Tag: humility

“Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

Thousands of years ago in Jerusalem, the crowds were so excited about Jesus’ arrival in town, they welcomed him with the ancient equivalent of rolling out the red carpet for the arrival of a star to a world premiere. Except the red carpet was made up of the coats they threw down (like, from right off their backs) and the branches they ripped off the closest trees (likely palms). They gave up their cloaks and branches and shouts of praise in celebration of the famed prophet and healer arriving in their city. It was loud, it was joy filled, it was intoxicating. And then it was gone. 

In many traditional church observances, the palms used for Palm Sunday celebrations are burned and the ashes sit untouched for nearly a year. Then, on Ash Wednesday, the ashes are mixed with oil and become not something we give, like the coats and branches and shouts of praise, but something we receive. With the imposition of ashes on Ash Wednesday, the bearer takes on humility and mortality, all that’s left of the celebration.

The palm branches were the crowds, the social following. Loud, lavish, brash and sure.

The ashes are the quiet reflection. Intimate, personal and humble.

In an Ash Wednesday service, as the ashes are crossed on the forehead, the imposer often pronounces, “remember, you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

I am from dust.

I am returning to dust.

Secular sciences and Biblical accounts all reference life created out of dust. Dust was the medium used to create all of life. Dust was the medium used to heal. God mixed his breath with dust and formed humans. Jesus mixed his spit with dust and created sight for a blind man.

God enters and the dust is no longer dust.

God enters and the dust becomes the very medium of life and sight. The transformation from dust and to dust is not limited to just our literal birth and death, it is found in every season of our lives. In every season there are cycles of creation, dust, waiting and re-creation.

“Remember, you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

Today I’m trying to just sit and allow myself space to wonder at the constancy of the cycle, and the impermanence of the things. Everything is made from dust and everything turns to dust. There is grace and freedom in knowing both of those are true – that everything we own, everything on earth that we hold on to, will turn to dust. And re-creation comes out of dust.  

And yet here I am, storing up letters from 30 years ago, holding on to clothes from 20 pounds ago, and installing a shelf for a pile of high heels I can barely remember wearing. As though holding on to those things keeps the person I was, or I wanted to be, or I want to be, real. Maybe I need to put down some of those palm branches and coats (literally…do I need a dozen coats?) and instead, sit with the dust. Remembering the palms they once represented, and receiving the ashes. Laying down the loud, lavish and sure, receiving the personal, intimate and humble.

This is what I want. Or at least this is what I want to want.

It’s not about losing. It’s not even about less. It’s about releasing my grip on what I don’t need in this season, allowing it turn to ash so I can sit in humility, mortality and intimacy. Prepared to receive what’s next.