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, glennumc.org March 1, 2017 

Marked by Ashes

Ruler of the Night, Guarantor of the day…
This day — a gift from you.
This day — like none other you have ever given, or we have ever received.
This Wednesday dazzles us with gift and newness and possibility.
This Wednesday burdens us with the tasks of the day, for we are already halfway home
     halfway back to committees and memos,
     halfway back to calls and appointments,
     halfway on to next Sunday,
     halfway back, half frazzled, half expectant,
     half turned toward you, half rather not.

This Wednesday is a long way from Ash Wednesday,
   but all our Wednesdays are marked by ashes —
     we begin this day with that taste of ash in our mouth:
       of failed hope and broken promises,
       of forgotten children and frightened women,
     we ourselves are ashes to ashes, dust to dust;
     we can taste our mortality as we roll the ash around on our tongues.

We are able to ponder our ashness with
   some confidence, only because our every Wednesday of ashes
   anticipates your Easter victory over that dry, flaky taste of death.

On this Wednesday, we submit our ashen way to you —
   you Easter parade of newness.
   Before the sun sets, take our Wednesday and Easter us,
     Easter us to joy and energy and courage and freedom;
     Easter us that we may be fearless for your truth.
   Come here and Easter our Wednesday with
     mercy and justice and peace and generosity.

We pray as we wait for the Risen One who comes soon.

 

Walter Brueggemann, Prayers for a Privileged People (Abingdon, 2008)

A Sight

 

Last night I watched a documentary on war,
and the part I carry with me today
was the spectacle of a line
of maybe 20 blinded soldiers
being led, single-file,
away from a yellow cloud of gas.

That must be what accounts
for this morning’s brightness—
sunlight slathered over everything
from the royal palms to the store awnings,
from the blue Corolla at the curb
to a purple flower climbing a fence,
one gift of sight after another.

I couldn’t see their bandaged faces,
but each man had one hand
resting on the shoulder
of the man in front of him
so that every man was guiding
and being guided at the same time,
and in the same tempo,
given the unison of their small, cautious steps.

Billy Collins, otherpeoplespoems.blogspot.com, October 12, 2020

Life Expectancy

On the morning of a birthday that ended in a zero,

I was looking out at the garden
when it occurred to me that the robin
on her worm-hunt in the dewy grass
had a good chance of outliving me,
as did the worm itself for that matter
if he managed to keep his worm-head down.

It was not always like this.
For decades, I could assume
that I would be around longer
than the squirrel dashing up a tree
or the nightly raccoons in the garbage,
longer than the barred owl on a branch,
the ibis, the chicken, and the horse,

longer than four deer in a clearing
and every creature in the zoo
except the elephant and the tortoise,
whose cages I would hurry past.
It was just then in my calculations
that the cat padded noiselessly into the room,
and it seemed reasonable,

given her bright eyes and glossy coat,
to picture her at my funeral,
dressed all in black, as usual,
which would nicely set off her red collar,
some of the mourners might pause in their grieving to notice,
as she found a place next to a labradoodle
in a section of the church reserved for their kind.

Billy Collins, Whale Day (Random House, 2020)

Holy Ghost

The congregation sang off key.
The priest was rambling.
The paint was peeling in the Sacristy.

A wayward pigeon, trapped in the church,
flew wildly around for a while and then
flew toward a stained glass window,

but it didn’t look like reality.

The ushers yawned, the dollar bills
drifted lazily out of the collection baskets
and a child in the front row began to cry.

Suddenly, the pigeon flew down low,
swooping over the heads of the faithful
like the Holy ghost descending at Pentecost.

Everyone took it to be a sign,
Everyone wants so badly to believe.
You can survive anything if you know
that someone is looking out for you,

but the sky outside the stained glass window,
doesn’t it look like home?

 

June Robertson Beisch, Fatherless Women (Cape Cod Literary Press, 2004)

Wondrous

I’m driving home from school when the radio talk

turns to E.B. White, his birthday, and I exit

the here and now of the freeway at rush hour,

travel back into the past, where my mother is reading

to my sister and me the part about Charlotte laying her eggs

and dying, and though this is the fifth time Charlotte

has died, my mother is crying again, and we’re laughing

at her because we know nothing of loss and its sad math,

how every subtraction is exponential, how each grief

multiplies the one preceding it, how the author tried

seventeen times to record the words She died alone

without crying, seventeen takes and a short walk during

which he called himself ridiculous, a grown man crying

for a spider he’d spun out of the silk thread of invention —

wondrous how those words would come back and make

him cry, and, yes, wondrous to hear my mother’s voice

ten years after the day she died — the catch, the rasp,

the gathering up before she could say to us, I’m OK.

Sarah Freligh, How to Love the World slowdownshow.org December 5, 2022 

Thirteen Below

 

It's thirteen below on my morning walk.
The snow is rock, the brook is a brick.
Everything crackles. The air itself is brittle.

Yet chickadees and nuthatches work the oaks
in their bare feet, on their tiny ankles.
Life prevails, sustained by a mystery within.

There are seeds that sprout after thousands of years.
Pine cones that open only after forest fires.
Survivors of child abuse who turn out lovely.

There is some force of life in you
that can't be put out, that is—what's the word?—
Eternal.

Shelter that spark. Give thanks.
Layer up if you have to. But trust it.
It will keep you. It will keep you.

 

Steve Garnass-Holmes, unfoldinglight.net February 6, 2023