ash wednesday

ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

i don’t think you can ever separate your self from the dust you came from.  we are made from that dust.  the land.  our land. we are made from the lands we were born in.  they are born in us too.  and places are different- vastly different and they shape us  and how we think about the world and ourselves in the world. 

if you come from a place that sits on the ocean, and you can stand at that edge and feel both all your smallness and yet all the possibility- it’s painful to be away from it.  if you come from a place where the seasons change and the plants move and you see growth and birth and death, then you know that when you lie on your back in the grass you will sometimes see no sky but only the green cover of leaves overlapping and light peeping down between; and sometimes you will hear the crunching of dry leaves under you and see orange and yellow and brown above and some will be falling and the light will be lower in the sky and different in the dry air; and sometimes the sky will be broad and white and you will look up at it through the empty scraping bare branches of that same tree, while the ground you lie on is hard and cold.

somehow you will need those differences because you had come to rely on the earth reminding you of time and process.  you need to be moved by the light and the air and ground and whatever was framing the sky.  you can’t get things done when it’s always summer- dry or wet- but still summer.  because that's not what you were made of.  because you’re waiting and waiting for something to change. but it doesn’t.

perhaps that is why I’m clinging to Lent this year. because it’s something.  because it’s giving reference to time and process.  because it names a season when i can't feel one. i can close my eyes and imagine the ground and the sky looking different, but they don't. today i went outside and tried. i lay down under a tree and looked up.  the same. where is the movement? where is the change ? show me..i whispered.

and yet...it was beautiful still.  and turning my head i could see that while the tree was the same, the bougainvillea chopped down near the water tower had completely regrown.  that another tree was full of purple flowers.  another one filled with little white flowers - perfectly shaped like little dairy queen soft-serve ice cream cones. another one full of new red berries, another with pink tufts like flower feathers.  there is change and newness- it's just not what you are  used to. keep your eyes open.  keep your eyes on Me. be here now, where you are, in this season. you want time and process- be in My time and process.  every moment, time and place has choice- that is your part- choose Me.    

i am here. it's not my land. it's not my dust. but it is ash wednesday. let something new begin.