Dust

As for mortals, their days are like grass; they flourish like a flower of the field; for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more. But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting. (Psalm 103:15-17a)

‘God is having a reveal party,’ Dixie said, as we drove east into the night. And so it was. A lingering sunset blazed pink and blue, purple and orange, before fading to a pale yellow as the sun disappeared beneath the horizon.

Rolling hills gave way to flatlands as prairie counties passed by our widows, Jo Daviess to Stephenson, Winnebago to Ogle, Dekalb to Kane then home to DuPage.

Every turn and every bend on every road along the way well known to us, down to the rough patches in the pavement we know to avoid, each passing scene evoking memories of decades gone when there was more than one beloved old soul to visit on these trips.

Our conversation recounts the conversations of the day, naming what meanings we find, fading gradually into a knowing silence hovering over the dull thrum of tires on the roadway, as love’s long liturgy bids us to rest in each other’s presence.

Outside, dust from darkening fields rises as combines make their way like great ships across a seemingly endless sea of corn stalks on either side of the road. The stalks dry, dead and brittle brown, full ears of corn hanging heavily, head down, ready for harvest. The chattering sickles of the combines cut the stalks low, leaving a stubble, but raising great clouds of dust I feel on my lips and taste on my tongue.

It’s a sacrament for me. I run my tongue across my lips and smile, savoring the goodness of each particle of earth that yields a harvest of life, gratitude trickling from my eyes, love for the ground, for the dust, for the souls who work the soil, plant the seed and run the combines that accompanied virtually every mile of our journey, gathering in the grain.

All of us feeling and tasting the dust, perhaps realizing that … we are dust, of one being with the dust from which we are made … and which we will become—just like those souls, now gone, I think of with unspeakable gratitude on every one of these journeys. They, too, loved this dust and taught me to love it.

Into the night, we drove, the dust having colored the sunset hours before, coloring, too, the orange harvest moon, impossibly large, rising in the northeast, as we reached the final leg of our journey. A line of purple clouds streamed across its face, it’s pale light falling gentle on autumnal fields.

‘It’s good to be alive on this planet,’ I whispered, half aloud. Seemed absurd to say it, where else would or could I be? But the gratitude I felt was not; it was as real as anything I’ve ever known.

David L. Miller