This Little Clod of Dirt

“If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”
—Luke 9:23

“Though more people than we realize carry real crosses of poverty or illness, the crosses most of us must carry are the seemingly trivial little crosses of accepting ourselves and those around us as the flawed creatures that we are. Carl Jung spoke of the humbling process of ‘climbing down a thousand ladders’ until he could reach his hand to the ‘little clod of earth’ that he was.”
—Aileen O’Donoghue

Yesterday began the season of Ashes, the Lenten journey to Easter. There’s a kind of depth to Lent that makes it my favorite liturgical season. I felt relief yesterday to be marked with ashes and reminded that I am dust and to dust I shall return. This is the season of getting down those ladders to the little clod of earth that I am, as Jung says.

And what do we find there in that little clod? Is it only dirt? This is the risk of Lent. This is why these forty days are more than an extended exercise in morbidity and remembrance of our impermanence, and is rather an adventure of self-discovery. The process of rediscovering ourselves is liberating because we can let go of all the things we mistakenly thought we were, and get down to the essence of what we really are: dirt, the fabric of the universe, the substance of the stars, the same stuff that is redeemed and made whole on Easter.

Lent and Easter are one thing, just as we are one thing: flawed, broken, simple, dirt that is nevertheless the living body of the Divine.