Ash Wednesday

I burn the palms from last year
A year gone with its dreams.
Burnt offerings to a God who tells me today
Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust

The brazier is warm from the fire called down
Which consumes and I wonder what fire is really
What is it that can change hope and joy to ash?
Charity and comfort to soot and smoke?

Broken promises, harsh words, betrayed trust
All part of this broken bit of creation
Fractured and pieced together,
The bits and pieces creating a mosaic of beauty, but not completeness.

The body of Christ has been rent and torn
Dismembered by its own limbs
Joints wrenched from their sockets
Bruised and Dislocated

Are my dreams but chimera?
Illusion, pipe dreams that smoke
An expectation of prospects that cannot be?
Or are they the substance that makes my life worth living?

Still, I will be obedient.
Hoping that in obedience there is comfort
Lessons to be learned,
Reconcilations to forge.

I look forward to that day of reconciliation
Where fire cleanses and the fire forges
Where the touch of a coal will purify
And the dross of self will be burned away.

But today, I wait.
The smoke, flame and heat pace me
The silence that never is really silent will be my voice
The stillness will be my friend

Today in obedience, I will wait
And the ash will mark me, branding me with the imprint of my own sin.
The blemish of the cross will stain me
And the weight of that cross will sustain me.