Ash Wednesday
“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
Far from being a season of deprivation and sadness, the Christian season of Lent is one of great joy and fierce dedication. The joy comes partly from the realization and acceptance of the phrase “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” But why would such a seemingly depressing idea bring joy? It is because this profound and universal truth, a truth that we all know and yet tend to forget, is made clear to us by the celebration of it. The stark truth of our mortality is poetically plain to us. We not only believe it, we know it to be true, and, in the celebration of Ash Wednesday, we embrace it. The joy comes from the relief of seeing and accepting truth. It is like being given a tool that is very useful, that can shape or reshape your life.
Embracing this truth brings a clarity of mind that gives us new dedication and a vision of how we can live a fine life. It is the same realization that comes in the Buddhist practice of meditating on a skull or pile of human bones. The bones, like the ashes, tell a true story. We are no longer living in an illusion. This is something we can work with.
The service of Ash Wednesday is generally a service of prayer, confession, and readings followed by the “imposition” of the ashes. These are the ashes of palm fronds from the previous Good Friday celebration. The fronds are kept, later burned, and the ashes are used in the service. The ashes represent the “dust”. Following the imposition there is the usual eucharist (communion). See http://www.bcponline.org/SpecialDays/ashwed.html for the Episcopal litany.
The prayers, confession, and readings all put us on our knees before God who we acknowledge as the best focus of our lives. In the readings, especially Psalm 51, we take full responsibility for all we have done in our lives, good and bad. In our confession, we acknowledge this again, and vow to change for the better. We admit, in this Ash Wednesday service, that, despite what we want to think, we are in fact weak and need help. We ask God, who has, like a Father/Mother, created us, to help us as a parent would help a child. So far, none of this requires any faith to speak of. The next part does.
For here, having been reminded of our own weakness and our own mortality, we ask and, in faith, expect God to guide us along the path we now walk, this Lenten path, through the 40 days in the wilderness. This self-imposed wilderness is, of course, a wonderful blessing, because here is the place where we quiet down, shed unnecessary things, find what is real, and find ourselves.
The happy news is that we come from dust and to dust we return. And so, our whole life is spent right here and right now . Here and now is what we must come to honor and love.
In the Wilderness
It’s night, the air has gotten a chill, but the rock ledge we sit on is still warm from the desert sun. We are tired from our day. We build a little fire. It becomes a warm center to the universe. Up there, the rest of the universe sparkles, worlds spinning quietly away into the deepness of it. The mind reels again at the thought of it. Down there, in the desert valley below, the rest of the universe sparkles too. Little sparkles of other fires in little villages near a quiet sea.
He sits with me and we roast a little fish on the fire. We don’t talk much. There is no need. A peace has descended on us. Our vision is clear. We just breathe, and eat our fish, and stare into the fire. This place has everything. A rock with a view, and a companion for the ages…
This was the picture that came to me the first time I practiced the holy season of Lent, a time of reflection in the wilderness, a time of returning to what is true, and a time of honest and earnest practice in seeing who we really are, the nature of the universe, and where our best effort in life should lie.
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