Much to reflect on tonight, walking in the dark on the quiet beach.
The slender moon, two days old, hangs beneath Venus.
"Dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return."
I look it up in Hebrew: "Afar atah, v'el-afar teshuv."
My sister Emily says this dust has several possible meanings, from worthless dust to interstellar dust from which all was created.
We are stardust, as the women of Sacred Emerging would say.
Why do all the church services leave out the address of this verse, Genesis 3:19? I think we don't want to be reminded that these beautiful words come from God's words to the man after his first sin.
T.S. Eliot captured the sadness of this day best in his poem "Ash-Wednesday 1930":
Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn...
[I] pray to God to have mercy upon us
And I pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us
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