Remember You Are Dust

And that's a gift. That's a blessing.

Photo by Adrien Olichon on Unsplash

You can listen to this reflection for Ash Wednesday at The Heavenly Banquet or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Welcome to The Heavenly Banquet where the hungry are filled with good things. What are you hungry for? Today I am hungry for justice, peace or maybe just some reasonableness, and like, um, a cup of tea that someone else made for me. You know what I mean?

I’m recording this reflection for Ash Wednesday, the first day of the penitential season of Lent. Today Christians all over the world will be marked on the forehead with a little smudge of ashes, some with a dark, bold cross of ashes, identifying themselves as penitents, as sinners seeking reconciliation. And when the priest or pastor or deacon or friend strokes the forehead of the repentant with her ash smeared thumb, she’ll whisper a blessing that was once a curse: “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

Those words were spoken by God to Adam when our fore-bearers were ushered out of paradise. That God who had so carefully crafted Adam from the earth and breathed life into his nostrils, animating our ancestor with the divine spirit- that God who molded humanity from the fresh clay of creation, fashioned this creature as a companion to walk the garden together in the cool of the evening- that God who took dust and gave it life so it could be loved- that same God when betrayed by those same creatures, that God offered a curse, a singular threat: “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.” -The words of a vengeful parent, a sort of poetic rendering of the more familiar, “I brought you into this world, and I can take you out of it.”