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Good morning. I am dust. Minute particles of life knitted together in my mother’s womb. Dust, like that which is thrown out into space by the explosion of a star. Dust, that’s invisible in the air but which dances in sunlight. Dust, that sits thickly and far less romantically on the slats of my window shutters, no matter how many times I clean them. Regular, every day, commonplace dust. Today it’s Ash Wednesday, so I’ll go to church and have ashes pressed onto my skin which will remind me that I’m not perfect or special, I’m as ordinary as the dust that’s placed upon my head, the same as the people kneeling beside me. The well-off, the struggling, the beautiful, the not so beautiful, the old, the young, the sick, the fit. The priest will say to each of us, “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ.” What follows is six weeks of Lenten fasting, so I’ll give up the red wine I like to drink on Friday nights and the take aways from our local Chinese restaurant. I’ll try to pray more often and temporarily abandon the light-weight novels I enjoy in favour of something more spiritually uplifting. I’ll save the money I would have spent on take-aways and eating out and I’ll give it to a charity instead. I’ll work on not losing my temper with my husband, or being grumpy, or gossiping with my mother, a favoured pastime, and by the end of this simulated time in the lent wilderness, I will feel virtuous. I am still dust. For Christians, the ash on our foreheads is the great leveller which reminds us that yes, we will die, but while we live we are all burdened by the same human frailties, flaws and weaknesses as each other. On this day we confront not only our mortality, but also our imperfection. Sin, that most unpalatable aspect of the Christian faith, is one which gives me huge comfort because the person kneeling next to me in church is as fallible as I am, and in a world where equality is everything, I need to know that we are all equal in our capacity to make mistakes and mess things up. On this Valentine’s Day, I don’t need to know that God loves me because he thinks I’m special. I need to know I’m loved and valued in all my dusty ordinariness. This is how we love each other. This is how we forgive. This is how we accept that we are fully, fallibly human. We are dust.