photo by Jimmy Hemphill: flickr.com/photos/jimmah_v

I wrote the following meditation for a Taizé service during Lent 2011. But I think it relates well to the experience of dementia caregiving, so I’m including it here. Being a caregiver is sort of like one long experience of Lent. Through the spiritual discipline of caring for someone with dementia, we are forced to confront our powerlessness. We learn very clearly that we cannot run this show. This powerlessness is the essence of our mortality, our “dust”. We are continually living the song of Lent: "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." My hope is that, just as Lent eventually gives way to Easter, our caregiving will one day lead us into a deeper experience of life. 

So keeping that analogy in mind – caregiving as a Lenten discipline, a fast of sorts – read on.

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We are dust, made of earth, of soil – We are mud-men, humans of humus. God creates Adam out of the dust in the second chapter of Genesis. Adam and Eve learn this dirt secret about themselves in the third chapter, after eating of the forbidden tree. They discover that they are naked. Then God tells them it’s worse than that … They are only dust – naked dust. 

Lent is a time to experience the dust of our lives, and it’s hard to make it through the season without getting a little muddy. Through our Lenten disciplines we bump up against the limitations of our knowledge. We face head-on the selfishness in even our highest motives. We feel the brevity and fragility of our lives. 

But we are Christians, and there is good news even here. For God loves our dust, and there is something powerful about our remembering that we are made of it. 

The psalms remind us that God remembers our dust and has mercy on us. In John’s gospel, Jesus writes with his finger in the dust as he forgives the woman caught in adultery. Jesus has said that he does only what he sees the Father doing. And here he re-enacts God writing mercy all over our dusty hearts. 

In John’s story of the man born blind, Jesus again puts his hands in the dust. Here he spits into it first, and then he makes a salve. He puts this muddy concoction into the eyes of the blind man and tells him to go and wash at the pool of Siloam. The man returns seeing for the first time in his life. In the hands of God, mud heals. 

The good news is this: As we experience our dustiness during Lent, we find not only mud but mercy, not only humus but healing. And when the Lenten season nears its close, we can look forward to washing off the dust, even as we abide in the love and mercy we have discovered in it. Easter will come soon enough, and we will return – clean, forgiven and clear-sighted.