Ash Wednesday Reflection: Our Origins from Star Dust and Earth’s Dust

Lighting Candle of Our Lenten Journey (dish of soil for blessing)

Lent is a time not for giving up but for taking on, a time to be reconnected with a heart that has been made tender by truth.  Contrary to an asceticism that diminishes, Quantum Grace invites us to an aestheticism that enlarges the horizons of our journey into God. Lent is an ideal season to renew care for God’s Earth and take action that will embody Christ’s teachings to work on behalf of the most vulnerable.  Let us engage in the spiritual discipline of putting compassion into action, conscious of our oneness in the web of life, allowing ourselves to align with the Cosmic Christ in the evolving journey from stardust to Easter garden.

(Diarmuid O’Murchu quoted and adapted from  A Lenten Journey Guide for the Use of Communities and  

  Apostolates; prepared by the JPCCS Team of the Philippine-Thailand Province.)

Genesis 2:7

“The Lord God formed the human from the dust of the ground and breathed into its nostrils the breath of life, and the human became a living being.” The second Genesis creation story (Genesis 2:7) reminds us that we come from E/earth, the actual soil. The Latin word for soil is ‘humus,’ from which comes ‘humility.’  The Hebrew meaning of ‘Adam’ is ‘earth.’ Many of us grew up with dualistic thought patterns.  This made it easy to think of humans as totally separate from (and better than) the rest of creation.  (Source:  Spirituality of Soil: A Lenten Journey from Cosmic Dust to Easter Garden, by Terri MacKenzie, SHCJ, et. al.)

 

Matthew 5:5-6

           “Blessed are the humble, for they are close to the sacred Earth.

Blessed are those who hunger for Earth’s oneness, for they will be satisfied.”

(The Casa del Sol Blessings of Jesus – based on Matthew 5:3-9)

 

We Are Made of Stardust     science.org.au/curious/video/we-are-made-stardust

 

Reading

            “At this very moment, the Earth is above you, below you, all around you, and even inside you. The Earth is everywhere… (T)he water, the sea, the sky, and everything around us comes from the Earth.  Everything outside us and everything inside us come from the Earth.  We often forget that the planet we are living on has given us all the elements that make up our bodies.  The water in our flesh, our bones, and all the microscopic cells inside our bodies all come from the Earth and are part of the Earth.”  (Thich Nhat Hanh, Love Letter to the Earth, 8-9.)

Blessing the Dust:

“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 proclaiming what God  can do within the star 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.”

(adapted from Circle of Grace, by Jan Richardson)

 

Silent Meditation:  Look “inside” letting silence reveal something new within you.

                  Reflect on the idea that you are made of star dust and to star dust you shall return.

 What feelings and thoughts arise for you?  How might this shape your relationship with God’s

 creation?

 

Prayer for Blessing Hands:   Bless one another’s palms for this year’s Lenten journey

“Touch the Earth with Gentleness

Touch the Earth with Love

Touch Her with a Future by the Way You Live Today

God has given us the Power

to Create the World Anew if We Touch the Earth Together – Me and You.”

(Spirituality of Soil: A Lenten Journey from Cosmic Dust to Easter Garden)

 

Closing Prayer:   Up From Eden  –  Genesis 3

O Gracious God,

You have set us in this garden of life and created us for freedom.

We seek release from this self-imposed sentence

that reduces ‘freedom’ to endless consumer choices

and banishes us to the desert of anxiety.

We chase after the tawdry and transient,

while the simple practice of abundant life eludes us.

Captive to ego’s petulance, we focus on forbidden fruit,

flirting naively with desire’s seduction: just one more drink, just one furtive glance,

just one more hour at work, just one more deal,

until we lose possession of desire and desire possesses us.

Drive us deep, Most Holy One, into soul’s terrain,

there to reclaim the gift of true freedom that comes with gnosis,

a deep knowing of you, hidden in the heart of the cosmos.

May the allurement of this sacred yearning for union with you

lead us up from Eden on this evolving journey.  Amen

(Bruce Sanguin, If Darwin Prayed: Prayers for Evolutionary Mystics, p. 47)

 

With this song and picture what is evoked in your heart?