Ashes

Because
Dirt is beautiful
nurturing, rich, Smelling of life

Because God took dust
Formed humanity
and breathed, pneuma, life into it

Ashes

Because, God walks with us
from the mountaintops
to the sand on the beaches

God kneels with us in dirt, helping to ease the load
and when we look at our hands and feet, worried about how dirty we are
God sits with us in the grime

And then God kneels, and washes between our toes
counting the grains of sand, the remnants of our work and days
reminding us of the Abrahamic promise

Ashes, because we are mortal
And nothing is forever, and it is good to remember
Our time is limited

But enough

Created from dust–to dust we will return
Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust,
Amen

Feel free to use/adapt/share with credit to Pastor Katy Stenta “KatyandtheWord”

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Author: katyandtheword

Pastor Katy has enjoyed ministry at New Covenant since 2010, where the church has solidified its community focus. She now works at Capital CFO plus as the Non Profit Director. All opinions expressed on this blog are her own and do not reflect those of Capital CFO plus. Prior to that she studied both Theology and Christian Formation at Princeton Theological Seminary. She also served as an Assistant Chaplain at Trenton Psychiatric Hospital and as the Christian Educational Coordinator at Bethany Presbyterian at Bloomfield, NJ. She is an writer and is published in Enfleshed, Sermonsuite, Presbyterian's today and Outlook. She writes prayers, liturgy, poems and public theology and is pursuing her doctorate in ministry in Creative Write and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. She enjoys working within and connecting to the community, is known to laugh a lot during service, and tells as many stories as possible. Pastor Katy loves reading Science Fiction and Fantasy, theater, arts and crafts, music, playing with children and sunshine, and continues to try to be as (w)holistically Christian as possible. "Publisher after publisher turned down A Wrinkle in Time," L'Engle wrote, "because it deals overtly with the problem of evil, and it was too difficult for children, and was it a children's or an adult's book, anyhow?" The next year it won the prestigious John Newbery Medal. Tolkien states in the foreword to The Lord of the Rings that he disliked allegories and that the story was not one.[66] Instead he preferred what he termed "applicability", the freedom of the reader to interpret the work in the light of his or her own life and times.