Lent 7: out of the ashes.

A week ago, we marked our faces with ashes, a sign of death and mortality, and formed a cross, a sign of hope and resurrection.  As I come to the end of the first week of Lent, my prayer is that my life would become like the mark of those ashes. Though I am small, imperfect and smudged, I pray to live a life of courage, hope and beauty. A life that offers love and grace to others. A life that brings renewal and resurrection to situations that feel hopeless.

In light of that prayer, I wanted to share this beautiful Ash Wednesday poem from Jan Richardson at the Painted Prayerbook. I love this poem because it is a reminder that Lent is not about guilt or shame, as much as it is about possibility. May it be a reminder to us all of the stars that blaze in our bones, and the wild dreams God has for our flawed and beautiful lives.

Blessing the Dust

A Blessing for Ash Wednesday
By Jan Richardson

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.