March 5, 2025
A Note from Pastor Jon and Poet Jan Richardson
Dear Friends,
Blessing the Dust — A Blessing 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.
—Jan Richardson from Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons (Wanton Gospeller Press, 2015).
© Jan Richardson. janrichardson.com.
We are not marked for sorrow and shame or false humility but for the realization of what the Creator can do with dust. Makes me rethink — “Made a little lower than the angels,” as Psalm 8:5 says. As I rethink, I remember who God is, who we are, and how even though we are from dust and to dust we shall return, we are worthy and loved.
Ash Wednesday
While Ash Wednesday (today, March 5) is also a reminder of our mortality, we can do a pretty good job of convincing ourselves that we’ll live forever, and driving out the thought in our day-to-day lives that our time here is limited and that none of us is making it out of here alive.
There is a Latin expression, Momento Mori — “remember that you will die” — that while haunting is also helpful. When we think daily on our own mortality we keep constantly before us the gift and preciousness of this life, of our lives, and the lives of all creation. As the writer of Ecclesiastes reminds us, “It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, for death is the destiny of everyone; the living should take this to heart” (Ecclesiastes 7:2).
Hopefully today and in this season we can all remember what’s truly important.
Pastor Jon
The Rev. Jon Osmundson
Associate Pastor
