Tag: dust

Inherited Specks

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photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

Skin was earth; it was soil. I could see, even on my own skin, the joined trapezoids of dust specks God had wetted and stuck with his spit the morning he made Adam from dirt. Now, all these generations later, we people could still see on our skin the inherited prints of the dust specks of Eden.
~Annie Dillard from An American Childhood

A goodly portion of every clinic day is spent looking at my patients’ skin.  Most of the time, it is a quick assessment of color, moisture and texture before I go on to concentrate on the chief complaint that brought the patient in.  However, skin concerns frequently are the chief complaint — perhaps as straight forward as an abrasion or laceration, or a puzzling bump, an oozing sore, a total body itch, or an ominous pigmented lesion.

I feel like Sherlock Holmes when I focus on a patient’s outer covering in magnified detail.  I assume the identity of detective, inspector and archeologist all at once, trying to discern what is taking place on or beneath a piece of dermatologic geography.

No matter what the diagnosis or the treatment plan, I’m continually awestruck by the topography of skin.  This supple landscape is made up of trapezoidal specks connected one to another, just like the soil upon which I tread.   Skin cells are in a state of constant renewal, the dead and discarded falling off to rejoin the dust from which it came.

This elaborate matrix of collagen and keratin is the foundation for our scaffolding and our shroud.

His spit provides the superglue: the rivets, the bolts and the nails that bind us together for a lifetime.

We are created to be far more than a mere pile of random dust specks.

Lenten Grace — Rain on Dust

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photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

“Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried, than before–more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle.”
~Charles Dickens as “Pip” in Great Expectations

Lent humbles the hardest of hearts by softening and readying us through our tears.  We weep to read again of Christ’s walk on the parched road to the cross, where our tears are as welcome as a cleansing rain — tears meant to renew and restore the dust beneath His feet.

When we cry for Him in His sacrifice, experience His rejection and sorrow, we empty out our bitterness, our pride, and our ingratitude.  Our tears gently cushion His footsteps.  We prepare ourselves to follow on this difficult and arduous road, fitting our foot to each print He has left behind, knowing exactly where it will take us.

Our tears make us better than we ever have been and will set us right.

We weep in joy that we have His tear-stained footprints to follow.

Lenten Grace — Dust as Equalizer

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photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

It comes equally to us all,
and makes us all equal when it comes.
The ashes of an oak in the chimney
are no epitaph of that oak,
to tell me how high or how large that was;
it tells me not what flocks it sheltered while it stood,
nor what men it hurt when it fell †
and when a whirlwind hath blown
the dust of the churchyard into the church,
and the man sweeps out
the dust of the church into the churchyard,
who will undertake
to sift those dusts again,
and to pronounce,
This is the Patrician,
this the noble flower,
and this the yeomanly,
this the Plebeian bran.
~ John Donne

And we shall all look the same when the end comes
sifted through His hands
blown on with His breath
bled on in His sacrifice–
Varied as we are now in life,
we shall, in death, become One in Him.

Amen

Lenten Grace — Quintessence of Dust

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photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

What a piece of work is a man!
…And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?”
~ William Shakespeare in Hamlet’s monologue 

This dust left of man:
earth, air, water and fire
prove inadequate
to quell its significance.

Only the transcendent hope
of eternal life restored
can breathe glory
into the plainest of ash.

We therefore commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust;
in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ;
who shall change our vile body, that it may be like unto his glorious body…
Committal service from The Common Book of Prayer

Lenten Grace — Forestalling Burial

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..earth sifts over things. If you stay still, earth buries you, ready or not. The debris on the tops of your feet or shoes thickens, windblown dirt piles around it, and pretty soon your feet are underground..

Micrometeorite dust can bury you, too, if you wait: a ton falls on earth every hour.

Quick: Why aren’t you dusting? On every continent, we sweep floors and wipe tabletops not only to shine the place, but to forestall burial.
~Annie Dillard from For the Time Being

I conveniently thought dust came from flakes of old dead skin innocuously loosening and lazily floating away from their body of origin to accumulate on the piano, or book shelves, or hide innocently in surreptitious dust-bunny clumps under the bed.   Each house is it’s own self-sustaining dust-factory thanks to its exfoliating occupants.   I hadn’t given too much thought to all that alien dust outside our doors, much of it originating from something quite extraterrestial.

A mega-ton meteor comes roaring out of the sky, breaking sound barriers and everything around, including people, and busts into millions of microscopic particles on impact.   Now that is real DUST, overwhelming dust, a beyond-our-comprehension debris burying us from above with shock and awe brightness.

We dust compulsively in our daily lives, trying to forestall our ultimate burial, hoping to avoid the harsh reality of being covered up only to become dust ourselves someday —  all dust and nothing but dust.

Truly, in one fell swoop, we will all be changed, in a blink of any eye.   A little meteor exploding from the heavens is nothing compared to the cataclysm of the Son of Man hung, dying, buried, to be returned to dust like us all,  and yet rising to walk again.   Instead he dusts us up, shines us clean, and readies us to live when he comes again.

No more dead skin to forestall.  We will be so much more than mere dust.

Everything exists, everything is true and the earth is just a bit of dust beneath our feet.
~ W. B. Yeats

Better was it to go unknown and leave behind you an arch, then to burn like a meteor and leave no dust.
~ Virginia Woolf

Lenten Grace — Fearful Dust

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photo from the top of Mt. Baker by Josh Scholten
photo from the top of Mt. Baker by Josh Scholten

I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
~T.S. Eliot in “Burial of the Dead” from “The Wasteland”

We do not want to think of ourselves as the dust we were and the dust we will become.  There is too much of us living right now; we cast shadows before and behind us depending on the time of day and time of life.  We are substance with our shadows only ephemeral reflections of our presence on earth.

Yet the dust we were and the dust we become is a fearful thing.
Nothing but dust…
until the Creator lifts us up in the palm of His hand, and blows on us.  Now we breathe and pulse and weep and bleed.

We become something different than mere shadow.

We become His, awed,  to the last grain of fearful dust with which we are made.  We become so much more.  So much more.

photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

Advent Cries: The Shadow of Death

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Rachel weeping for children who are no more, sculptor Sondra Jonson
Rachel weeping for children who are no more, sculptor Sondra Jonson

A voice is heard in Ramah,
    mourning and great weeping,
Rachel weeping for her children
    and refusing to be comforted,
    because they are no more.
Matthew 2:18 and Jeremiah 31:15

In mourning for the people of Newtown, Connecticut

There is no consolation for these families.
Their arms aching with emptiness tonight,
beds and pillows lying cold and unused,
dolls and stuffed animals awaiting all night hugs
that will never come again.

There can be no consolation;
only mourning and great weeping,
sobbing that wrings dry
every human cell,
leaving dust behind,
dust, only dust
which is beginning
and end.

He came to us
for times such as this,
born of
the dust of woman and
the breath of Spirit,
God who bent down to
lie in barn dust,
walk on roads of dust,
die and be laid to rest as dust
in order to conquer
such evil as this
that could horrify masses
and massacre innocents.

He became dust to be
like us
He began a mere speck in a womb
like us
so often too easily washed away
as unwanted.

His heart beat
like ours
breathing each breath
like ours
until a fearful fallen world
took His
and our breath
away.

He shines through
the shadows of death
to guide our stumbling uncertain feet.
His tender mercies flow freely
when there is no consolation
when there is no comfort.

He hears our cries
as He cried too.
He knows our tears
as He wept too.
He knows our mourning
as He mourned too.
He knows our dying
as He died too.

God wept
as this happened.
Evil comes not from God
yet humankind embraces it.
Sin is our choice
we made from the beginning,
the choice we continue to make.

Only God can glue together
what evil has shattered.
He just asks us to hand Him
the pieces of our broken hearts.

We will know His peace
when He comes
to bring us home,
our tears will finally be dried,
our cells no longer
just dust,
never only dust
as we are glued together
by the breath of God
forevermore.

the tender mercy of our God,
    by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven
to shine on those living in darkness
    and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the path of peace.
Luke 1: 78-79

Wood sculpture of Rachel weeping, located at Our Lady of Guadelupe Abbey, Texas
Wood sculpture of Rachel weeping, located at Our Lady of Guadelupe Abbey, Texas
InTheNews06_01_2005b
Rachel weeping for the children who are no more
Sculptor Sondra Jonson

 

Lenten Reflection–We are Dust

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magnified landscape of human skin

…He knows how we are formed,
He remembers that we are dust.
Psalm 103: 14

God remembers because He sculpted us from dust, gently breathing into our nostrils the breath of life, filling our lungs to keep us afloat while anchored to the soil. Though we are grateful for each breath that keeps us alive, we tend to forget how our daily journey returns us to dust, beginning with the parched and dying desert of our covering. Our skin sheds, flake by flake, returning to dust, slowly pulling us back to the ground where we were formed. With each breath we are closer to dust than the breath before, each more precious than the last.

His touch formed us. His breath fills us. His love anchors us.

He remembers. So must we.

magnified human skin cells