New Song: MOTHER (ash to ash)

This song was written for Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the Lenten Season and the day we remember the words of God to Adam in Genesis 3:19, and of Qoheleth to his readers in Ecclesiastes 3:20 - 
Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return. 

I am moved by how frail we are as humans, how ill-equipped we are to walk through grief and loss, or to feel our biggest feelings. This feels especially true among European Christians, which seems ironic since our faith is founded on a profound loss and the resurrection of hope. Yet we do not know what to do with death and dying, and so we pretend it has not happened; we sweep pain away with meaningless (vain) platitudes and spiritual bypassing. 

But I believe there is great hope and Life in recognizing that the patterns of life and death, the evolution of ash to ash, dust to stardust, is itself a kind of perpetual resurrection. We come from dust and return thereto, and so become the particles of whatever new life rises. We are literally made of stardust, our bodies composed of long-dead, but resurrected cells. 

It is one of the most beautiful truths I've come to understand: 
I am, in this body, eternity.
What I do with my limited time in this body matters.
The seeds I plant and tend will grow and give life -- or cause death -- long after I've returned to dust. 

And so I pray to Mother God:

What to do with death and dying
How to tell the truth when liars lie
How to breathe lament and sighing 
Will you gather up and hold us
Like a mother will you show us
What to do with death and dying 

In your waters baptize us 
Let your death to life remind us
You have hallowed us for life eternal
And in this one may we lay the seeds
for justice and for peace
In your waters baptize us 

Mother

Ash to ash and dust to stardust
From a billion years of life we are us
The resurrection of what came before us
Made of dirt and of divine 
We are great love come to life
In the gardens that we tend
May we grow a medicine 
When consecrated back to earth
May it be another birth from
Ash to ash and dust to stardust

Mother, Mother, Mother

​MOTHER (ash to ash)
(c) 2022 Amy Courts Music