Particles of Grace | Previous Challenge Entry

how it works

TITLE: Particles of Grace | Previous Challenge Entry
By Corinne Smelker
11/19/25
LEAVE COMMENT ON ARTICLE
SEND A PRIVATE COMMENT
ADD TO MY FAVORITES

The rectory smelled of old paper and coal dust that no amount of Mrs. Beale’s polishing could quite banish. Canon Theodore March sat at his desk beneath a window filmed with the same grey residue that drifted from the chimneys of St Aldhelm’s churchyard. Every Lent, he promised himself he would have the sashes replaced; every Lent, the dust returned, patient as sin.

He was trying to write his Ash Wednesday sermon and failing. The page on the monitor remained obstinately white. Outside, the gravedigger, Mr. Gedge, was clearing last autumn’s leaves from the path. Each sweep of the broom lifted a small storm of particles that danced in the weak February light before settling again, unchanged.

Dust.

The word had pursued Theodore all week. Remember that thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return. The ancient warning felt both intimate and absurd. He had imposed those ashes on hundreds of foreheads; cool, gritty crosses that smudged almost at once. People smiled nervously, as though the priest had played a rather poor practical joke. Then they went home and washed their faces, and the dust was gone.

He typed the single word: Dust.

Below it, he added, without thinking: Verb transitive. To sprinkle with a powder. To remove fine particles. To reduce to powder.

The keys clacked like small bones. Mrs. Beale knocked and entered with tea. She was a substantial woman who believed that dust was a personal insult. She carried a yellow duster the way a knight carries a lance.
“Shall I do the bookshelves while you’re occupied, Canon?”
“If you wish.”

She began at once, attacking the Morocco spines with short, irritated strokes. A fine haze rose around her. Theodore watched the particles drift through a shaft of sunlight and vanish.
“Funny stuff, dust,” he said.
Mrs. Beale snorted. “Devil’s flour, my mother called it. Gets everywhere, no matter how you fight it.”
She flicked the duster across a row of sermons, and more dust spirited into the air, glittering like tiny souls.
Yet without it,” Theodore murmured, “we’d have no rainbows.”
Mrs. Beale gave him the look she reserved for remarks that were neither helpful nor orthodox.

He thought of the woman who had come to him yesterday, elegant even in grief, asking whether her husband, dead these six months, was merely dust now, or something more. Theodore had offered the usual comforts: the resurrection of the body, the seed that dies to bear fruit. She had listened politely, then said, “But Canon, what if the seed would rather stay buried?”
He had no answer then, and none now.

The church bell began to toll four. Mr. Gedge had finished sweeping; the path lay immaculate for perhaps ten minutes. Theodore watched him lean on his broom, light a cigarette, and exhale a thin stream of smoke that mingled indistinguishably with the dust.

To cover and to uncover. To add and to take away.

He began to type. When he finished, the sermon was only four pages long, short enough that the congregation would not grow restive, long enough that Mrs. Beale would nod approval. He printed the message, then read the closing lines aloud to the empty room.

“We come this night to be dusted, not cleaned – a little ash on the forehead, a little death on the skin. We think we are being reminded of what we will become. In fact, we are being shown what we already are: creatures who both shed and receive, who both bury and are buried. The dust is not the end of the story; it is the stuff the story is written in. And the Hand that writes is gentle. It does not wipe us away. It signs us.”

He straightened the papers and felt something loosen in his chest.

Mrs. Beale reappeared in the doorway. “Will there be anything else, Canon?”
“No, thank you. You’ve done wonders, as always.”

She glanced at the tidy bookshelves, then at the faint new film already settling across them, and permitted herself half a smile.
“’Til tomorrow, then,” she said, and closed the door softly behind her.

Outside, the light was fading. Theodore opened the window a crack. The evening air carried the smell of cold stone and distant woodsmoke. A single mote drifted in, caught the last of the sun, and came to rest on the sermon like a quiet amen.

PREVIOUS ENTRY | NEXT ENTRY
SUBMIT YOUR ENTRY FOR THIS WEEK'S CHALLENGE

The opinions expressed by authors may not necessarily reflect the opinion of FaithWriters.com.

Accept Jesus as Your Lord and Savior Right Now - CLICK HERE
JOIN US at FaithWriters for Free. Grow as a Writer and Spread the Gospel.