remember you are dust – Unfundamentalist

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Wednesday, February 14, was Ash Wednesday. Many Christians in my community attended worship and left their sanctuaries with ashes smeared on their foreheads to mark the beginning of a Lenten season of reflection and repentance.

On Wednesday, February 14, a gunman shot and killed students and teachers in a Florida school.

This Sunday, the first Sunday in Lent, we hear ancient Gospel words: “and immediately the Spirit drove Jesus out into the wilderness” (Mark 1). The wilderness is too real in our world—in our hearts—right now. May God have mercy on us as we seek our way.

what prayer dare we utter when
unspeakable horrors silence
songs of children paralyze
tongues of poets we stumble over
all that remains—unspoken—

perhaps some ancient tree will
whisper wisdom into this unending
night—wilderness people do not
recognize its edenic lyric we
are dust to dust we will return we

are all dust and we are all creating
this mad mad world imposing
premature imprints of mortality on
unblemished foreheads of children
turned to ash in our clenching hands

save us creating one from this fickle
foolishness why do we sacrifice innocent
blood to the thirsty ungroundedness of
our being we flinch gritty truth marks
us we are exiles in our own homes

holding our breath as tongues of fire
consume what really matters—save us
open our mouths to exhale the ashy
smell of repentance make our bones
remember we are dust to dust we will return—

About Jill Crainshaw
Jill Crainshaw is a PCUSA minister and Blackburn Professor of Worship and Liturgical Theology at Wake Forest University School of Divinity. She is the author of several books on worship and ministry.