A thumb dipped in ash and dirt and scraped across a bare forehead in the haphazard rendering of a cross: “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.”
I’ve always been enchanted by this Ash Wednesday mantra. It’s morbid and intentionally so. We’re reminded that we are mortal beings, destined to die and return to the dust of the earth. We’re reminded, too, of our all-consuming, all-loving God, the one who called us forth from that dust, “the one who began a good work in” us (Phil 1: 6), the one who desires our intimate collaboration and our great good.
We are dust and will return to dust — it’s visual, visceral. We are nothing; dirt buried in the footsteps of time.
And yet.
And yet God beckons us forth from that dust. God molds us, shapes us, crafts and polishes us. God delights in our beauty and our wonder. And we know that God so treasures us in all our dust and glory that God continues to call us — even once we’ve returned to that same dust — to enter more deeply into God’s great dream. God doesn’t let us go.
Isn’t that the story of Easter? Isn’t that why Jesus came? We return to dust; we are nothing more than dust. And yet, we erupt from dust into the loving embrace of God. We are both dust and delight, nothing and everything, common and exceptional.
There’s more to be said about this Ash Wednesday mantra. We may be tempted to focus on our own dustiness: I am dust and to dust I will return. I zero in on my death, on my mortality, on my limited self. I think, too, of God’s great love for me, of Jesus’ breaking into human history to accompany me in my life’s journey.
But this mantra applies to all of us. We are all dust and to dust we all return.
As that thumb traces the sign of the cross across your forehead, as you feel the tactile reminder of earthen limitations and our common mortal destiny, I wonder if we might also think of something more: that dust is our shared bond.
We share a common origin and destiny; we are bound to the material world and yet invited by the God of the universe to transcend it — all of us, each and every person on this earth. God pulls us out of the ordinary, the tactile, the “stuff” of the earth. The dust and dirt we walk upon each day — God is creating even here. In and through that “stuff,” God invites us deeper and deeper into the Easter mystery, into the promise of the Resurrection.
We are all dust; we are all invited to the Easter banquet.
As we begin these 40 days, how might this reminder transform not only our interpersonal relationships but how we view one another from afar — through headlines and social media posts and simple, general assumptions? Is this, perhaps, an invitation to make peace and offer forgiveness? To extend a hand and a smile rather than a curse and upturned lip? To look kindly on others and, in turn, not forget to look kindly on ourselves?
We are all dust; we are all invited to the Easter banquet.
These days of Lent are a mystical invitation embodied in the physical, nitty-gritty reality of our daily lives. We are called to find God, here, now, in all things. We are called to find God, too, beyond our wildest imaginings.
Let’s get going. And as we do, as we shake the dust from our feet, let us remember that even here, in this dusty place, God creates. God delights.
