Remember, you are . . .

Dust!


Yes, we hear those words once again and it is almost as if we want to hear them, perhaps even need to hear them.
Ash Wednesday is "Go to church" day. It truly seems that this is one occasion, ranking right there with Christmas, when people feel the need to go to church. And it is not just Catholics who
see this as a go to church day. Most mainstream Christian denominations are also doing the ashes.
I got to thinking about how this day and that marking with the ashes seems so critical to so many. It is not and has never been a day of obligation. We don't have to go and we don't have to get marked with those ashes.
But we do it anyhow.
It is like we are somehow wired within to need this.
And may I suggest that we do, indeed, need this.
Life can get so demanding, so complex, so filled with so much. And as we feel ourselves pulled this way and that, we can even start to think of ourselves as somehow indispensable. Why, without us, the world would likely collapse!
But the ashes call us back to reality.
You are dust and to dust you shall return.
It's like the Voice of God calling us back to reality.
Dust!
Frail and fragile, weak and even broken, sinful and failed!
Dust!
Every last one of us.
That panhandler on the corner and that Bishop of Rome - dust!
That immigrant, making that perilous journey, hoping for a chance at something better and that one who actually rules that land the immigrant hopes to enter - dust the both of them.
We need to face reality, to remember who and what we truly are for it is in that remembering that we begin to question where, truly, we acquire our value, our worth.
Who is it that formed us from this dust?
Who is it that has chosen to breathe life into each one of us?
Who is it that had chosen to love what has been called into being even though it is flawed, failed and sinful?
Who indeed?
It is in that "Who" that we can then begin to discover the true source of our worth and the true meaning of our life.
And until we make that discovery and unless we continue to renew our awareness of that discovery, we remain dust, one day returning to dust.