Poetry From the Ashes

One of our dear ones from Talent, Oregon sent out a note to let us know that they were safe and their property was spared. But they are living in a wasteland with no services, no water, no connections, only devastation, smoke, and ash.

Yet he shared this beautiful poem. May it hold us all in the midst of this apocalypse.

All those days you felt like dust, like dirt,
as if all you had to do was turn your face
toward the wind and be scattered to the four corners.

or swept away by the smallest breath as insubstantial—
did you not know what the Holy One can do with dust?

This is the day we freely say we are scorched.
This is the hour we are marked by what has made it through the burning.

This is the moment we ask for the blessing that lives within the ancient (and current) ashes,
that makes its home inside the soil of this sacred earth.

So let us be marked not for sorrow. And let us be marked not for shame. 
Let us be marked not for false humility or for thinking we are less than we are.

but for claiming what God can do within the dust, within the dirt,
within the stuff of which the world is made and the stars that blaze in our bones
and the galaxies that spiral inside the smudge we bear.  

~ Jan Richardson