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As we mark Ash Wednesday and begin the season of Lent, Justin Fung talks about the difficulty of the deserts we find ourselves in — the places of “This is not what I thought life would look like” — and the opportunities that lie there too. [2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10]

Resources

Abraham Heschel, “Dust and Image”, from I Asked for Wonder:

Man … is a duality

of mysterious grandeur and pompous aridity,

a vision of God and a mountain of dust.

It is because of his being dust

that his iniquities may be forgiven,

and it is because of his being an image

that his righteousness is expected.

Fr. Ron Rolheiser, “Entering Lent”:

“[In fasting] Lent invites us to stop eating whatever protects us from having to face the desert that is inside of us. It invites us to feel our smallness, to feel our vulnerability, to feel our fears, and to open ourselves up to the chaos of the desert so that we can finally give the angels a chance to feed us. That’s the Christian ideal of Lent, to face one’s chaos. … The need for Lent is experienced everywhere: Without sublimation we can never attain what is sublime. To truly enter a feast there must first be a fast. To come properly to Easter there must first be a time of desert, ashes, heaviness, and tears.”

Richard Foster, Dallas Willard, Walter Brueggemann, and Eugene Peterson, The Life with God Bible:

“Our wildernesses and deserts are not our endings. It is the Spirit of God who leads us about in them. They are our opportunities.”

Jan Richardson, “Blessing the Dust”:

All those days

you felt like dust,

like dirt,

as if all you had to do

was 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