Hello, I love you, we're all going to die: Part 2

Another poem for (this year's) February 14th

Photo by Austin Ban on Unsplash

Again, a shout-out to the rector of my church, who inspired the title of this post in his announcement that, this year, Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday fall on the same date. Last week’s poem reflected on how I feel about one of those observances. Here’s a poem about the one that’s closer to my dusty heart.

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ASH WEDNESDAY


Almighty and Everlasting God, you hate nothing you have made….
Remember, mortal, that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
             -- From the Ash Wednesday liturgy, Book of Common Prayer


Dust of fire now spent, of green wood charred,
it smears my forehead with myself.
Remember you are dust. Remember wishes,
blazing in their moment, then blown out 
like candles; remember friendship bright as steel, 
now tarnished into habit. Vows erode, 
hope sifts away, in tiny ways,
day by day, grain by grain. To dust
you shall return. Return to where, God,  
in your restless world? You hate nothing 
you have made; then will I one day turn and see 
atoms of my old faiths and passions dancing 
like dust-motes in the heavens to declare
your glory, fused into stones that cry out your
hosannas when men are silent? All the songs
your children sing or never sang, the love we gave 
or were afraid to give — dust now on the breath 
of your Spirit and singing still, 
loving still. The heavens, God, 
declare your glory, the stones cry out:
you hate nothing you have made,
and we are dust, returning to dust,
and the dust is singing.

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[You can listen to an audio version of this poem using the little widget above the photograph.]

I wrote this poem in (goodness) 2002, and commented on it indirectly in an essay written for my church community in 2009. Here’s the heart of what I wrote then:

It was early evening during the season when light begins to linger, and the last glow of a spring sunset was falling gently through the stained-glass windows in the nave’s western wall. From where I was standing, a little behind the altar, I could look over the shoulders of my fellow worshippers and see a marvelous silent conversation going on out in God’s house between embracing shadows and gracious golden air. And in the nearest of the low, broad beams of light that fell across the altar I could see a thin cloud of tiny specks that rose and fell in spirals: motes of dust, stirred up by our motions, joining us at the altar to praise God and dance in the light.

Remember you are dust, I thought — and for the first time, when those words crossed my mind, I smiled. How bad was it, really, to be tiny and frail and mortal on the skin of the universe? … Look at the persistence of these dust-motes, dancing before the altar of God. Look at all of what God keeps raising up to praise the light; and yes, it falls away, and then look, God raises it up again, dancing. God loves the dust, each mote alone and all of them together. To God, the dust is not nothingness; to God, it’s a partner in the dance.

In the faith tradition that holds me, Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent, and Lent is — among other things — a season to remember that death is real, and grievous, and present in our lives in small and large ways every day … and to consider the notion that death is not the end of the story, any story. I may glance back at that notion a time or two in this space, over the next few weeks. Don’t think of it as me tugging at your sleeve; think of it as the dust, humming to itself, happy to have you listen.