Dust and Breath: An Invitation to Lenten Spiritual Practices

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.“

We hear these sobering words each Ash Wednesday. It is sobering to hear them as a cross of ash is smudged on our foreheads. And it is sobering as a pastor to say them. They name the mortality we all share. They are even more poignant reminders of that reality when you must look into the eyes of someone struggling with a terminal disease and say, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

I recall the comfort I tried to render decades ago to a friend who had been diagnosed with AIDS. He quipped in reply, “We’re all dying--some of us just more quickly than others.”

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Dust and breath. They are the stuff of our lives. God took the dust of the earth and breathed into it to give us life. Both are gifts: the dust and the breath of God. We are human, made from humus, the earth. And our deep connection to it is something that we’ve neglected and abused. And we are paying the price for that.

According to writer Wendell Berry, “Most of our modern troubles come from misunderstanding and misevaluation of this dust.” (Wendell Berry, Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community) We have misevaluated the dust by failing to appreciate our deep connection to the wonderful cosmos God has created.

But we have also misevaluated the importance of dust relative to the breath of God.

Some of us are too preoccupied with dust—with our outward appearance, how we look, what we wear, the houses we live in, the things we acquire. It is all dust. But breath, the breath of God, animates. And much of the world is starved for oxygen, gasping for the breath that gives true life. Maybe we’re gasping ourselves. Breathing in and out—from the Spirit and Breath of God. It is the only way we’ll survive.

So the invitation this Lent is to adopt a regular rhythm of breathing. Inhaling and exhaling. Inhaling: making time for meditation or whatever allows you to breathe in the Spirit of God. Exhaling: some practice that lets you share with others the breath of God. Breathe goodness, breathe love on them.

Dust and breath. Both are gifts. We need to remember that we shall return to mere dust. But the breath of God is the source of life, life now and life eternally. So breathe, breathe, breathe.