DUST

[The following is  a  poetic type reflection on a word - “Dust” - from today’s gospel - Luke 9:1-6 - for this 25^th Tuesday in Ordinary Time.]

 I am always moved by the Ash Wednesday words, “Remember you are dust and into dust you shall return.” [1]

I am moved by T. S. Eliot’s  words, “I will show you fear in a handful of dust.” Those words are worth pondering. It’s in his long 1922 poetic piece called, The Waste Land. [2]

I think about the words in today’s gospel - Luke 9: 1-6 -  “Whatever house you enter, stay there and leave from there. And as for those who do not welcome you, when you leave that town, shake the dust from your feet in testimony against them.”

I love it that people - when they are going to have guests - they dust their  house….

I’ve lived in many places - and in many states - and I’ve often wondered why there seems to be much more dust in some places - some rooms - than in other.

I like reading the poetry of Mary Oliver - who seems to be very, very, very interested in little things - well not as tiny as specks of dust - but almost as tiny. Reading her poems I can picture her stopping to see everything along her way - to hear every bird within earshot - to name them - to spot the ugly face of a snapping turtle - or to see

           “in the deep water

            the eye of a trout

            under a shelf of stone

            not moving.” [3]

Her friends tell her she has to see Yosemite and The Bay of Fundy and The Brooks Range - and she smiles and says, “Oh yes - sometime.” I laughed at that because I’m going to see the Bay of Fundy in 2 weeks. [4] In the meanwhile she keeps taking her little walks around her neighborhood and close by woods and water and inlets - and she lets in all the tiny gifts of creation around her.

Then at the end of a poem entitled, “By The Wild-Haired Corn” she writes,

           “I grow soft in my speech

            and soft in my thoughts,

            and I remember how everything 
            will be everything else,

            by and by.” [5]

Is there only so much stuff - so much skin - so much tissue - so much earth - so much dust - and it all makes up this world of ours - and does star dust slowly fall onto our planet and make us more?

I don’t believe in re-incarnation - but I do believe the corn we eat or the calf’s liver - is made up of earth - plants - that grew tall because it took in nutrients from the soil - growing onwards and upwards - becoming corn - or plant that a calf munched  - corn or pods or what have you - and then it too goes through a process of life and death - like us.

Remember you are dust and into dust you shall return.

And just as dust settles slowly and silently - in the night and in the day - sometimes we can see lots of dust floating in our living room - when the blinds are a certain way - and the light is coming into the room  a certain way - and it’s dust, dust everywhere - moving without air traffic controllers.

Poets like Mary Oliver and Isaiah and Jesus help us see we’re all coming and going.

And in the gospel for today - Jesus sort of says - there’s good dust and bad dust.

The good dust is the great visits - great meals - great times  - in various places - that have settled down on our soul - the memories that we have eaten - and experienced - hopefully on a day like today -As Tennyson says in his poem, Ulysses, “I am part of all that I have met.”

We are part of all we have me - we are our good times and our bad, our sickness and our health. We are what we have eaten. If I eat up good books, good music, good God, good food, good people around the table, they become us. We become our family, our spouse, our neighbors and our friends. We begin to sound like each other - taking on a Boston or a South Carolina accent without even knowing it. We can finish each other’s sentences as they say.

We are also the bad vibes - the bad conversations - the poison venting that can ruin a meal or a meeting or a moment. 

That’s the bad dust - that can settle on us - and Jesus says, “Shake that dust off your feet,” and get moving.

And we know how much a bad word - bad news - BadSpell - as opposed to Gospel - good news - can settle down on our brain - our memory. We can still get agita or indigestion from  a nasty comment a sister made at us in 1977. It still sits there in our craw like dust in the crevice of a piece of wooden furniture that we just can seem to dust away. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.

Jesus! It would be nice if we could simply shake that  anger from our throat - that dust from that house, that town, that experience - that rejected us -  and move onto better towns and better tables.

Right now in our church we are celebrating the good news coming out of the mouth of Pope Francis. Some of his sounds are resounding like church bells calling people home. I’ve heard about 5 times now - someone telling me about a neighbor or a son or a daughter - who said, “Hey, with this new pope, maybe I’ll take another look at the Catholic church.”  

After years of bad news about abuse by priests on the little ones - after years of bad news about bishops and popes, “Why didn’t they do something better about all this?” - after hearing over and over again stuff on abortion, gays, politicians, from the pulpit and the diocesan Catholic papers - people are hearing a new sound - Gospel Sounds - about less pomp and more circumstances with the poor, less meetings on how to meet people and more actual meetings with  live  people - that we work up a sweat - even smell like a sheep - in other words - to come up with less shrill sounds and more sweet sounds of “Welcome!” [6]

In the meanwhile, let’s have less worry about the dust and more with the readjust in our life for more laughter, love and joy.

In the meanwhile, let’s enjoy the time we have left  - instead of fearing the time we have left. Once more, as T. S. Eliot put it, “I’ll show you fear in a handful of dust.”  Instead let’s show our world handfuls of faith and hope and love -  as well as handfuls of laughter - even though our skin is flaking - we're losing our hair and we're losing height - and time. Amen.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] From Genesis 2:7 - and used in the Ash Wednesday Liturgy

[2] T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land, New York, Horace Liveright, 1922

[3] Mary Oliver, Long Life, Essays and Other Writings, Da Capo Press, 2005, page 100.

[4] Idem, page 91.

[5] Idem. page 95.

[6] Pope Francis recently said: "We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. This is not possible.''

"The teaching of the Church, for that matter, is clear and I am a son of the Church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.''

I remember sitting at a meeting when a priest speaker said to those present, “Tell your priests that they must say something in every homily about abortion.” In the Question and Answer period after his talk I waited a while and stood up and said: “This is a statement - not a question - ‘I disagree with your comment about telling people to tell their priests that they should say something about abortion in every homily.’”  Silence!  Then he said to his credit, “Well you’re entitled to your opinion.”  And I said, “Thank you.” Silence - for a while.