Piety--to be pious. There is such negative baggage for this
simple word.
A word that means to live
one’s beliefs about God. To live what we
profess.
Today we mark our foreheads
with a cross of ash---a reminder of our origins, our beginnings. We are dust.
We believe God took the adamah---the dust, soil of this earth our fragile
home, and blew God’s breath into it---giving life. Abundant life,
Did it happen just like
that? Was there a first man, a first
woman? Maybe. Maybe not.
Maybe not just like this. Genesis
isn’t a book of history so much as it is a book of Truth---the Truth of who we
are and whose we are.
We are dust into which God
blows the breath of life. Born into bodies that are not meant to last
forever. We are not meant to live alone,
but in companionship, in community. And
we are not meant to live of our own devices, but instead called to live in
intimate relationship and connection to the Divine.
Today we are invited to take
a journey---a journey to return to our divine purpose---a journey of shaping
and forming our wills, our dreams, and our vision so that they might bend in
the arc of God’s plan, God’s justice, God’s Kingdom.
We may not completely
understand what this means or how it can be.
We may not be completely certain we even believe it. Or want it.
But here we are, at the
beginning of the journey, with fellow pilgrims.
So, let us walk together, we pilgrims.
Seeking the Creator and the Creator’s plan for each one of us and us
together as a community. Let us embrace
our differences---different viewpoints, different opinions, different ways of
being. We need not judge the rightness
or wrongness of one another; instead, let us simply recognize our shared
createdness, our shared dustiness.
Leaving the judgment to the One who knows—the One who redeems and
sanctifies.
We need only remember a few
things: We are loved; we are forgiven; we belong to one another; we belong to God;
we are enough.
Come; Let us follow the Way, giving
of ourselves, our treasure, praying, abstaining from beliefs, habits, and
actions that separate us from God and one another, and instead sharing Word,
sacrament and prayer with the pilgrims who join us. Let us draw near---to the Face of Mystery,
the One who transforms---surrendering ourselves to the God who gave us our
first breath.
Beloved, we are invited to
live in such a way that those who meet us can believe these things to be true:
we are loved; we are forgiven; we belong to one another; we belong to God; we
are enough.
Come; a different Kingdom
awaits.
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