ignoring dust

"Remember you are dust- to dust you will return."

After a long day of ambivalently ignoring the presence of Ash Wednesday, I read these words on a friend's blog tonight. Until this evening, I have heard and experienced these words primarily as condecendion that evokes shame and self-contempt - some form of misguided spiritual masochism that understands my body and being as completely worthless.

Consciously or not, it is hard for me to believe that God's intent of such words in scripture is not condemnation and shaming the core of my being. I want to believe, and at my most hopeful moments, do believe that God enjoys me and sees immense beauty in me (and all of humanity) despite the brokenness and violence that I have been both victim to and perpetrator of. It is hard to believe that I could be defined primarily by my beauty as a bearer of God's image and not by my sin and brokenness. But I always seemed to hear "you are dust" as "you are sin/worthless/filth." Hence my desire to ignore Ash Wednesday. :)

"Remember you are dust - to dust you will return."

Tonight, when I read these words on my friend's blog, I suddenly experienced these words in a new way. The word "grounded" immediately came to mind, and I thought, "Maybe 'you are dust' isn't a statement about our worth but a statement about our Source - the promise that we will one day be grounded in God as we were originally intended to be."

And then I remembered the meditation that I love so much & have posted here before by Meister Eckhart...

When I dwelt in the ground,
in the bottom, in the stream, and
in the source of the Godhead,

No one asked me where I was going or
what I was doing.

Back in the womb from which I came,
I had no God
and merely was myself.

And when I return
to God and to the core, the soil, the ground,
the stream and the source of the Godhead,
No one asks me where I am coming from
or where I have been.

For no one misses me
in the place
where God ceases to become.