You and I Are Earth

Humility via a 17th-century plate

Dear bookish friend,

I am one of those people who rarely comes up with new questions in my writing and thinking. Instead I spend hundreds and hundreds of hours obsessing over the same questions I’ve been obsessing over for the last decade. Will I ever come to the end of, to take one of them, the virtue of humility? I wrote an entire dissertation on it in Middle English poetry and contemplative writing, yet my questions are seemingly nowhere near their end. My book coming out in October is riddled with it. The new project I’m currently working on seems to be following that trajectory too.

So when I randomly came across this plate on Instagram, it was love at first sight.

Maker unknown. 17th century. Found in a London sewer, now at the London Museum.

This plate, found initially in a London sewer, reads “You and I are Earth 1661.”

First of all, can you imagine finding something this spectacular in a sewer? Secondly, it’s a pun! The plate is made of clay. Humanity is made from the earth (Genesis 3:19). The plate is punning with its human beholder on their mutual origins. It’s also drawing upon traditions and imagery around humility.