This morning, thousands rose early to catch the birdsong at dawn in an annual celebration entitled “Dawn Chorus Day” which went out live on radio from locations all over the world
A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer,
it sings because it has a song.
Maya Angelou
thank you, Karl Duffy of MindfulBalance
Blessing the Dust
For Ash Wednesday
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 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
“Blessing the Dust” appears in Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons.
Between the dark sky and the dark earth we hang a light in a dark tree and sing of our wonder together.
Quote: Pir Elias Amidon
Photo: Tien Vu
taken from A Network of Grateful Living
I believe that the world was created and approved by love,
that it subsists, coheres, and endures by love, and that,
insofar as it is redeemable, it can be redeemed only by love.
Quote: Wendell Berry
