The Ashes

 A Mystagogia, 2010 

The most terrifying words ever spoken are these: Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return. You are going to die. Perhaps not tomorrow, perhaps not next year, but as sure as you were born, so too will you die. We all enter the wasteland, the place where death shows us fear in a handful of dust. 

And the astonishing thing is that we take that handful of dust, mix it with oil, and mark upon our foreheads the symbol of an appalling murder. Like the woman who anointed Christ in Bethany, we are preparing ourselves for our own burial. We are walking with eyes open to Golgotha, the place of skulls, to be crucified. 

We return from the dark place in the ground from which we sprang. God crafted the human from the mire and the muck of the earth, fingers deep in soil, shaping it like a clay putty doll. This manikin the Creator called ha-Adam—not a name, but a moniker meaning creature of the dust, mudman, dirtclod, ash heap. 

The Lord of the Universe deigned to press her lips into the dirt. Like a rescuer performing CPR, God blew into the mudman. Humanity came into being not with the touch of fingertips, as Michelangelo would have it, but with a kiss. The human was a clay golem animated not by some kabalistic magick, but by the very breath of God. 

What is ha-Adam, Lord, that you are mindful of her? What is this creature of dust that you imbued with your spirit? And what am I, Lord, that you doom me to die? That you forsake me on a tree? That you hide your face? 

Yes, I venture to speak to my Lord, to argue against the destruction of the Sodom and Gomorrahs of the world, though I am but dust and ashes. 

Manhattan is burning, the ash covering the capital of the world. And falling like snow from the furnaces of Treblinka and Auschwitz comes the ash. Krakatoa blocks out the sun. And through it all, Job sits on his mound of cinders in a tattered sack cloth, itching his oozing wounds with a shattered pot. He is a Hiroshima survivor sitting on the bone and dust of his sisters. He is a terminal AIDS patient, a victim of famine, history’s orphan. He is an ash heap on an ash heap, and he speaks, “Word of you had reached my ears, but now that my eyes have seen you, I shudder with sorrow for mortal clay.” He says Kaddish for us all, the last priest speaking last rites. 

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. And yet, a deep God-shaped hole in our heart whispers, “If a man dies, shall he live again?” Come and kiss us again, el shaddai. Come and pull us from Sheol. Breath your life giving spirit-wind-soul into our earthy flesh. 

Though we make our home in the valley of dry bones yet do we prophesize to them: Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake. The dead shall live; their bodies shall rise. You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy! For your dew is a dew of light, and the earth will give birth to the dead.
The Lord of the Universe has not forsaken us to our ash heap, but has himself become a creature of dust. He has joined us on our death march, and has become the God of the gallows. She has become the stark victim of the black plague on Grünewald’s altar, hands in claws, skin blistering, dying a final death. 

Ashes, ashes, even God falls down. 
We must say with the madman, “God is dead. We have killed him- you and I. We are all his murderers.” Therefore I will be quiet, and repent in dust and ashes
For 40 days, we dwell in the long dark night of the soul. 40 days of endless night. We dwell in Friday, the day that God died. 

Yet from the twilight of the gods, the One God burst into light. Out of the depths of the abyss, the brightest morning dawned. At the end of our long period of waiting and mourning, Easter, the day of the sun, rises. 

Plant my body like a seed in the dust and ashes. Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return. Yes, you are going to die, but you will also rise. 

In the world which will be renewed and where He will give life to the dead and raise them to eternal life and rebuild the city of Jerusalem. May His great name be exalted and sanctified in the world which He created according to His will! May He establish His kingdom