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“By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
Ash Wednesday is, unquestionably, my favorite day of the liturgical year. This has always been true, but I haven’t always known it. I was raised in the lowest of low churches, and to be honest, I didn’t even know that Ash Wednesday existed until about two years ago, when I was asked to lead worship for an on-campus Ash Wednesday service at my undergraduate alma mater. I remember almost nothing about that service. The songs that we sang, the scriptures we read, the sermon that was offered, all remain a mystery to me.
What I do remember is standing in the lobby of Gano Chapel after the service, when my friend Ian asked me a simple question: “would you like to receive ashes today?” I thought about it for a grueling thirty seconds and semi-reluctantly replied: “Sure, if you’ll impose them.” And so, without missing a beat, Ian dipped his thumb into the mixture of obsidian-black ash and anointing oil and smudged a cross-of-sorts onto my forehead as he echoed the words of Genesis 3:19: “Cameron, from dust you were made, and to dust you shall return.”
Though this was the first time that I intentionally observed Ash Wednesday, as I think back through my formative years, I realize that ash and dust have been central characters in my story. I have spent an incredible portion of my life playing in the dirt. Whether it be adventuring in the woods of rural Missouri as a Cub Scout, limping into my childhood home toting the mud-stained vestments of Pop Warner Football, working for my uncle’s wastewater management company as a teenager, or the countless hours of turning, sifting, and spreading compost at our beloved Farminary, I have been well acquainted with the dust of this world for as long as I can remember. This too, has been the story of humankind.
Genesis 2:7 tells us that “God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.” Indeed, we are dust. Those seemingly insignificant particles which constitute the ground on which we trod, through breath and a bit of divine intervention, become these beautifully complex bodies in which we live out our days in communion with all Creation. We creatures have many things in common, but perhaps the most universal of creaturely experiences is this: we have breath, and one day, we cease to breathe. Paul Tillich has posited that, “Faith is an act of a finite being who is grasped by, and turned to, the infinite.” I wonder if, through our being dust, we too might become infinite.
This Lenten season, as we mark ourselves with the dust of the earth, we participate in the ceaseless circle of grace, turning our ash-smudged faces toward the one who created us, and sustains us evermore, and evermore. As we journey with Christ through this wilderness, may we dare to believe that not only we, but the very dust from which we were formed is held, tenderly and intentionally, in the cosmic embrace of our Creator.
This piece is part of the Farminary Lenten Reflection Series. Each week throughout the 2026 Lenten season, alumni of The Farminary Project will share a personal reflection rooted in soil, scripture, and hope. Students in the Master of Arts in Theology and Ecology program and those pursuing the Concentration in Theology, Ecology, and Faith Formation participate in the Farminary to explore ecological sustainability rooted in theological practice.
Cameron Huett MTE ’25 is a chaplain resident at The University of Kansas Health System.
