Dust to dust, ashes to ashes

image by Simran Gleason, 1997

Jeanette has alerted me to a fine Lenten devotional resource, Journey to the Cross. It's done by the d365 people. This was tonight's entry into the journey:

Ashes: what the fire leaves behind. Dust: what wind, rain and decomposition leave behind. What can you leave behind on this Journey to the Cross?

Tonight I am thinking of a dear woman who is in a skilled care facility. C.F. has Parkinson's, osteoporosis, dementia and a broken leg. She is turning into dust before our very eyes.

Tonight I am thinking of another dear friend whose husband has left her for another woman, and who now faces the dissolution of her marriage, the sale of her beloved home, worry, anger and loneliness. She is has been tasting ashes for months now.

I'm wondering if Lent is not only about what I choose to leave behind, but about my response to life's storms and firestorms. And I remember how I am dust, and that I will return to dust. I ask for the grace to sit still, so that I can be re-formed, now and in the hour of my death.

"Teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still." --T.S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday