Lent Devotion: Star Dust

Skin was earth; it was soil. I could see, even on my own skin . . . 

the dust specks God had wetted and stuck with his spit the morning 

he made Adam from dirt. Now, all these generations later, we people 

could still see on our skin the inherited prints of the dust specks 

of Eden. I loved this thought . . . Someday I would count [them], 

with the aid of a mirror, and learn precisely how many dust specks Adam comprised – one single handful God wetted, shaped, 

blew into, and set firmly into motion and left to wander about 

in the fabulous garden bewildered.          

                                                                    –Annie Dillard

I have walked the Pleiades                                                      
     and followed their courses
I have been bound by the Kimah chains

A Spitzer image of the Pleiades ininfrared,
showing the associated dust (Merope Nebula).
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

     loosened by the hand of God
I was shaken loose from                    Thuraya’s whirlings
          only to settle here
I am the God-breathed dust
          scattered
                    collected
          only to be scattered again
And it is good.