Ponderings of the General Presbyter of the Presbytery of Sheppards and Lapsley

Sue Westfall

February 27, 2023

Lenten greetings, friends,

Over the years, I’ve had a love/hate with the season of Lent which, this year, began last Wednesday with a smudge of ash on our foreheads. Traditionally a season of repentance and self-denial (which I can easily get into – I kind of like sack cloth and ashes and God knows I have plenty to confess) more and more I’m feeling drawn less to attention on myself and my own agency, and more to God’s relentless love for God’s beautiful and fantastical creation of which I am a part. To that end I’ve been drawn to the poem by Jan Richardson, Blessing the Dust, because it speaks of our humble acceptance of our fragility and mortality and surrender it to God. We are dust and to dust we return. Richardson reminds us of what God can do with dust.

BLESSING THE DUST

All those days

you felt like dust,

like dirt,

as if all you had to do

was turn your face

toward the wind

and be scattered

to the four corners

or swept away

by the smallest breath

as insubstantial—

did you not know

what the Holy One

can do with dust?

This is the day

we freely say

we are scorched.

This is the hour

we are marked

by what has made it

through the burning.

This is the moment

we ask for the blessing

that lives within

the ancient ashes,

that makes its home

inside the soil of

this sacred earth.

So let us be marked

not for sorrow.

And let us be marked

not for shame.

Let us be marked

not for false humility

or for thinking

we are less

than we are

but for claiming

what God can do

within the dust,

within the dirt,

within the stuff

of which the world

is made

and the stars that blaze

in our bones

and the galaxies that spiral

inside the smudge

we bear.

—Jan Richardson

from Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons

I love the idea that God is at work in the dust of our lives to give us life abundant! So I am thinking this Lent, what would it be like to give up being anything less than the most audaciously magnificent versions of ourselves which God in Christ is bringing about.

As ever in prayer,

Sue