Ashes, Dust and Clay

Ash Wednesday began the six week season of Lent that will take us through Holy Week and Easter. Even in Lent, however, Sundays are considered sacred space and are little Easter outposts amid the journey of recollection and contemplation.

Or maybe just mindfulness. In order to fully live as humans, we are mindful of our mortality even as we are mindful of the God of Life.

Here's a poem prayer from Lent 16 years ago:

Ashes, Dust and Clay

Long ago, in dust and clay
you saw, O Lord, a flowered Spring
You saw the birth of life deep green
long ago in dark of night.

With no eye yet on earth to see
You saw, O Lord, a joyous light,
the break of earth’s first day to be.
You saw, O Lord, where I have been
chose love and breath to me to bring
Long ago of dust and clay.

And long ago to dust and clay
You made, O Lord, first blooms to fade
You brought again to ash and rust
All grasses green and living ones.

When my eye, too, shall fail and dim
as strength no more within me runs
Then deal with me as once with Him,
Your Son in whom I hope and trust,
Restore to life all Thou hast made
of ashes, clay and dust.

--Roger Fuchs

We pray. I remember that I am but dust. Be for me the Resurrection and the Life. Amen.

COMMENT: Beginning Lent with Ash Wednesday, we confront our own mortality, the dust and ashes to which we all return. Yet of these same things and less, the Creator has made the glorious wonder of all life. We place ourselves safely into our Maker’s hands, from whence comes life that does not die.


© 1994, 2010 by Roger D. Fuchs. All rights reserved.