A gentle hand applied the consumed palm

Leaves to my skin last eve. No oil here,

Just coarse and grainy dust, a deep

Gray stain upon my brow. “Remember you

are dust, and that to dust you will return.”

The dust of Earth, as Genesis infers,

Is dust of all creation: Hydrogen

Which makes two-thirds of all the water in

My cells is even now ignited in

A conflagration glorious, that glows

Serenely in each star and bathes this globe

With energy that is the root of life.

Dust, yes, but dust of majesty! And when

I lay this body down at last, its dust

Can then return to Earth, stems spring from it

And reach unto the Sun: the living dust

Arising to the splendid, blazing dust

Of fire. Still, the coarse and grimy cross

Emblazoned on my countenance evokes

As well the harsh realities of life,

The grit of illness, pain, and death,

The grating sense of sorrow, injury’s

Affliction, and the misery of sin.

Gray grains of glory and gray grains of grief

Creation manifest in this crude cross

Of grit.

So it begins…

Another Lent has come

With its demands of piety, privation,

Discipline, devotion,

Confession, contemplation,

Absolution, abstinence, 

And ashes.

Awake before the spinning world

Turns my face to the cheery sun

You summon me from rest

To this, a consecrated concentration

That rests, in its own way,

My whirling mind.

“Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,” 

You said so long ago,

That those who heard 

(And those who heard from them),

That even I

Might lay aside tomorrow’s cares and ills

To live entirely in today.

Such a facile phrase!

Yet has there ever been

A task more trying?

So here before dawn’s rosy fingers

Stretch across the hills

I tune my thoughts,

Settle my spirit.

Let the disquiet and distractions

Kindle with the leaves of last year’s palms

And fill this solemn season

With ashes of anxiety

All aglow with grace.