Standing in Line for Ashes

This coming Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent. Maybe for you this day will be like any other. Or maybe you will go about your day but imagine a swipe of ash across your forehead. Or maybe, like me, you will go to a service, stand in line with others—likely some who are stripped bare or who carry a quiet grief or any number of everyday anxieties—and a minister or priest will make the sign of a cross on your forehead using ash from palms burned from last year’s Palm Sunday.

My friend Daniel Thomas has just released a new collection of his poetry, Leaving the Base Camp at Dawn. The poems explore how a long relationship of love is like a spiritual practice, and this exploration often comes disguised as narrative about forging streams and climbing mountains. A couple weeks ago I started reading his book and came upon the poem “Ash Wednesday.” I read it. Then read it again. And again. I closed the book and opened it and read it yet again. Please read it now yourself.

Go to this link. Read.

Then scroll to the bottom of the page and listen to Dan reading the poem. Reading and listening are two different things.

Carry the words with you and the way they made you feel into the beginning of Lent. Read and listen in imagination or anticipation of ash on your forehead, of standing in a “ragged line,” of carrying or observing “grief concealed.” 

~~~

[Photo: a field in February.]

Ashes to go

A picture in the current issue of Sojourners magazine caught my eye. On a city sidewalk stand two women. One is wearing a clerical robe. The other is a wearing a winter jacket, and, to me, it appears she has the beginning of tears in her eyes. The woman in the robe is marking the woman in the jacket with the sign of the cross on her forehead. It is Ash Wednesday. Instead of waiting for this woman and perhaps a man walking behind her and a couple running to their bus and an untold number of others to come inside a church, the church is going out to meet them. During the last month I've been slowly reading through the gospel of John. Here Jesus is at a wedding, here he is just walking along, here he is in the countryside, here he is getting water at a well, here he is by the sea, here he is walking ON the sea, here he is on a mountain ridge. All the while, he is meeting people where they are.

This short video expands on the story in the magazine picture. You can see the pair I described above at about 45 seconds in. It's quite a moving video; I hope you'll have the two minutes to take a look.

~~~

[Photo: taken of a staircase at St. John's University]

Together on Ash Wednesday

Yesterday, Ash Wednesday. The service at my church was in the evening and when I looked at the calendar late in the afternoon found that it was half hour earlier than I thought. I hadn't yet come to the stopping point in my work project and had no dinner plan and would have to rush to get there on time and it looked cold outside and I was tired. So many reasons to stay home. I told myself that individual devotion was what mattered, and that I could as easily attend to the reminder of Ash Wednesday (From dust you came and to dust you will return) and the call of Ash Wednesday (Repent and believe) at home. But I went. Sitting in the pews with others who had probably also rushed to get there; listening together to the spoken Word; standing in a long line to receive the streaks of ash (the burned byproduct of palms waved by this same group the Palm Sunday before) and the bread and the cup; watching the children and the teens; bearing each other's burdens in post-service conversation and with promises to pray, I was reminded. We're in this together.