[bonus] Wondrous Cross

God, today my finitude is rubbed on my forehead. The reality of my limits, my fragile body, spoken over me like a curse:  From dust I was made, to dust I will return. Some days I need to be reminded that I am not the perfectibility project I set out to be I am full of bounce and brimming with hope. All woes, solvable. All problems, a distant whisper. When I don’t feel like dust, bless me O God, in the ways I trick myself into believing that my life is something I’ve made, that all my accomplishments and successes and mastered mornings add up to something independent of you. But on days like today, when my head hangs low, sunk with the grief of my neediness, bless me o God. 

When my joints don’t work like they should, when I grow sick or turn gray too soon, when my body betrays me… or perhaps it is doing exactly what it is supposed to do. Tell me again exactly how you made me: from dust to dust. Blessed are we, a mess of contradictions, in our delusions and deep hopes, in our fragility and finitude.

Sim Shalom