We Are But Dust?

Today is Ash Wednesday, a day of repentance, remembrance, and acknowledgment of our own human fragility.

Today is the beginning the season of Lent, a season of watching, growing, reclaiming, and reigniting our human wonder - wonder that God loves us, not in spite of our fragility, but right in the midst of it. We are God's own beloved, human creatures, made in the image of God.

I've been reading a book that has been challenging me in many ways. The book is Suffer the Children: A Theology of Liberation By a Victim of Child Abuse, written by Janet Pais. That's a heavy title, for sure, and the book deals with systemic problems that are indeed heavy, but for me, the feeling of the book is largely freeing and liberating, because it calls us through our own pain (as it comes in many forms) to a place of acceptance and love toward ourselves, along with the other people who come into our lives, especially children.

Pais argues that we all experience pain as children, and while it comes in many forms, it often comes from adults who are uncomfortable with weakness, vulnerability, and need, all of which are natural experiences of what it means to be a child. These adults (and this includes us all) are uncomfortable with relative weakness, vulnerability, and need precisely because they (we) experienced this kind of pain as children. Here is a vicious cycle if there ever was one: Pais argues that our childhood wounds lead us to despise weakness, vulnerability, and need in ourselves (though this is natural and a part of how we are created!) and then as we become adults, we come to despise those aspects in the lives of children. We have contempt for parts of ourselves, but because it is painful to deal with our own self-contempt, we often project that contempt onto children. This is a painful cycle of sin, and in the worse cases, a cycle of abuse.

But Ash Wednesday reminds us of deep, meaningful truths that counter this cycle of contempt. We are fragile. We are all relatively weak, vulnerable, and in need. We are mortal. But God does not despise these parts of ourselves. God loves us with an endless, unfathomable love!

God does not love us in spite of our need.

God loves us right in the midst of our need.

"Dust you are, and to dust you shall return."

This is true. But in response to the contempt we have received in our life, God loves us as we are. We have been created from dust, and our physical bodies will return to dust. But we are also created in the image of God.

God created us and called us good.

And our conviction is that God is Child. God became a child and experienced weakness, vulnerability, and need. And as he grew to be an adult, Jesus remained the Child of God, living in love and relationship toward the One who names us all to be God's children. And in this season of Lent, we remember that Jesus chose to live a life of vulnerability, to identify and associate with those who were on the margins, those most vulnerable in his context. This choice had repercussions as it threatened the most powerful people of his day and led him to an unjust execution. Yet even this deep, vulnerability was redeemed. Love had the last word, and it still remains the last word.

Let's tell ourselves the truth of this amazing love. Let's love ourselves and the children in our world, living in the truth that we are beloved, children of a God who cares endlessly for us!

Renee Roederer

PPC L.I.F.T.