One of the things I know about myself is that I am not a singer. You know it too. Some of you have told me I’m not. But did you know that I can play the trumpet and I’m pretty good at it? 

Here’s what I mean by that. I remember a session in which I told my therapist that I work really hard to have the right answers, to say and do all the right things, to make the very best decisions I can, to always be strong and in control, to accomplish everything I set out to do, and to do everything with perfection. On and on I went describing the expectations I have for myself. 

That’s the playlist of my life, or at least one of them. That’s one of the ways in which I trumpet my life. I trumpet my life in order to cover my fears and insecurities, to drown out my self-critical voices, to meet expectations and gain approval, to try and satisfy my hunger for wholeness and meaning. Maybe those are tunes you know too.

I’m probably not the only one that can play the trumpet. I suspect you can too. Your playlist may be different from mine but I’ll bet you have one (or more). What’s on your playlist? In what ways are you trumpeting your life today? And what’s behind that for you? What’s it really about?

After I finished describing my playlist to my therapist I said, “But it’s not working. I’m not keeping up. I can’t hold it all together.”

When she stopped laughing she said, “Well, welcome to the human race. Who the hell do you think you are?” She could just as well have said, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

But I think that’s the reason we trumpet our lives. We don’t want to remember. We don’t want to face our limitations and finitude. We don’t trust that our humanity is enough or that we are enough. 

But what if that’s exactly what Lent is about? What if Lent is a time to reexamine what we are trumpeting in our life and why we do it? What if remembering our dustiness isn’t about negating ourselves but about recovering ourselves, becoming more whole, becoming more ourselves?

I like the sound of that and I wonder if that’s what Jesus is getting at in today’s gospel (Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21) when he says, “Do not sound a trumpet before you.” I wonder if that’s what he means when he tells us not to practice our “piety before others in order to be seen by them,” not to make prayer a way to “be seen by others,” and not to look dismal and disfigure our faces “so as to show others that [we] are fasting.” What do you think?

Maybe that’s Jesus’ way of telling us to stop playing for the crowd, whether it’s the crowd around us or the crowd in our head, and start playing for our life. Maybe Ash Wednesday and Lent are as much or more about our life as our mortality. After all, dust is the raw material of our creation. “God formed [us] from the dust of the ground and breathed into [our] nostrils the breath of life;  and [we] became a living being.” (Genesis 2:7) 

It’s pretty simple. No dust, no life. What if that’s how we understood the dust of Ash Wednesday? I’d want a dust bath, wouldn’t you?

The dust of Ash Wednesday has never ultimately been about lamenting, bewailing, or bemoaning our wretchedness, sinfulness, or whatever it is we think somehow makes us bad, defective, or not enough. It has never been about going to those places. It’s always been about growing out of and leaving those places.

No dust, no life. That’s the promise and hope of Ash Wednesday. 

No dust, no life. That’s the refrain God sings on this day. 

Most days, however, the playlist of my life is loud and on repeat. It’s a loop that plays the same old tunes over and over. They are tunes about comparison, competition, expectation, and judgment. I wouldn’t be surprised if you know those tunes by heart. I do. They are so familiar and overplayed that they no longer call us to the dance floor. Instead, they keep us stuck. 

They bind us to the past and rob us of soul-making power, “the power to re-image ourselves as larger than our history.” (Hollis, Swamplands, 127.) Today, however, there is a different tune playing. No dust, no life. 

Can you hear it? No dust, no life. 
Sing it with me. No dust, no life. 
It’s got a pretty good beat. No dust, no life. 
Tap your feet. No dust, no life. 
Will you dance to it? No dust, no life. 

That’s the song on God’s playlist today. No dust, no life. Today it is your song and my song. No dust, no life. 

What would it mean and be like for you today to put down your trumpet and remember your dustiness? What would it take for you to begin to reclaim every speck of your dustiness? That’s what I want to do, don’t you? Remember and reclaim. That’s when we begin to play a different tune. 

Let’s get dusty. 

____________________
Image Credit:
Photo #1 by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash.
Photo #2 by Ahna Ziegler on Unsplash.