"Remember you are dust..."

Dust
Today I am thinking a lot about dust! 

I feel a bit sad that I was not able to get to an Ash Wednesday service yesterday....many of the churches around here cancelled their services due to the extreme cold and gusting winds. So, I didn't go out to receive the imposition of ashes. 

However, I did wake up this morning to the bright sun shining through my bedroom window and I could see the bright sparkling dust particles floating around the room.  The sun always makes the dust shine and show up in a way that is impossible to remove adequately.  

My son wrote a song that had a lyric that I always sing in my head when I see dust in the sunlight... 

"In the bright light 

can you see...

all the dust 

you're breathing in?

In the bright light

can you see...

anything, anything?" 

Matt Mehlan- "Git" 

http://ghostlysongs.com 

The dust in the air and the dust that appears on the furniture and floors just reminded me of Ash Wednesday today.  The words spoken at the Ash Wednesday service are to remind us how small we are in the grand scheme of things....are we really anything, anything at all? Just dust.

But are we just dust? It says in Genesis 2:7

"...the Lord God formed the man from the

dust of the ground and breathed 

into his nostrils the breath

of life,

and the man became a living being."

Breath of Life

We have been given the "breath of life" and that has given us so much more.  The breath of life has given us a body for working hard, loving, touching, experiencing... we have been given the opportunity to enjoy all of God's creation.  

I am sitting here looking out at the frozen lake and the blowing snow and still the sun in shining and the house feels warm.  I can feel it.  I can think and use words to express my thoughts and my heart is beating steadily in a body that is made of simply dust.

I was able this summer to stand with my husband's family at the bedside of his mother as she took her last breath.  It was a sacred and holy moment for all of us present there in that room.  When she developed a lung condition that made breathing difficult, each breath was truly the breath of life. It had gotten to be such a struggle for her.   At the moment of her passing, and the last exhalation of her earthly breath, we all felt an overwhelming sense of peace knowing that her "breath of life" was finished and she had returned to "dust".  She wasn't struggling any longer. She was at peace. 

Within two weeks of her passing, I was witness to the birth of my grandson.  I stood in another room, in another place and experienced another sacred and holy moment as the "breath of life" was breathed into a tiny little body. I was in awe as this small creature took in his first breath and cried out! A miracle had occurred! I truly felt blessed to be able to experience these moments of life...life coming, and life going.

During this time of Lent, I choose to focus on my smallness, on my life as just being small in the grandness of creation. I am something, but mostly just dust that has been given a wonderful gift from God, the "breath of life".  And someday, I will return to God again, as dust, without fear.

May you, like me, take time in the next 40 days, to reflect on your lives and your relationship to God and love and life. Just remember that dust is powerful stuff when God breathes into it!

"Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return..." 

I sit here and hold in my hand a stone heart...http://amongthesunflowers.blogspot.com/2009/04/it-came-to-me-along-time-ago.html