02.14.2024 | Ash Wednesday

"Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return."  
It is a bit chilly on the sunny morning in the Carondelet Garden.  The sun will shine all day and we should see the mid 60s by this afternoon.  An absolutely perfect weather day.  Happy Valentine's Day as well!

Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent for many Christians. For more than fifteen hundred years, Christians have used these words to mark the day as they dip their fingers into ash, and smudge bowed foreheads with the sign of the cross. The words allude to when God admonished Adam and Eve as they left paradise in the Book of Genesis.

My prayer for us today comes from a poem by Jan Richardson called “Ash Wednesday: Blessing the Dust.”
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.
Amen.