Ash Weds: Life is Messy

Because
We are Here
In
This World
Right Now

Even
Maybe Especially when
It feels like
Everything is on fire

Deep breath in
Deep breath out

I am here
I am present

My body is worth
being present for

God wants me
to be present

So God bless this Mess
Ashes I began
Ashes I’ll return

Life is messy
Dirty
Full of ashes
fire
renewals

Grappling with Mortality
Tis hard

Grappling with reality
is Hard

But
it’s ok
to be
fully human
to cry

To sit
in the dirt
sometimes
and wonder
will anything grow?

God sits
with us too


Rub a little dirt in it
maybe
the reality
the visceral mundanity
of life

We are
only
blessedly
beautiful
Ashes
and to
Ashes
We will Return

Life is Messy
Amen

Feel free to share/adapt/use 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.

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