Living Dirty, Eating Clean

My mind has been flooded with thoughts today/this morning. Of course, I am absolutely and positively grateful to be awake, up, reasonably healthy, and in my right mind. Thank you Lord for those blessings! However, I am bursting with thoughts about things I have read, seen or otherwise processed in my mind over the last few days.

One item, posted below, talks about "living dirty, eating clean." It took me back years to my life in Georgia. I can tell you that we kept our house as clean as we possibly could. We raked the yards every weekend during the summer and fall. We scrubbed floors every weekend. We cleaned out the wood stove when necessary to keep it working properly. We washed our clothes (sometimes boiled them in the old black kettle), and hung them out to dry on the clothes line. We washed, and boiled our canning jars and bottles, and, of course, we washed, and sterilized our dishes, pots and pans. But, even after all of that, there was plenty of dirt blowing up outside, and because of the types of housing we had, there was always plenty of dust and dirt inside.

We played in the dirt. We fed the animals. We milked the cows, and we rode the horses. We rode in the wagon, and we climbed trees for fun and to pick the high growing fruits and nuts. During the growing season, it was nothing to go into the field, crack open a watermelon, and eat the heart out of it right there on the spot. The same was true for grapes, plums, blackberries, blueberries, and persimmons. No, we did not run home to wash our hands or to wash off the food before we ate it. And, oh, by the way, we did not have running water, indoor bathroom or bottled water.

We also did not get sick every time the wind changed! We were some very healthy children and adults. We rarely went to the doctor, and we did worry about carrying or passing on germs. I know they had to exist, then just as they do now. So, after reading the article on living dirty, eating clean, I asked, "what is different now?"

A couple of things came to mind. We are the Clean Nasty Society (CNS). We shower, bath and sanitize often (at least some of us do). We wash and sanitize our clothes often. We go to the doctor every time the wind changes, and we get flu shots, antibiotics, steroids, and we take a lot of over-the-counter drugs. We have (for the most part) access to doctors and drugs, and we utilize those things in excess. We kill off the body's natural ability to fight disease (it's immune system), and then wonder why we have so much sickness and disease.

Our children can't play in the dirt. God helps us, if they eat some of it. Mothers chewing up food to feed their babies (that lived inside of them for nine months) are considered nasty and unsanitary. Yet, she can pop out an unwashed breast and stick it in her baby's mouth to suck milk full of liquor, drugs (prescription and otherwise) and other unhealthy foods. Children washing in the same bath water could not possibly get clean. Things that I have considered fine and okay all of my life are now unsanitary, nasty, unclean, and unhealthy. Yet, as I look around our nation, my generation has more people living now, and are healthier than the two or three generations behind us. I find that to be very amazing.

I am definitely not advocating for total disregard for personal hygienes. I am not even advocating for homeopathic medicine. However, I am suggesting that we may be shooting ourselves in the feet by totally discarding a balance in our hygienes, medicating ourselves, and living in a body and world that were made perfect from the beginning.

I will never forget one of my teachers who has been a major influence in my life (outside of my Mother) saying in class many years ago, that there would come a time my life, should I live long enough, that machines would be doing most of the heavy lifting work that we were doing back then. She said, people would work smarter, and life would become so mundane that most would work a half day and spend the rest of their time pursuing the arts, education, religion, and other cultural endeavors. Ms. Ellen Cogdell, my teacher, was so far ahead of her time. I totally believed her. I became fascinated with the Romans and the Greeks, and their thirst for knowledge.

I have lived long enough to witness many of the things she spoke about. I have even participated in many of those things, and now, I am also seeing the consequence of many of those things in our physical bodies, mental health, and spiritual lives. We have reached the point where we as a species has become weaker and wiser. Science has unlocked knowledge that surpass most of our understanding. We have already gone where no man has gone before. We have placed our species on the path of destruction, and no amount of sanitation will correct that.

Last thought on this. While we are still here, maybe we should use less hand sanitizer. Maybe we should eat a little of the dirt/dust from which we were originally formed. Maybe, just maybe everything is not nasty and won't kill us. Maybe everything in moderation has some merit.

Living in harmony with our environment offers the best solution to living in our world. Just a thought.

Peace and blessings always! Thanks for dropping by.