40 Days of Lent: day one, lent for my weariness

Last night we spread the ashes in a cross over our foreheads, all of us walking a line to the front of the church to tell each other, “You are dust, from beginning to end.”

And I felt it, felt like dust.

We came from a long day, a week that lasted and lasted until we were bone dry.

I felt frail, just like dust, that everyday kind of weary that just comes because of what we’re made of.

I felt like I could be blown and sifted into the wind without a trace of anything left behind me.

So I hope that Lent speaks our stories to us, reminds us to look on and dream ahead and never stop believing that life can come from death.

But what else does Lent do in us and for us?

These kinds of holidays are meant to teach us something, start something new, dig something out, grow us out of our former selves and into someone we’re supposed to be.

But we’ve got to ask questions before we get to the answers, and that’s the tough part.

So what is Lent to you, and what will you spend the next 40 days asking of yourself, of your life, of your own dust-likeness?

May we find that as we dig into our own stories, we find some answers, and a new face of our very identity.

Let’s meet here for the next 40 (or so) days up until Easter, when a new kind of celebrating takes place.

Let’s ask these questions together, remember who we are as a community of people.

We’re gathering here to fill in our own blanks, to name our own story, to admit, again, that we are dust.

It is our humanity bound to the gates of heaven, held in the person of Jesus, who walked the path of Lent from beginning to end.

Join me.

“Blessed are we when we take on the heartbeat of God.” –Roger Paynter