A DNA connection--the great dust rising of God.

We are walking dust

       On Wednesday I spent about 10 hours watching candles grow dim and my finger turn black with dust.  Ash Wednesday is a powerful day for me as I wipe ashes along smooth foreheads, foreheads lined with the wrinkles of life and foreheads that are covered by wisps of hair.  I am always amazed by the intimacy of reciting these words as I make the shape of the cross; “From dust you were born and to dust you shall return.” Gen. 3:19

            I am not sure if it is speaking the truth of our humanity that makes me feel so close to tears or it is the humanity of Christ.  This is our beginning act of Lent, traditionally a time to prepare for baptism into the body of Christ.

            I imagine God breathing life into the dust; my life into dust!  I also imagine this dust coming from more than the gardens and dirt roads of Holliston Mass.  I like to think of my dust coming from the places of the ancestors I know; from Sweden and England, as well as the ancestors I don’t know.  What if my dust was from the Continents of Asia and Africa?  What if my dust included Armenian dust, dust I absorbed from a couple I adored who fed me beregs, homemade rice pilaf and wisdom? 

            What if all of us were dust gathered from a cyclone like event?  What if the dust of the ocean sands and salt of the seas and the planets in the sky were swirling in us, and shedding off of us?  (Of course this may be TMI; we really do leave our own dust behind.)

            People are spending a lot of money to have their DNA tested to connect them to their past.  What is this sudden interest and need?  As the world becomes smaller through technology, it may be that we too have insight to the “others” we are connected to, the great dust rising of God.

            From dust we were born and to dust we shall return.  These are the hard words, the truth of returning to dust.  But where will my dust go?  Will bits of my smile land with others that look like me in Sweden? Will bits of my hope land on a child in Syria, a child that looks nothing like me but is just like me in breath? Will my dusty remains be part of new life? 

            Christ went into the desert preparing for what was ahead, preparing for the end of his humanity and the beginning of an eternal life.  This is lent, a time of preparation for something new, a time to see ourselves as the very breath of God.

“Breathe on me, Breath of God,
fill me with life anew,
that I may love what thou dost love,
and do what thou wouldst do.” 

UMH 420