What God Can Do With Ashes

It's a big day at the hospital! I'll be imposing ashes for Ash Wednesday all day. If you desire ashes and cannot make it to chapel service at noon and four p.m., ask a nurse or clerk to text me your name and location, I’ll do my level best to get to you.

I also have a Special Blessing for Your Day if you do not observe Ash Wednesday:

May the Infinite bless you with humility because we are made of earth, and nobility because we are made of stars.

We have no special program for chapel service today, I’m simply imparting ashes and blessings. Here is a poem that seems especially perfect this year. Enjoy!

Blessing the Dust from Circle of Grace

by Jan Richardson

For Ash Wednesday:

"All those days you felt like dust,

like dirt, as if all you had to do was to turn your face

toward the wind and be scattered to the four corners

or swept away by the smallest breath

as insubstantial– did you not know

what the Holy One can do with dust?

This is the day we freely say we are scorched.

This is the hour we are marked

by what has made it through the burning.

This is the moment we ask for the blessing

that lives within the ancient ashes,

that makes its home inside the soil of this sacred earth.

So let us be marked not for sorrow.

And let us be marked not for shame.

Let us be marked not for false humility

or for thinking we are less than we are

but for claiming what God can do

within the dust, within the dirt,

within the stuff of which the world

is made and the stars that blaze

in our bones and the galaxies that spiral

inside the smudge we bear."

Have a blessed and meaningful day, my friends!