…with the idea of composting as a spiritual metaphor as well as a practice then the shoveling starts to make sense.
All of those mysterious times when we seem stuck we’re meant to just gently turn the pile (painremorse regret guilt) over work a little more Spirit into the moldering parts of our broken dreams. Next with a little loving attention carefully pikck out the stones and bric-a-brac no longer necessary. And then wait. The season will come to sow again but this time instead of our seeds falling onto rocky soil they will find their home in perfect dirt. The most that we can do then when we are emotionally creatively or spiritually stuck is all Nature asks of herself: participate in the regeneration of our own destiny.