Lent is a season of contemplating dust.
I never knew the whole “dust to dust” thing was a specific quote from the Hebrew scriptures. I knew of many references to dust, in the creation stories and otherwise, but tonight, as I was copying and pasting the classic “to every season…” passage from Ecclesiastes 3 I read to the end of the chapter.
If you need a refresher on the words of Ecclesiastes 3, here’s a tambourine heavy video of The Byrds singing the Pete Seeger penned hit “Turn! Turn! Turn!” on live television in 1965. (Of no relevance to this post is how on earth men managed to have bangs and hair that behaved the way these musicians’ hairs, corporately, are behaving. How??) All is vanity, writes Mr. Ecclesiastes, including hairstyles for men that surely require sitting in one of those colander shaped salon hair dryers.
Anyway, after all the parallelism – mourn/dance, gain/lose, tear/sew – is a funny section about animals:
For what happens to the sons of men also happens to animals; one thing befalls them: as one dies, so dies the other. Surely, they all have one breath; man has no advantage over animals, for all is vanity. All go to one place: all are from the dust, and all return to dust.
And there it is: dust, to dust. Life to death, in this season. And also death to life. Everything Has Its Time is how the Biblical caption writer chooses to summarize “a time to…and a time to…” Adam was made from dust, and we are, all of us, returning to dust. Everything has its time.
Post #4 of 40 Daze: A Lenten Writing Practice.
