Ash Wednesday

 

Blessing the Dust                      

     by Jan Richardson

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

My dear Lenten friends, I struggled a great deal with the words to use when imposing ashes this year.  The staff and residents in my nursing home have suffered so much this past year, their losses have been constant, and to use words that call them to repent, or to recall that they are dust to dust, was indeed a challenging thought.  I have decided to use the following words when imposing their ashes: 

"From dust you came, filled with the breath of God.

To dust you shall return, into the embrace of God.”