Ash
Wednesday
“All
those days
you felt
like dust,
like dirt,
as if all
you had to do
was turn
your face
toward the
wind
and be
scattered
to the
four corners
or swept
away
by the
smallest breath
as
insubstantial--
did you
not know
what the
Holy One
can do
with dust?”
Jan
Richardson (excerpt from “Blessing the Dust,” Circle of Grace: A
Book of Blessings for the Seasons)
Ash Wednesday, 2019:
Christians will file into churches today to receive a smudge on their
forehead. A reminder that we are made of dust and will return to
dust. Who knows when, in the long reach of history, a small furry
animal began making leaps and bounds in brain development. Who knows
when we began to stand up and reach for the stars. Did we know even
then that we were part of a spiral galaxy? That we were made from
star dust? That the Holy One grabbed up a bunch of dirt from the
earth and shaped us from it? Can we hold those two understandings at
the same time, and not feel that we are slighting either? I love
putting them together. They are not either/or, they are both/and, as
are we.
We begin the march toward
Easter and Spring today, but if we want to be true to the season, we
must first spend forty days becoming intimately acquainted with our
own dust. We all know when we are down in the dirt, when we are so
low, we're incapable of dragging ourselves out of it. I don't know
about you, but I've certainly been there—more than once. It feels
bad. But, oh-my, is it ever fertile ground. When we're down there in
the dirt, watering the earth with our tears, things begin to happen
that never would have happened in bright sunlight. That dirt becomes
a garden, a sanctuary for the Holy One to bring us back to life—to
reshape us. When we come to terms with our dusty humanity, when we
traverse its many low thresholds, we emerge a new person—actually,
a renewed person. One with a little more humility, a little less
bravado, but with far more grounding. We are real, more solid and
sure-footed. We know who we are.
I encourage you not to
skip the forty days of Lent. If you dismiss them as unimportant, you
will miss out on knowing your own stardust.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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