Mucking In and Out

My father was a farm worker all of his life, and I dare to say he was proud of the fact. Were he here now, he would say that a lifetime’s hard work was nothing to be ashamed of.  Part of that time was spent with horses, a time when muck was a daily part of his life, but for a few weeks every spring, horses or not, our home became perfumed by the all-pervasive smell of muck-spreading, for muck is (as the Oxford English Dictionary confirms by according it to the word as its first definition) ‘farmyard manure’.  

As well as its spreading, ‘muck’ provides other compounds too.  Every horse-owner knows the importance of mucking out: removing the ordure and refreshing the stable with new straw.  This was also a term that I heard in childhood, to refer to spring cleaning. From time to time – and not just in the spring – it’s a good idea to get into the farthest corners and remove the stubborn dirt and any accumulated rubbish.  This is a laudable task for, as George Herbert wrote in the seventeenth century, ‘Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws makes that [i.e. drudgery] and the action fine’ (from the hymn Teach me, my God and King, based on Herbert’s poem Elixir).

An expression not heard so much these days is ‘mucking in’, an expression of working, or facing adversity, together; helping one another meet a common need.  It’s a gesture we’ve seen on our TV newsreels in recent weeks as Somerset farmers have mucked in and helped each other save their animals from the floods.  The Israelites who rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem, faced by the taunts and conspiracies of Tobiah, Sanballat and their friends, worked together, some at the walls doing the actual rebuilding, some equipped with bows, spears and body-armour to defend them, and others carrying materials, weapons in hand (Nehemiah ch. 4).  They were mucking in so that their combined efforts would succeed.  St Paul also emphasised this ‘all-for-one-and-one-for-all’ attitude to community life in his letter to the Corinthians, where he compares the inter-dependence of the parts of the body to that of each member of the church (I Cor. ch. 12).  

Even in these mechanised days, to those either living or spending their leisure hours in the countryside, muck is still an inevitable aroma of spring.  As the year and its Lenten, or growing, season open up before us, let’s think of this word and its many meanings, as they remind us to remove the rubbish of the past from our lives; to join in with communal activities, and to spread God's love among all whom we meet in our daily lives.