You are dust, and to dust you shall return

Definitely not a Valentine’s Day greeting
A reflection for Ash Wednesday, Feb 14, 2024

They come in all shapes, colours, and sizes. They come as rolling cannisters drawn by a flexible tentacle, or as upright sticks with handles and a bag; they come as horizontal cylinders to be dragged across the floor. They are installed protruding from a wall in a spectacular house, or in portable forms for use in vehicles. No, I do not refer to deep-sea creatures described in ancient prophetic books. I refer to vacuum cleaners, many proudly displayed at Penticton’s Action Vacuums on Main Street. (Product placement duly admitted.)

In preparing my comments for Ash Wednesday this year, I thought I had my theme clearly imagined and my message shaped. But then, as I left Action Vacuums following a repair visit couple of days ago, I thought to myself, ya, Ash Wednesday is all about dust; and these machines are also about dust, it’s collection and disposal.

Sure, vacuum cleaners collect more than dust alone. Kitchen scraps, flour on the floor, the wastes and spoils of knitting, shredded paper, pieces of shattered dog bone, and any number of unwanted microbial particles are collected in a vacuum cleaner bag and slated for disposal. There is additionally the inevitable collection of dust that requires processing.

Someone once told me that dust is the accumulation of skin cells—yikes, I am walking on Uncle Harry—I can’t verify this, but the notion could be true. Uncle Harry, life, living space, and Ash Wednesday all focus on dust. As the good book says, “you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” We have other biological understandings of how life comes to be and how in time it ceases, of how we will all decompose when time collects us all for, hmm, processing. Holy Scripture, loves (?) the image of dust.

You are dust, and to dust you shall return.

We come, and return, to the earth. As earth is the one constant in our lives, prior, during, and following each of these ordinary and extra-ordinary states, this makes good sense. Earth makes life possible; its soil furnishes the resources of life itself; we lose life when we are separated from the earth; earth becomes dust when nourishing elements have been removed from the soil. Dust is lifeless soil, when there is literally nothing to water. Ask any permaculture gardener, any farmer who knows that the real question to ask is not what pesticide to use, but what community of nature is required for the soil, the land, the grown food, and the human workers all to prosper.

You are dust, and to dust you shall return.

Ash Wednesday, the sense of mortality, the appreciation of our origins as humanity-in-community with all creation, is the great leveler of the church calendar. Regardless of all ambition, ability, opportunity, wisdom, creativity, success or failure, “you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Churches will not be full today as such undemocratic understandings and experiences of life will never be popular. It is humiliating to think of such things in such ways. Yet this is also the message of Ash Wednesday. To live the Christian life, meaningfully, is to value and pursue humility. For such a journey we need a guide, a model, an inspiration. Paul reminds the Philippians:

In your relationships with one another,
have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
    did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
    by taking the very nature[b] of a servant,
    being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
    he humbled himself
    by becoming obedient to death—
        even death on a cross! (2:5-8)

Jesus points us downward, to the ground, to the earth, the place of our emergence, and the place of our return. As the canticle KONTAKION* reminds us within the funeral rite: “Even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.”

Blessings to all this Lenten Season.

*Please listen to the recording directed by the composer Rupert Lang with the choir of Christ Church Cathedral, Vancouver. You’ll be glad you did.