From Dust to Dust

“Remember, man, that thou art dust, and unto dust thou shalt return.”

That’s what the priest would say on Ash Wednesday as he smudged a cross of black soot onto my forehead. When I was little, I didn’t think too much about it. It was just what we did to kick off Lent. When I got older, I became self-conscious about my family’s strict adherence to the ancient ritual. My mother said it was a reminder to be humble. What’s more humbling for a teenage girl than to have to wear dirt on her face?

When I was in college, I found better things to do on Sunday mornings than go to Mass. But I did take a couple of classes on Eastern religions, so I felt enlightened. When I learned about Samsara, the soul’s rebirth into a new body, I may have connected it to the priest's “dust to dust” incantation, but probably not.

Later, when my kids were little, I looked to nature’s cycle of decomposition and fertilization to explain the Easter story of death and rebirth. We would go for walks in the woods, and I would point out saplings that sprouted from a decaying tree on the mossy earth. “When something dies, look around and you will see something else that is reborn from it.” I don’t know if I used the words ”from dust to dust.” You’d have to ask my children.

The other night, Mark and I stood with friends on a ridge line in Boulder, Colorado and craned our necks to view the parade of planets. We passed binoculars back and forth and consulted The Sky Guide app.

”Oh Look, Venus!”

”And that’s Saturn below it. Just above the moon.”

”And there’s Jupiter!”

“Is that one Mars?”

“Amazing!”

”I'm so glad we did this.”

And then, with quieter voices, we considered our relationship to the splendor above us. How small we were. How vast were the things we did not know. How humbling it all was.

As spectacular as the planet parade was, I was more intrigued by a pinkish mass between Jupiter and Venus. It turned out to be a nebula, a cloud of gas and dust that is formed out of a supernova, or a star’s death. After millions of years, a star’s grand finale is marked by an explosion that is billions of times brighter than our sun. In other words, we were witnessing the spectacularly violent death of a star.

But, a nebula is also a nursery for new stars. After a supernova, a new star will be born out of what is left from that explosion — a star that comes from dust and unto dust it will return.

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday. I was traveling back from Colorado and didn’t get to church (sorry Mom). Perhaps tonight I will build a fire in the fireplace. I’ll use logs that were once trees in our woods before they were cut down, chopped, and stacked by Mark and Campbell years ago. Tomorrow, I will shovel out the ash that remains and scatter it on the compost pile back in the woods. It seems a fitting way to kick off Lent.

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