Ash Wednesday Reflection
February 26, 2020
"We are stardust, we are golden” - Joni Mitchell
“By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Genesis 3:19
The observance of Ash Wednesday may begin the season of Lent, but it does so by compelling us to confront the end. We remember that we are dust, that we are ashes, that we will die. Ash Wednesday forces us to stare death in the face. There’s no looking away, no momentary glances, no denial. The dust rubbed onto our foreheads ensures that we feel and see what will be the remnant of our lifeless bodies.
By acknowledging the inevitable we embrace our mortal lives here and now. The Ash Wednesday paradox of beginnings and endings offers us a spiritual insight: that when we acknowledge the reality of our own death, we are freed to live life fully.
The doom and gloom of Ash Wednesday may hit hard. Lent, however, is forty days of exploring how to live, how to live more deeply, more consciously, more intentionally, more compassionately. So what is our ending is really our beginning––the beginning of a more authentic life that encompasses the reality of suffering and death transformed into healing and resurrection.
Part of the authentic life is becoming more aware of how the contents of our bodies connects us to all that exists, even to distant stars. We are literally stardust. Karel Schrijver, an astrophysicist and senior fellow at the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory, and Iris Schrijver, professor of pathology at Stanford University, are married to one another and co-authors of Living with the Stars. In a National Geographic interview, Iris explains how folk singer Joni Mitchell was right:
Everything we are and everything in the universe and on Earth originated from stardust, and it continually floats through us even today. It directly connects us to the universe, rebuilding our bodies over and again over our lifetimes. That was one of the biggest surprises for us in this book. We really didn't realize how impermanent we are, and that our bodies are made of remnants of stars and massive explosions in the galaxies. All the material in our bodies originates with that residual stardust, and it finds its way into plants, and from there into the nutrients that we need for everything we do—think, move, grow.
Poem
Excerpts from “Little Gidding” by T.S. Eliot
Ash on an old man's sleeve
Is all the ash the burnt roses leave.
Dust in the air suspended
Marks the place where a story ended.
Dust inbreathed was a house-
The walls, the wainscot and the mouse,
The death of hope and despair,
This is the death of air…
What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from…
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always--
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
Practice
How might you remember that you are dust today? Touch soil? Hold it in your hand? Smell it? How might understanding that we are stardust compel us to live more fully in and for the world?
Prayer
Mark us with ashes and dust, O God, that the death we will die transforms us into the life that you would have us live. For you are the breath we breathe, the beat of our heart, the love with which we love. You are the one who draws us more deeply into life. On this day. Amen.