Sermons

How to get out of the mud

We’ve all been there: The moment we’re ready to turn in our resignation, suffocating under the stress of the job, and it’s only Monday. The moment we realize everything our mom said was right. The moment our 2-year-old’s vocabulary is limited to the word “No!” The moment the car is making sputtering noises, and the bank account is running on empty. The moment we have to pretend to be happy for someone. We’ve all had moments like that. But don’t worry. There’s a way around it. Get some fresh air. Much has been written about the benefits of communing with nature. Think about it. When we get outside or when we take a walk on the beach, stroll through the park, or tend to our garden, we feel better. Part of that may be a result of the beneficial effects of exercise, but the power of nature to provide emotional and psychological healing cannot be denied. Writer Bonnie L. Grant, however, takes this concept further. In a recent article, she not only extols the benefits of the natural world, but, additionally, suggests that we start playing in the mud! She sort of says that. She bases her article on research which shows that there is a natural antidepressant in soil called mycobacterium vaccae, which has a similar effect on neurons as Prozac. This substance may stimulate the production of serotonin – which could make the creation of mud pies extraordinarily appealing. It is a well-documented fact that a lack of serotonin has been linked to depression and anxiety. This, of course, could explain my dull childhood. As a kid, I never liked getting dirty. I was so crisp that my mom even ironed my socks and underwear. I remember getting assigned one of those elementary school science projects. The teacher gave us some seeds and said to go home and plant them in cut up milk cartons, then get them to grow and bring them on back to school. My mother was not into gardening, so she sent me across the street to a neighbor who 2 was really into plants and flowers. And so I went and asked the neighbor lady quite seriously, “Mrs. Frederickson, can I have some clean dirt for my science project?” She smiled and said, “Clean dirt?” Avid amateur gardeners like Mrs. Frederickson have long extolled the therapeutic virtues of getting their hands dirty. Gardeners love to garden. It makes them feel good. They don’t mind playing in the dirt. It’s what they do. And now, what was just an intuitive feeling is backed up by hard science! When we feel stuck and mired in the mud and when the way ahead appears murky and unclear, can the answer really be as simple as playing in the mud? Because let’s be clear: Mucking about in the mud for fun is one thing. Getting mired in it is quite another. Just look at David, who found himself in a “desolate pit” and “miry bog” (v. 2) in today’s Psalm. He’s definitely not feeling the serotonin! We don’t know exactly what happened to David that landed him in such a “pit” of depression. He was a warrior and a leader. Sometimes he could make decisions which, shall we say, were indiscreet – although there’s no evidence that the Bathsheba affair was a part of the foul mood of these early verses of Psalm 40. David’s stress here may have come down on his head because of his own ill-advised actions, or because of enemies who were plotting his destruction. What’s certain is that far less dire circumstances than David’s can bog us down in the mud. David’s life was threatened after all. But we, too, can find ourselves in pits of desolation. Perhaps we’ve lost a job, or a spouse has abandoned us, or a child has died, or a debilitating illness has crossed the threshold of our home –– any of those situations can find us knee-deep in mud. And the mud we’re in may feel like quicksand. The question is, “How do we get out?” 3 The easiest way out is to blame someone else, thereby freeing us from working it out ourselves. Our mess, we think, is someone else’s fault, and that someone else, those someone elses, had better step up and step in to lend us a hand. Attributing blame frees us from responsibility and might allow us to move in the murkiness we find ourselves in; but the easy way out is not always the right way, and avoiding dealing with the loss which put us into the pit in the first place can only lead to complications later on. So how do we get out of the muck? Another possibility is to step outside. To restore our hearts, poet Mary Oliver says, “Step out to the shore –– or the mountainside or the riverbank or the desert. And pay attention.” Step outside. In other words, to get out of the muck of despair like David in today’s psalm, it’s helpful to get into the real mud of the natural world. Play in the mud. Get on a hiking trail. Take a walk through the woods. Exercise. Plant a tree. Plant a garden. A third possible way to be delivered from the muck of desolation and despair is to shift our position. The advantage of shifting our position is that we’re able to see new possibilities. + To shift our position is to attack a problem from a different point of view. + To shift our position is to let go of some limiting assumptions. + To shift our position might entail embracing certain realities we’ve heretofore resisted. + To shift our position may mean acknowledging we were wrong and someone else was right. + To shift our position may mean taking an active role in our recovery rather than waiting for something to happen ex nihilo. And a shift in position, in turn, can shift our perspective. The way we have always done things doesn’t always work when we are stuck in the mud. We need to shift our position to look at other possibilities. 4 We can also get out of the mire by singing praises (expressing gratitude). David accomplishes this by singing a “song of praise to our God.” Admittedly, it is hard to praise God when one is stuck in the mud. Yet shifting positions and trusting God in all things immediately changes our perspective. We recognize at once we are not alone. Our circumstances have not changed. What put us in the muck has not changed. But by trusting God’s presence with us in this murky time, even though we may not feel God’s presence, our position has changed, our perspective has changed and we have changed. The trick now is to trust when we may not feel like trusting and to move forward in faith when the way is unclear. We should try to make a conscious effort to keep trudging through the muddiness of our every day as though we believe things will someday change. This is when we act as though we believe that someday we will be out of the desolate pit. Let’s trust that our lives will not always be mucked up and that one day we will be different. The circumstances may not be different, but we will be different. Almost without noticing, we will find that the miry bog is behind us. We will find our “feet upon a rock.” Amazingly, we will see that our steps are secure and that, indeed, God did hear our cry. Now we can, like David, resume our song, sing a new song, a song of praise for our God. A miry bog can lead to treacherous areas of quicksand. Or it can lead eventually to solid ground. We can waste energy on pointing fingers, or we can let go of the blaming and change our perspectives. We can flounder in the foggy desolation, or be still and allow ourselves to be enveloped by the presence of a loving God. There is playing in the dirt and there is being buried in it. Choose playing. Think about spring flowers. Take a lesson from the lowly, ugly bulb. Push upward. Slog onward. You might not know where you are and you might not know exactly where you are going. But take heart: God does. And spring always comes.