Beloved dust

Reflections on Holy Week, limitations, and the friendship of Christ

Each day in this season of my life is a journey in a sea overwhelm. Some days the waves are manageable. Others they upend me completely. Time seems compressed into an impossibly full schedule as this long-distance relationship, engagement, wedding planning, work, and the details before another cross-country move all hurtle towards a knife edge of endings and beginnings. The to-do list is endless—in fact, it only seems to grow as I realize each day more of what I’m forgetting. While I don’t want to minimize the fact that I am very happy to be getting married to this man— stupidly happy, in fact!— I am also flooded to the brink with the logistics of change, and all too aware of my limitations.

I had great aspirations for Holy Week this year. Big dreams of really sitting with Jesus in his movement through the darkness of Friday and the silence of Saturday, to the joy of Sunday. Instead, I found myself freakishly distracted— the least “spiritual” version of me. Somehow, I’m still surprised when I find Christ walking tenderly with me in the particulars of my own journey. Isn’t he too busy being the Messiah to pay attention to my trivialities—especially during Holy Week??? There is some deeply rooted unbelief in his care that turns my soul concave in these moments, unendingly reflecting on itself. Turns out I can’t shoulder the burden of Holy Week (or any week?) with him, but he constantly shows up to shoulder even the most mundane of struggles with me.

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Sitting through the Maundy Thursday service, I was fighting off panic as old memories and new fears chased one another within my mind. Christ knelt to cleanse the dust from his disciples’ feet, and as a friend from women’s Bible study stooped to wash mine, I found myself overwhelmed by the sheer givenness of that movement. I’ve washed so many feet (and other body parts) in my work as a nurse. Yet as the tables were turned with someone much older shifting to care for me physically, viscerally, with such illuminating joy, it was as if Christ himself was bending before me, wiping my feet gently in his hands. He remembers that I am dust, and still, he washes it from my feet.

During the extended quiet of the Good Friday service, I was bombarded with the constant noise of my mental to-do list. Don’t forget to text mom… choose the napkins… check back with these vendors… etc. What am I forgetting? Oh right—Jesus. Annoyed at my fragility, frustrated at my lack of capacity for being present, it was these words of Christ in Gethsemane that struck me: “You couldn’t stay awake with me one hour?”¹ The disciples were flooded with their own exhaustion and overwhelm. So was I. I’ve read those words as an indictment of incapacity before, but now I see them as a Christ’s gentle acknowledgment of their humanity.

“As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him. For he knows what we are made of, remembering that we are dust.”

—Psalm 103:13-14—

I am dust: I’m so aware of my limitations, my fragility. Fortunately, so is he. I am forgetful; easily overwhelmed. As Christ hung on the cross, the dying man next to him gave vent to a prayer that often brings me comfort: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”² It is his infinite memory that keeps me, not my broken remembering of him. When I am forgetting, he is still remembering me, and re-membering me—putting me back together, or maybe, putting me together anew.

Photo by Eugene Chystiakov on Unsplash

Several months ago, I realized the promise of radical friendship from Ruth to Naomi was becoming true for me and Taylor: “Wherever you go, I will go.”³ It felt insane. It felt right. It still does. And as I sensed the Holy Spirit leading me into that radical trust with another human speck of dust, I sensed even more deeply that those were the words of Christ to me: “Wherever you go, I will go.” It floored me, this restating of his “I am with you” promise, a vow of radical friendship to me! He is inviting me into friendship with him. And as his friend I so desperately want to show up strong and capable and creative and fun, but in this season, it is all anxiety and to-do lists and overwhelm. And that’s ok. He knows that I am dust, and still he says, “I have called you friend.”⁴ It is friendship with Christ that I most want, and he is giving it to me. He is meeting this specific version of myself, and he is not tired of me. He’s walking with me as my friend.

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I took a hike this week, asking with each anxious step for what seemed impossible: help to be still. Mary Oliver’s words⁵ came to mind, repeating themselves over and over.

"Behold, I say—behold
the reliability and the finery and the teachings
     of this gritty earth gift."

It takes time to behold: time and attention, patience and love. I walked through the lush green of Tennessee Spring, the wet scent of the rain-seasoned earth rising to meet me. This gritty earth gift. In an unexpected moment, the rain drenched me too, waking me out of the anxious toil of my mind into an embodied form of beholding. I am invited to behold Christ, but really he is beholding me, seeing, “The ordinary glow / of common dust in ancient sunlight.”⁶ I am dust: the same as the rich, aromatic soil beneath my feet. And yet I am also more— beloved dust.

1. Matthew 26:40

2. Luke 23:42

3. Ruth 1:16

4. John 15:15

5. From “To Begin with, the Sweet Grass”

6. From “Mass for the Day of St. Thomas Didymus: Credo,” by Denise Levertov