Many times when I ask someone about their spirit-life, the response that I get has to do with how often they are meditating/praying, how much they are giving, how often they open and read their sacred texts, how consistently they gather with their spiritual communities.

Very rarely do they mention the double-pepperoni Hot Pocket they ate the night before.

But if we are spirit and soil—grace and grit, virtue and vocation, love and leftovers—that doesn’t just mean that how I cultivate my spirit affects what happens with my soil.  It also means that how I cultivate my soil affects what is happening with my spirit.

Recently, during a weekly gathering of our faith community, my son was invited to create an ornament on which he was invited to write an answer to the question, “I create peace when I…”. I was drawn in.  What was he going to write?  I create peace when I…love someone? give another a meal? de-escalate an argument?  

Nope.  This is what he wrote:

“I create peace when…I sleep.”

My first reaction was not generous.  Doesn’t he take this seriously?  Doesn’t he know that peace is real and requires real people to step into messy situations?  Did he not know how to spell “de-escalate?” 

But sometimes I experience what I can only describe as the Spirit grabbing hold of my spirit: I had a lucid moment.  I realized that what my son had written was actually profound.  Sometimes what creates chaos or conflict or cringe-worthy moments is a lack of a good night’s sleep.  My son was getting it right: the rest he gets impacts the peace he gives.

Here was a recognition that our soil (how much measurable sleep our body gets) impacts our spirit (what kind of peace we are able to bring into the world).

Many of us discover this when we exercise: after a good run (is there such a thing?), or a good bike ride, or a good swim, we find ourselves sleeping better, thinking better, feeling better, treating others better.

Over the last year, I have discovered this with food: there are some foods that lend to creativity, thoughtfulness, patience, kindness.  There are others foods that do not.  Like sugar.  Many have found that, if they’re paying attention, sugar creates impatience, irritability, short-tempered-ness, and daddy-grumpus-ness in them.

“Daddy Grumpus” may be a name I’ve earned at home on occasion.  Maybe.

I’m trying to cut back on sugar.

How we eat, how we sleep, and how we exercise is intimately connected to how we are able to cultivate the immeasurable realities that we want to see growing in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

Because we are not spirit over here and soil over there.  Spirit and soil, the immeasurable and measurable realities that make up who we are, are meant to be in constant interrelation with one another.  This, I believe, is what the Giver has always wanted to give us.

Integration.  Depth.  Completeness.  Shalom.

Shalom is the word the ancient Hebrews used for this spirit and soil in healthy relationship and exchange. In the ancient language it means wholeness.  It is that state of being where the cultivation of our spirit is enriching our soil, where the care of our soil is enlivening the expansion of our spirit.

And the most common English rendering of this Hebrew word shalom is…”peace”.

Peace is what we are being offered. Everyday. If we would receive it.  If we would partner with the One in intentionally cultivating it: the spirit and soil ness of our being.

And sometimes that simply begins with getting a good night’s sleep.