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Blessing The Dust
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?
This is the day
we freely say
we are scorched.
This is the hour
we are marked
by what has made it
through the burning.
This is the moment
we ask for the blessing
that lives within
the ancient ashes,
that makes its home
inside the soil of
this sacred earth.
So let us be marked
not for sorrow.
And let us be marked
not for shame.
Let us be marked
not for false humility
or for thinking
we are less
than we are
but for claiming
what God can do
within the dust,
within the dirt,
within the stuff
of which the world
is made
and the stars that blaze
in our bones
and the galaxies that spiral
inside the smudge
we bear.
~Jan Richardson, from Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons
Lent, maybe more than any other season in church
asks the most of us.
It’s not particularly predictable –
even with its traditions of preparation, fasting, and repentance,
the season still seems changeable.
The date on which it begins differs every year
(Advent is always 4 weeks before December 25th;
Thanksgiving is always the 4th Thursday of November)
But Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent varies:
It depends upon the sun and the moon – the cycles of life
(as does Easter).
Lent is, you could say, a moveable FAST in anticipation of a moveable FEAST.
A Jewish rabbi once said that holidays are either too early or too late.
I think we could agree –
the Lenten season sometimes has the “too early” or “too late” feel to it.
Rarely is it “just right” – like Goldilocks.
Whether we mean within the calendar year,
or, as a season in our own lives.
But isn’t that reality, that slight unsettledness, part of what makes Lent such a powerful season?
~~~~~~~~~~
Individually or as a community,
Ash Wednesday asks us to be deeply and even brutally honest.
What Psalm 51, traditionally attributed to David,
confesses and promises from the individual perspective
is precisely what God (through Joel) asks of us as a community:
Turn back to God.
The psalm, one of the most heart-breaking and poignant of them all,
written as an individual confession
is also asking us to join our voices together
in this deeply personal, yet common, admission of brokenness,
and to turn fully and completely to God – in trust.
The prophet Joel in his oracle to the Israelite people,
and Paul in his letter to the believers in Corinth,
remind us that this life of faith,
the life of the redeemed, and
one’s re-turning to God
is NOT just personal.
It is public. It has community-wide repercussions.
What God does in us and what God invites us into
is not just for us, for our salvation, or even just for like-minded others.
It is for the world, and for the sake of the world.
The transformation into which Lent pulls us –
and then sends us out as
is a journey that affects the whole world
because it affects how we are in the world.
While it is true that our faith may be personal,
it is never solely private.
Our faith has wide-ranging public implications and ramifications:
not so that we can trumpet our piety and religiosity.
NO! Jesus turns us from that.
But, faith is public in order that God’s righteousness and mercy may be reflected and shown throughout creation.
Faith is a public thing because we are transformed to live out grace everywhere and always.
~~~~~~~~~~
And yet...
And yet...
Despite words of encouragement,
prayers for boldness,
smudges of a cross to remind us of our baptism and our baptismal promises,
and the feast which we eat,
we do not always feel ready to go out into the world as we have been called.
We feel...
inadequate not repentant enough
without the words not fully transformed
half-baked
But,
it is enough.
We are ready.
Of course there is always more healing and reconciliation from God.
There is always more forgiveness and grace.
There is always another chance to turn again to God.
That is, after all, what our Lenten journey is about, no matter when in the year or when in our lives it happens.
We are ready.
We are ready because we
ALREADY live in the promise and the covenant of God’s love for us.
We are ready because God has claimed us
and made us wildly wonderful –
within the dust,
within the dirt,
within the stuff
of which the world
is made
and the stars that blaze
in our bones
and the galaxies that spiral
inside the smudge
we bear.
Amen
