Humility and Connection

 

…Remember you are from the earth, and to the earth you will return.      – Gen. 3:19 

Ash Wednesday speaks to our mortality, yes, but at its heart is a call to humility. Death is real, and not one of us can escape it. Death is one experience that connects me to my companion pets, to the birds singing to wake the trees, to the milk cows, the wild foxes, the gulls ingesting perma-plastic refuse. It humbles us and makes the strong case that life/the world is not about me.

 

Such realistic humility has been essential to my evolving spirit. Humility helps me to approach divine mysteries with awe and respect. Without awareness of interdependence and fragility, one can be tempted to use brokenness or resurrection as a cudgel that subjects others to an imagined self-superiority.

 

Recalling that I am from the earth renews the divine call to care for the planet and all its living things. Remembering that I will return is a warning that my hope of reconciliation is wrapped up in the restoration of earth and the cosmos. 

 

Ash Wednesday reminds me that I am connected to the golden starlings, the Maine coon, azaleas, and Marcellus shale. We are more alike than I sometimes wish to think. None of us are God, yet we’re all holy, and all culpable. Can we work together to restore the divine creation, while there still is an earth to return to?

Photo by Sonika Agarwal on Unsplash