Time for a Good Dusting

                Two days ago I was on the receiving end of a one-two punch.  In the early afternoon, I learned that I wasn’t going to receive an accolade that I thought I had earned.  Punch one!  I was pretty upset, but I managed to get myself through the day without telling anyone, complaining about it or dwelling on it too much.  That evening, I had my regularly scheduled meeting with my Spiritual Director.  I decided not to mention my day’s disappointment to him because I really didn’t want to dwell on it.  Well, guess what?  After an opening prayer, Ed said, “So, how are you?”  I then spent the next 20 minutes blathering on about my disappointing day, how I really deserved that accolade, and how unfair it all was.  Just as I was finishing up my rant, Ed, who was listening intently as he always does, said, “Sounds like a pride issue.”  Punch two!  Right in the solar plexus.  Pride?  I wasn’t ready to deal with pride, so I quickly changed the subject.  But Ed’s words have nagged at me ever since.  Maybe I was being prideful.  Maybe it’s time for a good dusting.

                Most likely, we know pride all too well, though it has a tendency to sneak up on us.  Dictionary.com defines pride as “a high or inordinate opinion of one’s own dignity, importance, merit, or superiority whether as cherished in the mind or as displayed in bearing, conduct, etc.”  The Catholic Church includes pride among avarice, envy, wrath, lust, gluttony and sloth as a capital sin – or even scarier:  a deadly sin – because of its tendency to engender other sins or vices.  That’s why pride has been called the mother of all vices.  Though we may never think so, pride sets us in competition with God.  Pride underlies our tendency to hoard material possessions; it makes us feel like we can do everything on our own; it makes us act like we are gods or believe that God doesn’t exist.

                The counter to pride is the mother of all virtues – humility.  Humility is a “modest opinion or estimate of one’s own importance.”  Humility enables us to understand that we are creatures, created by a God who doesn’t need us – a God who created us just to love us.  Through humility, we share our possessions with others in need, recognizing that every person is endowed by God with equal dignity and that every person is equally loved by God.  With humility, we accept that we can’t go it alone, that we need God and others to face the challenges of this world.  With humility, we place ourselves in proper orientation with God and with each other.  Humility teaches us that without God, we are no more than dust.  It’s no coincidence that the words “human” and “humility” are derived from the same Latin root:  humus, meaning dirt, calling to mind the second creation story in Genesis where God formed man “out of the dust of the ground.”  (Genesis 2:7)  To be humble, we must always remember that we are dust, and to dust we shall return.

                Millions of people around the world heard those very words today as we presented ourselves to have dust smeared on our foreheads in the sign of the cross.  Today is Ash Wednesday.  Today begins our forty-day journey dedicated to prayer, fasting and almsgiving, a quaresima dedicated to humility.  Lent is a time to simplify our lives, to remember what’s important and to rid ourselves of what’s not.  By emptying ourselves of worldliness – yes, pride included – we open ourselves to the closest possible intimacy with God.  That’s the only way to live a truly happy life.  So if you haven’t received ashes yet, take this as a gentle nudge.  You don’t have to be Catholic to receive ashes on Ash Wednesday.  If you need a good dusting, just find yourself a local Church and line up with the rest of us sinners.

                “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”  It was hard to hear those words pronounced at the imposition of ashes this morning.  It was even harder for me to repeat them more than a hundred times as I distributed ashes to our parishioners.  I’m still smarting from my disappointment of earlier this week, and having to fast today isn’t helping me feel any better.  A bowl of chocolate ice cream would help, but I gave that up for Lent.  You see, grounding my disappointment in pride – admitting that I was being prideful – suggests that, in part, my disappointment was my fault and, in part, my disappointment was inappropriate.  Intellectually, I get it.  I know that I was being prideful and that pride played a part in the illegitimate aspects of my disappointment.  But I’m not feeling it yet.  I guess I have my work cut out for me this Lent.  I guess today really was time for a good dusting.