Episode 14 of the Make Saints podcast: “Dust”
Many Christians gather on a Wednesday before spring begins to have someone rub ashes on their head and tell them: Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
Yeah, it is kind of weird.
This practice, the centerpiece of a day we (appropriately) call Ash Wednesday, is a most strange invitation: to remember something we generally avoid thinking about.
And this invitation comes as we are starting on a journey through a season we call Lent. Lent is probably most famous for being the time Catholics start eating a ton of fried fish. People like me, who grew up doing Lent, have more associations with it. Often going to programs or potlucks or eating less candy.
For most Christians, however, it is simply the time before Easter.
But that’s not what catches my attention this year.
I want to talk about dust.
That phrase, Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return, is so jarring.
Dust.
When we put so much of our attention in the muscles which stretch and ache, the blood that pumps and races, and the skin and the beauty, there is probably one word we don’t associate with our bodies: dust.
Dust is the language of unkempt rooms and computers that we never clean. Or things we don’t use.
But we use our bodies, they don’t collect dust.
But we are not the object that dust collects on. We aren’t even being compared to dust.
We are dust.
And we’ll return to it.
The Counter
Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
We receive these words as a counter to how we see ourselves. It’s a reminder of who we really are. You aren’t all that: you’re dust.
As humans, we see ourselves as the highest order of creation, the top of the food chain.
We even refer to humans and then the animals. As if we aren’t.
We claim that we are fundamentally Superior to everything else in the cosmos. So we are not just the top of the food chain: we think we are fundamentally different from everything else. We are of another source. Not just higher, different. Other.
In a way, we see humanity as something closer to an alien race. As if we are not of this planet. That we aren’t part of creation. We aren’t real!
In other words, we act as if all of creation has a certain order to it—a certain character to it—and humans are separate and different. There is everything and then there is us.
That’s how we are when we’re hit by the invitation of ashes.
Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
Remember.
So the invitation to remember that we are dust is an invitation to remember who we are. And to remember our place. You are dust. You will return to the dust.
And it is something better. It is an invitation to reject what we tell each other about the supremacy of humanity.
Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
This is a battle with the ego.
Who we think we are. And who we think we’re supposed to be.
Our egos are not so much a problem as they are more like out of control or out of proportion.
So when we see ourselves as outside creation or something other than an animal, we are removing ourselves from our place.
But this brings up another temptation: to maintain that condescension of creation and reducing the human to the animal without adjusting our view to the true beauty of creation itself. We’re often inclined to reduce our view of humanity to only our urges, desires, pheromones, and sensations.
Reducing ourselves to our biology. Like taking a hard-line in the debate between nature vs. nurture: if it can’t be all nurture it must be all nature…rather than the more obvious other option: both.
Ashes are a corrective.
They aren’t the answer. The end. The proof.
They counter the extreme character of our belief: that we aren’t part of creation. That we are superheroes and everything else is powerless, beneath us.Instead, we hear that we are part of a creation that is incredible.
We are dust. And everything is dust. And one day, we’ll be only dust. Which means, right now, we are beautiful and real and alive. And in this incredible, astounding, and ever-expanding creation that is sooo much bigger than our pathetic egos and minuscule imaginations.