February 22, Ash Wednesday

 Word for the day:  ashes: the remains of something destroyed.   But for me, ashes are a sign of new life.  One needs only study the changes to Mt. St. Helen’s following its eruption! Or how the burning of the earth can revitalize the soil and perhaps the soul.  

The dirt which produces the dust and the nourishment to many at the farm in Homedale!  Beautiful Owyhees!

Here’s a lovely Ash Wednesday poem  y Jan Richardson:

Blessing the Dust
For Ash Wednesday

All those days
you felt like dust,
like dirt,
as if all you had to do
was turn your face
toward the wind
and be scattered
to the four corners

or swept away
by the smallest breath
as insubstantial—

did you not know
what the Holy One
can do with 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.

This is the moment
we ask for the blessing
that lives within
the ancient ashes,
that makes its home
inside the soil of
this sacred earth.

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 for 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.

Attended st Al’s mass today with grandson Julian and extended family.  The children’s choir sang lovely songs including these words: 

Drawn to you, Lord…to the beauty of your presence in this place.                              Here for you, Lord, as the gifts we bring become a feast of grace!    

May we all live in the beauty of our Lord!

Jeez Louise!