A Devotion for Ash Wednesday: Blessing the Dust

Today is Ash Wednesday, a day of reflection and penitence that begins our journey toward the cross. Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of the season of Lent, the 40 days (not counting Sundays) before Easter used for personal reflection and spiritual growth.

We begin this holy season by remembering our need for repentance, and for the mercy and forgiveness proclaimed in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In doing so, we are marked with the sign of ashes, an ancient sign, pointing to the frailty and uncertainty of human life, and marking us as broken people in need of God’s redemption.

Jan Richardson has long been one of my favorite poets and artists. Her poem “Blessing the Dust” is from 2013 and has been one that I return to year after year on Ash Wednesday.

Blessing the Dust

For Ash Wednesday

by Jan Richardson

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.

This is a profound day for us in disaster recovery – we are people used to dust, familiar with the dirt and grime that surrounds us and the people we serve. As we walk alongside people in the remains of once was, we are reminded of the preciousness of life, the frailty of bodies and buildings, and our own brokenness; and yet we find comfort, for as Jan Richardson writes,

“did you not know
what the Holy One
can do with dust?”

As we are marked with ashes today, we bear the reminder and reality that from ashes, both death and life spring abundant. In the dirt, in the dust that settles and rises, there is a promise – God’s promise that loss and death are not the final words. In the dust there is a whisper; we have come from ashes – to ashes we will return. Today, and many days, it may not sound like good news. But what can God do within these ashes? Lean into the dust, and be blessed.


Grace and Peace,

Chaplain Amy