A faith introspection-Lent
©ESR 2026

The palms were burned on purpose.

Last year’s Hosannas,
last year’s procession,
dried and gathered,
fed back into flame
until green turned to gray
and praise turned to powder.

We call it preparation.
We call it repentance.
We press the cross of it
onto our foreheads and say,
Remember that you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.

The fire finishes its work.
The branches collapse.
The song becomes ash.

And from that small surrender
something stirs.
Not a phoenix.
Not a banner of light.

An ash moth.

Its wings the color of cinder,
its body dusted with what was once triumph.
It rises not in spectacle
but in tremor…
lifting itself from the cooled remains
of palms that once waved at a king.

It carries the memory of procession
without the illusion of permanence.
It knows the truth of Lent:
that everything green will fade,
that every cheer will thin,
that even devotion must pass through fire
to mean what it claims.

Dust to dust.

The moth does not argue with this.
It is made of it.

It lifts through the thin blue of morning,
ash sifting from its wings like whispered psalms.
Not erased.
Not restored to what was.

Simply risen enough
to move.

And when the light finds it,
it does not glow like a firefly at night.
It does not blaze against the dark.

It drifts in daylight…
holy in its smallness,
unlit,
unafraid.

For the holiest fireflies never glowed.
The dust upon their wings
was prayer enough in the daylight.