Dust You Are

reflections on lent & ash wednesday

Lent is my favorite liturgical season, Ash Wednesday being my favorite holiday. I drape our family altar with purple cloth and light candles under the icons of John the Baptist and the Virgin Mary.

John the Baptist is traditionally depicted with his head on a platter. I smile to him. I smile because I know that someday I, too, will be transfigured, my righteous wings billowing behind me, the symbol of my mortality and willingness to suffer offered up on a platter like a Thanksgiving fowl.

This iconic depiction of St. John the Baptist makes me want to shout like a Pentecostal. I’m reminded of the charismatic southern preacher, Dwight Thompson, who during sermons regularly hollered,
“HA HA, DEVIL!” I smile to Dwight Thompson, too.

On Ash Wednesday, we went to the first mass of the day, the mass for our local Catholic school. The sanctuary is full of children. When I receive the ashes on my forehead, the lady placing them with the sign of the cross smiles into my eyes. She smiles and says, “Dust you are, and to dust you shall return.”

I love that part. I love it. It’s so true. It’s so real. It’s what’s been bothering me for years—what’s bothering me right now.

Dust you are, and to dust you shall return.

The certainty of mortality. The short life, even if it’s lived long.
Why does it take so long to return to dust?
Why does life seem wastefully short?
Why must we suffer and struggle in this life?

exhausted

I’m tired all the time.

I sleep six hours a night or less, because my husband snores and thrashes in his sleep. The thrashing seemed to come upon him suddenly. It’s disconcerting. He runs in his sleep, like our dogs do in their dreams. I don’t know what to make of it, but his snores and thrashes keep me awake. I feel like a nursing mother again, awake every few hours every night.¹

Add to this exhaustion the concerns for elderly parents. One’s attitudes change as parents age. My brother and I agree, “We won’t tell them thus-and-so, because they’re old and deserve their peace.” We don’t confide our worries, concerns or heartaches over our kids or lives to the grandparents any more; we confide in one another. This is a good thing, but it’s also strange. Our parents are more like beloved, octogenarian children to us. We care take them—to which assertion, I am sure, they would object. At the same time, of course, we are still caretaking our actual children.

Our teenagers are nearly adults, but not quite. They’re full of energy and new selves, so they’re high maintenance. When they learn to drive, we learn to drive with them too—all over again. It’s exhausting and nerve-wracking.

For many years after my daughter died, I felt a lot of pain, but it was a different sort of emotional pain than the pain I’m experiencing now. My firstborn told me that a lot of energy has gone out of me over the past decade and perhaps not enough has gone back in. I think she’s right, yet I don’t know how to get the energy back in.

This is why I love Ash Wednesday: I’m ashes; to ashes I will return. When I think about my daughter’s remains, which are ashes, I think about how they are not her. She still seems very much alive to me, in spite of the ashes in that pretty little urn in my living room.

I suffer as we all do under the curse of toil, labor, always longing for rest. St. Symeon the New Theologian, whose work we’ve been reading in our book group, said that we err when we don’t recall to mind always that we are under a sentence of hard work, that life is about work and toil and difficulty, so we long for repose in our souls.

All year I’ve said “I need a vacation.” What I mean by that, I’ve realized (thank you, St. Symeon) is repose. I want rest in this world. I know this is not heaven; it’s not here. But I’ve been confused, thinking I can find rest in a particular place at a particular time—when this event happens, when that event happens, when I can sleep eight hours, when my college kids move out, when I clean this up, when that is remodeled, when the bill is paid, when that person finally does the right thing, and when I do such-a-thing.

the kingdom is within you

True to my earthy, determined inner Capricorn goat, I lower my head and butt circumstances and people out of my way, making room for repose, only to realize it’s not where I thought it was. The remodeling, moving, and changing that need to be done are here, inside me.

“The kingdom of God is within you”—how I resist this truth. This truth makes me 100 percent responsible and accountable, through attitude and thought alone—conditions others cannot dictate or control—for my own repose and peace. Betrayers will appear in my own body, through a family member, in a friend—but I’m in control of myself, my attitudes and reactions. Until and unless my mental faculties degenerate, I’m responsible.

No wonder I’m so exhausted. Dust I am, and to dust I shall return; yet the kingdom of God is within. There’s a rich comfort in that.

notes

1. APR 2024. Three years later we would learn that my husband had Parkinson’s Disease. We spent years feeling exhausted as he ran in his sleep and woke early to provide for our large family, while I did likewise. I look back and feel so sad for his suffering, and angry about the mis-diagnoses his physicians insisted were correct, all while his rare form of PD ate away at his person. ↩︎