so it will no longer be. Human law must be made to align with natural law.

Permaculture’s ethics teach us these laws.

Care for Planet,

Care fore People,

Share the Excess.

This is a system of abundance from the dirt. This is a system of working with earth mother. In alignment with natural laws mapped out for eons in stars and knowledge of our ancestors. It is time to remember that wisdom. It is time to bring ourselves into alignment and connection.

It is time to bring our consciousness into a higher frequency to witness and dance with the forces of natural goodness.

When we eat from that abundance, from that love, and prepare that abundance with love and care, we become healthier, happier, and loving.

Our choices are clear.

It is time to look beneath our feet to our roots and intermingle our energy with our mother to become part of the oneness we’ve forgotten.

Find our allies in the soil for an abundant future.

Can I have an AMEN-dment?!

April 29, 2018May 2, 2018

Regenerating Tropical Dirt Life in Costa Rica

Shifting From an Extractive to a Generative Relationship with the Dirt

Swales capture rainwater and nutrients to build tropical soil and prevent erosion.

The industrial agriculture system is causing serious health problems throughout the world. Populations that have lived in close harmony with the soil and plants for eons, are being driven into debt by our extractive economic system.

Millions leave the land that has sustained them and their culture for eons. They flock to cities looking for scarce jobs that pay money. They find deep poverty in an economy void of truth or connection to our source. Left behind is their true wealth, a soil that sustained their families for generations.

Typically, those lands are left to be sucked into industrial agriculture, mining, or logging. Those lands are raped of their value and left as “overburden” or planted with meager “restoration” that will never in our lifetime see abundance.

We moved to tropical southern highlands of Costa Rica to connect to dirt and to learn from nature. We are lucky to have been able to relocate and to afford to take a degraded cow pasture and rundown buildings to build our own paradise.

Facing the Facts

The family that lived here before us ran a dairy operation until the owner got sick with Parkinson’s type symptoms and could no longer keep up the place. Clues to his sickness became more clear when we found containers of 2-4-D, a roundup-type glyphosate herbicide in the storage. Farmers spray these herbicides on the pastures to kill undesirable plants, so that they can plant grasses more suitable to cattle production. If you read the fine print, or care to dig up cautions about these herbicides, you find that Parkinson’s symptoms is one side effect caused by exposure to glyphosate.

Cattle production makes no natural sense in a land of steep slopes that used to be tropical rainforest. After the rainforest, came coffee, then cattle. When we arrived, the soil was void of nutrients. Dead. There were no worms in the compacted and chemically treated soil. In the tropics, plants hold the majority of nutrients. But in this ever more degrading of nutrients without replenishing the life of the soil creates poor soils that depend more upon chemicals to grow food. These chemicals don’t work so well in the human gut.

We figured out that if we were going to be able to live here, that the soil needed building, even more than the crumbling buildings. Once we had a reliable source of water and a place to compost our waste, we could move in, but we couldn’t wait on the soil. Given the evidence of impacts of the toxins on our health, we really didn’t want to live in a toxic environment. We had only an inkling of how much work it would be.

Designing Healthy Soil with Permaculture Principles

With Permaculture principles, we learned to observe, and listen deeply to what nature teaches about how to care for the life in the dirt that is feeding us. We began composting and hu-man-ur-ing. With knowledge garnered from nature, books, websites, and others, we are co-designing a garden to sustain us.

The awareness that in just one teaspoon-full of rich soil, are billions of microbes; living things that feed plants and us. We have learned to value this essential force of nature, and begin to work with that to grow food. We are discovering that through this dedication, we are creating true abundance.

No matter where we are, we can stop and look find our nature. We can find and make soil. Generate new soil. Even if you live in a place void of soil, make a worm bin that lives inside and feed them your food scraps.

If your garden is just a pot, the plants will respond to your care and nurturing when you develop soil of healthy living nutrients.

We are dirt, and to dirt we return. Your hands back into that dirt nurturing plants is their proper place. Where you can ground your soul in connection to planet life.

One with the soil, nature and life.

Can I have an AMEN-dment?!

Home

Lettuce feed you whirled peas and hominy.