Lent

Blessing for Ash Wednesday

God, today my finitude is rubbed on my forehead.
The reality of my limits, my fragile body,
spoken over me like a curse:
from dust I was made
   to dust I will return.

Some days I need to be reminded
that I am not the perfectibility project
I set out to be.
I am full of bounce and brimming with hope.
All woes, solvable. All problems, a distant whisper.
When I don't feel like dust,
Bless me, oh God,
in the ways I trick myself into believing
that my life is something I've made,
that all my accomplishments and successes
and mastered mornings
add up to something independent of you.

But on days like today, when my head hangs low,
sunk with the grief of my neediness,
Bless me, oh God.
When my joints don't work as they should,
when I grow sick or turn gray too soon,
when my body betrays me...
or perhaps is doing exactly
what it is supposed to do.
Tell me again how you made me:
   from dust to dust.

Blessed are we, a mess of contradictions,
in our delusions and deep hopes,
in our fragility and finitude.

From The Lives we Actually Have by Kate Bowler and Jessica Richie

Welcome to Lent—

Grace and peace,
Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation