dust. noun. the stuff of life.

I know there are lots of things I’m good at. But being mortal isn’t one of them. I like to think that I can do everything and please everyone, not taking rest and not making mistakes. I get frustrated when I’m tired or sick or in pain. I wonder why I only accomplished seven out of the 17 things on my to-do list.

And this, my friends, is why I have ashes smeared across my face this afternoon. Ash Wednesday is one of the few chances we’re given in our culture to stop and acknowledge our own mortality. I like to call it, dustiness. Yeah, I’m dusty. And that’s okay. You are too. Being mortal means being fallible and sinful and making mistakes. It means being tired and grumpy and needing to rest. It also means I will die.

Think about it: we spend most of our lives pretending we aren’t going to die. When a conversation around death arises, people tend to speak in hushed tones or discretely excuse themselves. Many families don’t even have funerals anymore, so averse are we to thinking and talking about death. The problem is, people still die and I am still mortal. Avoiding our own mortality leaves a hole of fear in our lives that we rush to fill with other things.

Today, however, I sit quietly and take it all in. My mortality, in fact, is a beautiful gift. We are like the lilies of the field, here today and gone tomorrow. And yet, not one bit of life is the same as another. There is something beautiful and whole and good in every bit of life we encounter. It is a fragile thing, like a cherry blossom or a newborn bird. It does no good to treat it like it will not be easily broken.

This is also why, historically at least, we fast today. It reminds us of all the things we rely on other than God. There's nothing like hunger to help us let go of the mirage of immortality. At the same time, by fasting we declare that we take our life from something more than animal-like needs. As humans, we are mortal like the animals but called to something more as bearers of the Divine Image.

Yet it is a mistake to make Ash Wednesday- and the ensuing season of Lent- into something about ourselves. Today we are called to repent of all the ways we mess up by turning again to God. But mostly are called to simply acknowledge who we really are and who God really is. It’s tempting to make Lent more about our own repentance, about a call to pull ourselves together and be better people. But with the ashes we are acknowledging that we cannot, in fact, be better people. We will always be mortal and we will always be sinful. So we come to the ashes again and again, proclaiming that it is only God who is the Creator, the Healer, and the Redeemer. All that is asked of us today is to tell the truth about ourselves and to allow God to enfold us once again in his loving care.

Don’t misunderstand me. Of course repentance means turning away from darkness and toward light. But even then, it is God who enables us, even as we remain very dusty people. We pray the ancient Psalm together:

 

For behold, you look for truth deep within me,

      and will make me understand wisdom secretly.

Purge me from my sin, and I shall be pure;

      wash me, and I shall be clean indeed.

Create in me a clean heart, O God,

      and renew a right spirit within me.

Cast me not away from your presence

      and take not your Holy Spirit from me.

As I sat in a midday service today, I was reminded of the prophet Ezekiel, taken in a vision to a valley of dry bones. His guide says to him, “O son of man, can these dry bones live?” And a baffled Ezekiel responds, “You know.” God promises to bring life to our dustiness, to make the dryness of death flourish with the greed of life. This is the mystery of our faith- and indeed, of life itself. All we must do now is declare ourselves dust.