Dirty, Filthy Love

When I was five, I loved mud.  How it cooled me down on hot summer evenings and reminded me of something scrumptious, like chocolate.  I loved just sitting out back on the cement, mixing the water from the horse trough with the loose dirt Bubba dug up and smelling it; it was rich, brisk and comforting, and made me either want to lie down and take a nap or run up a hill and stake my claim to the world. 

I used to put it on my nose and chin because Andrea was a teenager and walked around with something like it on her face at night.  It’d dry and tighten, I’d wiggle my face and it’d crack and crumble all over the floor as I’d come inside and ask my mom to wash it off.  I didn’t know the healing elements it contained for the skin, or anything about its detoxifying beauty benefits, it just felt playful and messy and was something to delight in.  Mud just felt right. 

Nearly twenty years later, standing in my kitchen, mixing a bowl of bentonite Indian face clay I bought from Sprouts, I realize how I’ve come full-circle.  Except now I pay ten dollars a tub for something that once cost me nothing more than a chastising, “aye mija” from my father.  It still cools me down, but now I add peppermint oil for an added tingling sensation.  It’s still messy and fun, and sometimes reminds me of crushed cocoa nibs, but now I add actual food to it to optimize the nourishing benefits for my face. 

I’m knowledgeable about mud—how to put it on (upwards from the chin to the cheeks, outwards from the nose across the ‘T’, and delicately around the eyes and the mouth), I know the various kinds of mud (white China, pink, French green, Indian and rose), and the purpose of each (moisturizing, smoothing, cleansing, tightening, absorbing).  I wouldn’t say I’ve matured in it, anyone who sees me in this primitive manner will undoubtedly recognize the degree of childish glee I bounce around in it with, but I’ve come to intimately know and understand this thing called ‘mud.’  And I wonder if this is what God had in mind when He instructs us to both put our childish ways behind us (1 Corinthians 13:11) and yet come to him as little children (Mathew 19:14).

When I was five, I did not understand mud, all I knew was mud existed and it was fun.  I did not know that if you ingested it, it could make you sick, or that if you leave it on too long it can dry you out.  I did not know that it is one of the elements with which my body was created.  I did not know that there were different times and places in which mud was appropriate and inappropriate.  I did not know that men thought women rolling around in it was ‘sexy’ (I still don’t understand that one).  At some point I picked up some books, researched it on the internet, got some recipes and started mixing it up—seeking it out, because I realized I like it and I should know how it works.

Similarly, I don’t think God wants us to just be acquainted with or be mildly affected by Love, and other disciplines.  I think He wants us to know how they work.  He wants us to know the various forms it takes on, the intimate benefits of each and how they interact and feed different parts of us and others.  And the only way we can ever learn is to dive in. Talk about it, read about it, try to do it.  In order to know Love, it requires, at some point, that we shed our child-like ignorance of it.  It requires that we take up our adult responsibility to seek after it.

At the same time, Love can be exhausting…learning about Love devastating.  And it’s all too easy to lose sight of why we wanted to know it in the first place, but we should continually grasp onto that ‘primitive’ side of us that knows without a doubt that Love is good—it’s fun and messy and something to delight in.  We should never be so proud in ourselves as to believe we’ve mastered it or learned all there is to learn. We should never let our ‘adult’ habits devoid anything of it’s deep mystery and magic, but let ourselves have wide eyes to the hope and beauty of it.

I don’t know, not to over-spiritualize a beauty regimen, but I think I’m just seeing the ways in which I'm called to get a little dirty in life.