Beyond the Dust

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