Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
It is the nature of all things to be transformed. With the daily rising of the sun, we are presented with a fresh opportunity to reconfigure, transfigure, and resurrect everything corporeal and ethereal, everything we taste and touch and see and everything invisible.
This is a gift from God.
Ashes both conceal and guard the fire, which Christ came to cast. “I came to cast fire upon the world; and would that it were already kindled!” (Lk. 12:49) Configuration and transfiguration: the mission of every Christian, the charge of every human being, the purpose of life itself. We first must be reduced, in small or great part, to ashes. From a pile of dust, we can rise like a Phoenix--feathered for flight, with new eyes to see, new ears to hear, and a new heart from which to speak. From a pile of dust, we may rise collectively as a single, united Spirit, a constantly contracting and expanding cosmic dust mote through which the Light will penetrate like a prism.
Consider the sign of our faith: when we sign ourselves with the cross, we are tracing the true vine and its branches on our hearts. The vineyard is one vast living organism, the branch of every vine connected to every other branch, each branch drawing life from each vine. The verticality of the vine is antecedent to its ground of being in dust, reaching organically upward to the Divine. The horizontality of the vine’s branches manifest our inalienable interconnectedness, the awareness of which is not usually available to us in ordinary consciousness but which nevertheless is an awareness which can be cultivated with care and practice. Interconnection is our manifest destiny and demands that we remain ever watchful of our sisters and brothers, ever aware of their pain, their hunger, their tears, and their anger, ever mindful that their hands are firmly clasped to our own–as the vine to its branches–and that their fate is our own. When we trace the vine, we trace the Cross–the trestle which supports the passionate intensity of our intertwined selves.
Configuration and transfiguration: what Christianity's high holy days concern. Re-creating, re-configuring ourselves individually and communally. The vine and its branches, the fire and the rose, ashes and dust. From ashes, a Phoenix rises, fully itself, fully configured, fully transfigured; the flames of fire are formed like rose petals; and, ashes conceal the fire from which we rise like a Phoenix. Christ himself said he came to cast fire upon the world, to burn away the chaff, to throw it into the fire, to smelter humankind, thereby recreating us in God's image.
The heat of the fire seems to have intensified in recent times. "Whoever is near Me is near the fire," Jesus said.
Let’s remember that the rose in the fire, and to practice kindness in all we do. Jesus is just one transformation away.
This is a gift from God.
Ashes both conceal and guard the fire, which Christ came to cast. “I came to cast fire upon the world; and would that it were already kindled!” (Lk. 12:49) Configuration and transfiguration: the mission of every Christian, the charge of every human being, the purpose of life itself. We first must be reduced, in small or great part, to ashes. From a pile of dust, we can rise like a Phoenix--feathered for flight, with new eyes to see, new ears to hear, and a new heart from which to speak. From a pile of dust, we may rise collectively as a single, united Spirit, a constantly contracting and expanding cosmic dust mote through which the Light will penetrate like a prism.
Consider the sign of our faith: when we sign ourselves with the cross, we are tracing the true vine and its branches on our hearts. The vineyard is one vast living organism, the branch of every vine connected to every other branch, each branch drawing life from each vine. The verticality of the vine is antecedent to its ground of being in dust, reaching organically upward to the Divine. The horizontality of the vine’s branches manifest our inalienable interconnectedness, the awareness of which is not usually available to us in ordinary consciousness but which nevertheless is an awareness which can be cultivated with care and practice. Interconnection is our manifest destiny and demands that we remain ever watchful of our sisters and brothers, ever aware of their pain, their hunger, their tears, and their anger, ever mindful that their hands are firmly clasped to our own–as the vine to its branches–and that their fate is our own. When we trace the vine, we trace the Cross–the trestle which supports the passionate intensity of our intertwined selves.
Configuration and transfiguration: what Christianity's high holy days concern. Re-creating, re-configuring ourselves individually and communally. The vine and its branches, the fire and the rose, ashes and dust. From ashes, a Phoenix rises, fully itself, fully configured, fully transfigured; the flames of fire are formed like rose petals; and, ashes conceal the fire from which we rise like a Phoenix. Christ himself said he came to cast fire upon the world, to burn away the chaff, to throw it into the fire, to smelter humankind, thereby recreating us in God's image.
The heat of the fire seems to have intensified in recent times. "Whoever is near Me is near the fire," Jesus said.
Let’s remember that the rose in the fire, and to practice kindness in all we do. Jesus is just one transformation away.
posted by Sister Harriet at
3:17 PM
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