Thursday, February 22, 2007

Remember that you are dust.....

"Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." Having worked with the dying over the last several years, I am deeply moved in the moments when the minister makes the sign of the cross on my forehead with ashes and speaks the words. No matter how much I try and convince myself that life will be full and I will live long, these words speak truth. Life is temporal and we all will die. To live in the light of that reality is to embrace the spiritual quest of living. The "dying to self" that we undertake during the Lenten season isn't a bodily death, it is a time spiritually to die to the things that just aren't important. I reflect during this season on what I have focused on as important in my own life. How easy it is for the unimportant to invade our lives. It begins simply, then grows daily. My journey this Lent will be on focusing again on what is important. At the heart of what's important is faith and compassion. Faith without compassion, it seems to me is empty. And so I seek to grow in compassion, in love, in acceptance and to lose my tendency toward judgment and arrogance.

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