Dirt, Mud, Dust

“This is the day we freely say

We are scorched.

This is the hour we are marked

By what has made it through the burning.

…so let us be marked not for sorrow.

And let us be marked not for shame.

Let us be marked not for false humility or thinking we are less than

we are but for claiming what God can do

within the dust, within the dirt, within the stuff of which the world is made

and the stars that blaze in our bones and the galaxies that spiral inside the smudge we bear.”

Jan Richardson

            I like to get my hands dirty.  I like to move them in and out of the cold, wet soil of spring, the warm and often dusty dirt of summer and then finally in the fall the rich brown compost cluttered with the debris of harvest.  I wear gloves most times but only so others won’t judge my dirty nails.  I like everything about dirt. 

            God loved dirt, God loved getting stained from the soil of creation and God never gets tired of playing in the mud.  God’s breath is so far reaching that the dusts of Africa rest on my lashes as I squint my eyes at the one sun we share.

            Lent is a time to remember we come from the same dust and to that same dust we shall return. In the end the bed of my neighbor will look very much like mine—dirty.

 So how do we live in between the here and now?  How do we live in between the horrors of school shootings, of espionage and of our own need to separate ourselves from each other?  How do we live in between the breath of God, the Ruah, and our eventual rest in God? 

Our Wednesday evening prayers have been focused on Three Simple Rules: A Weslyan Way of Living by Rueben Job.  In 2007 the author wrote: “The path we are on has become so well worn that only a radical change can jar us out of the deep ruts of our dilemma.” 

John Wesley believed there was a way out of the rut with three simple rules:

Do No Harm

Do Good

Stay in Love with God

John Wesley knew there would always be times like these—times when we would forget our beginnings and ends come from a shared dust. 

1 John 4:11 “Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”