Dust to Dust

Wednesday, February 17, 2021

All my longings lie open before you, Lord;
    my sighing is not hidden from you.
My heart pounds, my strength fails me;
    even the light has gone from my eyes.
Psalm 32:9-10

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” whispered into my soul as he smeared oily ash onto my forehead—inky charcoal bleeding into my furrowed brow. My parched soul abrasively demanded me to finally pay attention to death, to loss, to grief and suffering. I had long wrestled with grief and my own mortality, pushing it down like an embarrassing relative I was ashamed to share DNA. My natural propensity for positivity lent itself to conjuring silver linings at inappropriate moments, glossing over pain and loss with cliches I barely believed but trusted more than the truth. 

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” 

Ashes smeared as I thought it’s in the wilderness of my mind, dusty and desolate and isolating, where I howl at the moon and cry into the silence around me—life is fragile, a mist, a breath. Even in the deafening noise of children, deadlines, political upheaval, global pandemics, and theological unraveling there’s a wilderness. I might be surrounded by people and yet feel totally alone—lost in the loss of this year, of loved ones, of health, of routine. 

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” 

These dusty places, dry and weary, feel impossible to navigate. The ground kicks up around me as I hiccup another tamped down sob. There’s no time or energy to cry and who knows what will happen if I let it out. 

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

And then I remembered how Jesus’s legs buckled under him as he fell to his knees, laid his head to the dusty ground and wept when his friend died too soon. Dust to dust. 

Jesus wept. 

I am a product of American cultural strength that sees grief, sadness, and suffering as shameful, hidden, personal, and private. And yet Jesus wept. There was no shame in his grief about how fragile and uncertain this existence is. There was no humiliation in his vocal lament. He wasn’t telling everyone about the sweet by and by, inviting a different perspective. He was fully present to mortality in the dusty wilderness loss. He allowed his body, mind, and heart to feel every bit of humanness in the midst of his community.

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

My feet felt the ground beneath me—feet standing on millennia of carbon death; dust from bones, beetles, bark. I’m not alone and they aren’t either, I thought. Mourning isn’t just a personal or private event because lament and grief is meant to bind our souls back to ourselves, to each other, to the Divine. Forty percent of the Psalms are public prayers of lament filled with questions about where God is in this fragile life.

As the oily ash settled onto my brow, I savored the truth that from dust we came and to dust we will go. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. And it was in that moment I recognized I was standing on dusty holy ground. 

With (love),
Bethany