Palm Sunday

Over the past few years I have been thinking about dust during Holy Week. Not that annoying dust that you see everywhere at this time of year as the Spring sun streaks into corners and dances in rooms - no not that at all. I am talking about down to earth, mundane outside dirt.

It starts today with Palm Sunday and Jesus on a donkey - all that dust in a dry place and people with cloaks and branches to provide a clean and soft path for the King. But this sort of dust is a dancing, merry dust of bustle and life - like the dust of a bazaar or children playing soccer in a dry street with a broken down ball - on their way home perhaps they catch a glimpse of green on someone else's TV set and hear the roar and dream the dream/

I don't know how many people shouted Hosanna! I doubt it was a stadium roar but nevertheless enough to turn heads - enough to excite the dream that here was the one - and the journey continues - the end finally marks its time for a new beginning.

The confusion of time is where we find ourselves - listening to the whole story and anticipating it. The whole of salvation history stretches across this most Holy of Weeks for us to savor and yet it is just that, a week, with dirty coffee mugs and trips to the store.

Holy Week really works best when we walk every day - from Palm Sunday to Easter - very carefully and mindfully. This is "Monday in Holy Week" we tell ourselves when we wake up and we should at least read the Gospel and let is drip through us as we go about our labor. This is "Maundy Thursday" we tell ourselves as we wake up and wonder about Our Lord's hands on our feet and those words we know so well.

Make it to as many liturgies as you can - they help, they are well made but more than that be mindful this Holy Week - mindful that the same dust which is kicked up on the streets today, is walked by the feet of Jesus and Pilate all week, and circles around Golgotha in a cold and violent wind - smelling of destruction. The same dust lies silent in the tomb and on the hillside and in the streets. That same dust yields the life of Easter - but that is not today's journey.