Dust to Dust

We need an Ash Wednesday.

No matter what we believe, no matter how faithless our faith, we desperately need an Ash Wednesday.

Because, even if we cannot agree that dust was our beginning, we can maybe agree that dust will be our end.

Because, it would be good for us to ponder…
Why is it that the flowers come from the dust and create such beauty,
And food comes from the dust and provides such care,
And the stones and the trees come from the dust and offer such shelter,
And we come from the dust and so often, too often yield only pain upon pain and suffering upon suffering?

We need an Ash Wednesday because we have forgotten ourselves.
We have forgotten love.
We have forgotten that we have agency and a choice.

The potter takes dust and carefully molds it into something useful and beautiful. What shape will we choose?

In this life, in this temporary moment between dustiness and dustiness, who will we be? And what will we be for the world, however large or small that is for us?

We so need an Ash Wednesday this year and every year to remind us that the love which formed us had expectations of reciprocity and perpetuation.

We need it because we will return to the dust and what’s left behind should not have to mourn that we existed.