Ash on Golden Beaches

This is a piece that has been percolating for a few months now, from the time of the L.A. wildfires, and some startling images, including the attached one, of tall palm trees remaining standing amongst the destroyed homes of celebrities, millionaires and ordinary people. Of course there were those who used those same images to fuel conspiracy theories about the fires being caused, not by our calamitous attitude to climate change, but laser beams and other "heat attack" weapons being used to destroy the American way of life and force people into socialist 15 minute cities. If the original stories didn't make me weep, those conspiracies did. 

But the images stuck with me until this morning with my Lenten reading of Malcolm Guite's "The Word in the Wilderness" where his own meticulously crafted sonnet for Ash Wednesday touches on similar themes from a broader perspective. His commentary provided the phrase "the detritus of destruction" which I shamelessly purloined.

Ash on golden beaches,

But not from palm leaves.

Palm trees stand proud

Beside the detritus of devastation.

A sign that, despite our

Heedless, suicidal rush

To use up the rich resources

Graciously laid down deep,

aeons ago, entrusted to us,

And unsettle the balance

Of this fragile pebble

With its thin film of

God-breathed air,

Hurtling through the cold

Dark vastness of the cosmos,

That life will somehow

Outlast our playing with fire.

But if we are to be saved,

Today is the day, if not

Yesterday, to repent;

To realise that worldly wealth,

Or divine blessing,

Will not protect us from 

Ignoring the signs, 

Or buy us another Earth.

Instead we need to stoop,

And take that smear of ash

Not only on our foreheads,

But on our hearts.

Selah