Dear Friends,
Frailty and dust at the beginning of Spring? Lent is the season when we remember our mortality even as the world around us breaks into life at the end of the long winter. It derives from Jesus being driven into the desert, fasting for forty days and nights, and facing dark temptation. It includes his crucifixion on Good Friday and his lying in the womb of the earth on Black Saturday. It is broken, like the seal on the garden tomb, by his resurrection from the dead, being born again from the earth, early in the morning of Easter Sunday. It began on Ash Wednesday, when I marked the sign of the cross on the foreheads of those who came to our last communion service before Easter, using the black ashes of a burnt palm cross from last year’s Palm Sunday service. As I mark the cross, I say to each one “remember you are but dust, and to dust you shall return.”
Those words hold a profound truth. They draw from the creation story in Genesis where God created Adam out of the dust and breathed life or spirit into his nostrils. But this story is built on the recognition that ‘we are what we eat’, and all we eat ultimately comes from the soil, be that animal, vegetable or mineral. In other words, we are made of the soil, or dust, of the earth, and it is to this that our bodies return after we die, whether we are buried or cremated. The ash of the cross represents this soil – our mortality. Our lives, then, are soil that has been ‘enspirited’ for the time we are alive. Quite literally, we are ‘living soil.’ So we have an extraordinarily close relationship with the earth. But what does this mean?
Very early one morning, Cuthbert set out on a long walk from his monastery at Melrose on the banks of the Tweed, to head into the hills around what is now Hawick, to minister and share God’s love with the poor living in the rough uplands. He was expecting, as usual, to be gone for several days, maybe even weeks. He was accompanied by a young lad who had asked to come along. They headed south east down Dere Street, the old Roman Road, until they reached the River Teviot, some ten miles distant, then turned right to head south west, upstream, following the river towards the mountains. Once they left the road, their journey took them over rough ground, through woods, and along the occasional footpath. It was hard going. After many weary hours of walking they were both tired and famished, miles from anywhere. Cuthbert said to the lad, “Where shall we find refreshment? Do you know anyone in the area who might give us something to eat?” “I was just wondering that” said the boy, “as we haven’t brought any provisions with us. No, I don’t know anyone who might feed us, and we still have a long journey ahead which we can’t hope to manage without eating.” Cuthbert replied, “My son, learn to have faith, and trust in God, who will never let those who trust in him starve to death.” Then looking up, and seeing a fish eagle flying high overhead, he said, “Do you see that eagle? It is possible for God to feed us even by her.” They continued on their way. A short time later, they rounded a bend in the river, and there on the banks ahead of them sat the eagle, perched on a rock. “Look,” said Cuthbert, “there is our handmaiden, the eagle, that I spoke to you about. Run and see what provision God has sent us.” The boy ran and found a good-sized fish which the eagle had just caught, and brought it back to him. “What?” exclaimed Cuthbert, “Why have you not given part to God’s handmaiden? Quick. Cut the fish in two and give her half, as her service well deserves.” The lad did as he was asked. They carried the other part with them on their journey, and when they reached a village, they broiled the fish and shared it with those with whom they stayed while Cuthbert told them of God’s extraordinary love.
Cuthbert knew what it meant to be ‘enspirited soil’. He understood that the change in creation, wrought by Christ’s death on the cross, his resurrection at Easter, and the gift of God’s Spirit at Pentecost, brought new life to all living beings with whom we share soil and breath. The Anglo-Saxons saw all animals and birds as brothers and sisters, precious to God and therefore precious to them, worthy of sharing God’s gifts with us. This story is just one example of many, and is one of the reasons why there are so many animals on the Bewcastle Cross.
In a world that seems to have gone mad, we could do worse, as part of our Lent, than to look on the bursting out of Spring with new eyes of enspirited dust, and, whether we’re milking cows, lambing ewes, walking dogs, catching mowdies, watching birds, even caring for each other, to give thanks to God for all life. To be ‘Singing Soil’ while we may.
Your friend and priest,
Robert
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