Each year, on Ash Wednesday I return again to our God who looks into the dust and finds beauty. As the ashes are placed on my head, I encounter the Divine Creativity that reaches into the dirt of the ordinary, and sees fit to breathe new life. I am humbled and inspired by the reminder we are all made up of dust and dirt, blood and bones, and that from these raw materials such abundant life can come.
In Gilead, a masterfully written book by Marilynne Robinson, the main character observes that the beautiful is all mixed up with the ordinary, the messy, the grime:
"I really can't tell what's beautiful anymore. I passed two young fellows on the street the other day... They work at the garage. They're not churchgoing, either one of them, just decent rascally young fellows who have to be joking all the time, and there they were, propped against the garage wall in the sunshine, lighting up their cigarettes. They're always so black with grease and so strong with gasoline I don't know why they don't catch fire themselves. They were passing remarks back and forth the way they do and laughing that wicked way they have. And it seemed beautiful to me. It is an amazing thing to watch people laugh, the way it sort of takes them over."
This season I hope I can see through the eyes of this character, who seems to me much like the God who sees beauty in the dust. Lent is not only an opportunity to fast, repent and return to the Lord, but also an invitation to look outward, to find God in the dust and ashes in our midst. To see where the Divine is already alive and present. To open our eyes to beautiful things everywhere.
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