This is a sonnet-format response to a friend’s facebook post asking if there are any hymns about shaking the dust off one’s feet. It’s not at all what he asked for – sorry Steve!
The dust reminds us of our origin,
from where we’ve come, not where we want to go.
And as it clings, brings with it all we’ve been:
familiar places, things we think we know
and may not like; perhaps we’d like to leave
them all behind, but they have made us who
we are today. The stuff we now believe,
the wisdom our experience treats as true
is just as much a part of us as all
the atoms of our flesh. And we are kind
of stardust. That’s a fact with its own call
on what we choose to keep or leave behind.
Then, when we shake the dust from off our shoes
we do so, knowing what we have to lose.
reverendally.org 