Guess I really ought to put something in here once in a while. I wrote this today.
February 6, 2008. Ash Wednesday. Lent began today. I drove up the hill through the cold rain to the solemn, yet joy-filled Mass of the day, and emerged with a dirty face, marked with ashes and the words, "Remember, O Man, that dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return."
Beyond the Dust
Dust,
ashes,
mortality,
an ending deserved,
an outcome worked for,
by denial of life,
by rejection of Him,
who is Life,
who makes life,
who breathes Life into life,
and loves whom He has made,
and grieves at the death
I have chosen.
Dust and ashes have I chosen,
Love and peace I have rejected.
From the dust my life was formed,
and to the dust I shall return it,
for I have spurned the One who made me,
daily have His loving will denied,
and by my choices choose
the sin,
the dust,
the ashes,
and the dread mortality,
and by my choices hope has faded from me,
and I die
and shall not live,
unless ...
unless ...
unless I hear the loving call,
of Him who came into creation,
and, ruling in a reign of love,
a reign begun in pains upon a torture tree,
a reign that passed into the realms of death,
and dying broke those fearsome gates,
rose,
and calls,
and summons me to live,
and leads me past those grey dim ashes
into everlasting life.
--------------------ed pacht
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3 comments:
Tonight, a friend approached my door with her cell phone pressed hard to ear, and her heart's cry in her eyes. The news---her mother has only hours to live, and her father, only a few days. After hours of listening and praying, she left knowing that Elohim lays behind and before her believing parents---He is "beyond the dust." Your poem has refilled my cup, after an evening of pouring out to a thirty dusty sister. Thank you.
Hopie,
Thank you for sharing that. I just got out of bed (almost 4am)to deal with a leaking ceiling. Feeling weak and overwhelmed by my petty problems as I was, it meant a great deal to be reminded how petty my problems really are, and to be told that my puur words actually ministered to someone. God bless you, and may He watch over your friend and her parents. He is good!
I've loved what I've read of your work.
In Him
ed
Ed, this is a deep stream. Being Orthodox, I didn't observe Ash Wednesday. Instead we have Forgiveness Sunday where we ask forgiveness of one another and hug and kiss after we forgive. Lent begins the following day on "Clean Monday." I did indeed feel clean and packed and ready for the Lenten journey to Pascha. I admit though that Ash Wednesday was always very meaningful to me and I was a bit envious of those I saw during the day with ashes on their foreheads.
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