That's what the priest says on Ash Wednesday as he or she takes the ashes from the previous year's palms used on Palm Sunday, mixes them with oil and traces a cross on your forehead.
What exactly is one supposed to make of a remembrance of decay? It's a grim remembrance and I at least remember it all day when I find soot on my fingers and sleeves. As much as I hate to admit it, my first thoughts on the phrase are fearful. Once I believed that the God of the Bible was one who would control people by fear. Fear of punishment, fear of hell, fear of being ungrateful, fear of disappointing.
But I don't believe that now. So what am I to make of this remembrance now?
I don't know. As Carrie Newcomer sings, "I don't know what happens when people die." And that's what this dust to dust thing is about---death, right? I don't like not knowing. Surely there is a solid answer and I ought to know it.
Yes, there are many who would offer me solid answers with so much certainty that my unknowing would seem intentional. And I suppose it is. You see I tried certain answers. I liked certain answers. I liked the power they gave me to avoid the fear of uncertainty, the power to dismiss mystery. But the God of the Bible is a God of mystery. A God who says "I form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe; I the Lord do all these things" (Isaiah 45:7) is a God who challenges my easy, comfortable answers.
This is not where I planned to be in my twenties. No, I was trained to be a woman of the church. A woman of a specific church. I expected to be teaching by this age in a school and in a church. These days it seems that what I know is not so readily taught.
These days I have to admit that I am dead. The I who believed uncomplicated truths, the I who believed she had found the Truth before living a quarter of a century. She is dead. Sometimes I still mourn for her and grieve for the life she would have lived.
But someone new is being born. She too is me. As Thumbelina who grew from a tiny barley corn, she grows from the seeds of truth planted deep in the dust within. The dust of the dead I.
Lent is about examining the things that keep us from drawing near to God. Lent is about admitting death, decay, sin, and error. Lent is about waiting in the desert, the wilderness, the sacred dark to see what it is of that dead thing we will find resurrected with Christ.
How easy it is for me to think of the Christian life as static or changing only in the ways I want. But we live in cycles of death and new life. God makes us from the dust of the earth and then we find our dreams, our ideals, our understanding, our selves dim and return to the dust. Not to the dust of futility, but the dust of dependence. For as dust we are moulded by the Creator again. As dust to attempt to reform myself is to remain dead. But it is to remain dead to God who would make me again in Imago Dei.
"Almighty and ever living God, you hate nothing you have made and forgive the sins of all who are penitent: Create in us new and contrite hearts..." --Book of Common Prayer; collect for Ash Wednesday"Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return."
Remember and do not fear, for the same God who made you once will make you again and again with a new and contrite heart.
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In the past I've tried keeping Lent by fasting and abstaining, but those are only one form of discipline. This year I'll be adding things back into my life--devotions and remembrances in keeping a holy Lent.
Below is a phone* wallpaper I made to help myself in this remembrance. It is here for you to use if you too would find a reminder helpful in keeping a Holy Lent.
*The image is designed to fit perfectly on an Iphone 5 lock screen, but will work on other devices.
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