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.