Ashes.
I scatter them. They slip away from cold-numbed finger tips. It is winter. Nothing grows in winter—does it?
Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.
But the kitchen fire warms my hands.
Its ashes make nutritious things grow.
We are ashes;
our lives seem sometimes to slip through our fingers.
We are also formed from good, dark hummus—the earth.
We are dust.
Placed in God’s garden “to till it and to keep it.”
Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.
The season of Lent in Christian traditions is a time to reflect on rhythms of feasting and fasting and feasting again in our world, our churches, our spiritual lives. To what fasts can we commit ourselves during this season that will teach us how to fashion a redemptive and life-giving relationship with this earth we call home? What can we plant in the ashes and dust of Lent’s Great Fast that will bear nourishing fruit for Easter’s Great Feast?
Lent begins with Ash Wednesday. On Ash Wednesday, our foreheads smudged with charcoaled Palm branches from last year’s now-cold feast, we are reminded:
By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread
Until you return to the ground,
For out of it you were taken;
You are dust, and to dust you shall return. Genesis 3:19
Life is fleeting and fragile. Yet Lent calls us to work–by the sweat of our brows–to embody the Christian Gospel’s Easter promises of abundant feasts for all people. This is perhaps the most palpable outcome of a holy Lent: people of faith considering what it means to live lives of meaningful sacrifice and redemptive service and then taking steps to do just that.
Salt 