“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Book of Common Prayer 265). That claim is a collision between the finite and infinite—an intersection of ambiguity and utter clarity. The claim made every Ash Wednesday intends to remind us that these bodies of ours, indeed the very life we claim, is a gift given to us by God that is made from something bigger still. This claim is the spiritual foundation on which the liturgical season of Lent firmly rests. We spend this time (40 days not counting Sundays) wondering just what this dust is about. Dust of God. We must not imagine the stuff collecting on things hard-to-reach or articles shoved to the back of the closet. The dust of Lent is the substance of creation. It is the ongoing work of the One who creates. Lent is a time thoughtfully spent imagining the point and capacity of the Creator’s creation and our own place in it (and not the other way around). We who are created by love and inspired by grace are the dust that bears the very fingerprint of God.
Faithfully,
Tim+
