From Ashes

Ash Wednesday. Standing in the nave at St. Martin, I gaze up at the figure of Christ that hovers between the wood-paneled eaves. His posture straight and his face serene, he seems not to hang from the cross, but to lift it with the backs of his hands.

Liturgical worship is brand new to me, so each season unfolds like a child’s first Christmas, first ride on the city bus, first visit to the sea shore. What will I see? What will I hear? What will I feel?

This is what I feel, kneeling at the communion rail with ashes drying into the creases of my forehead: I feel lost. Lost isn’t the right word, I decide later. Lost is when you don’t know where you are. What is the right word, when you know where you are, and you know where you have been – but have no idea where you’re going next? Perhaps the word is human.

I was born on Ash Wednesday. This bit of trivia emerges like a memory stored in the bones. Ashes for sorrow. Ashes for grief. Ashes for penitence. Ashes for loss.

We all have our own ashes. We politely brush them into the urns of our hearts, where no one has to look at them. The ashes settle into a black and solid thing, until some stray memory or fresh injury shakes us, stirring up the dust.

One day a year, we wear our ashes on the outside. We see each other as we are. We confess that we are dust.

Ashes look like devastation, but they produce cleansing and renewal. Our ancestors used ashes to soften lye soap. We still spread wood ash on the garden to fertilize the soil.

So I kneel beneath this levitating Jesus in a place still exotic with new words and practices, yet as warm as a little nest. I am still the stranger, the vagabond who wanders in off the street to eat and drink and find warmth. Always finding what I need, I offer back everything, though my “everything” is but rags.

I’m still surprised when no one asks, “Why are you here?” Maybe no one asks because we are all vagabonds. We have all found the same warmth in each other, the same meat and drink in his body and his blood.

So we share this journey through the hope of Advent, the joy of Christmas, and the wonder of Epiphany. Now we prepare ourselves for the journey to the cross.

The church seasons play out like a perpetual catechism. They school us annually in the birth, life, death and resurrection of Christ, and the birth and mission of the Church. We remember who God is. We learn again who we are.

In Lent, we begin with ashes, but God does not leave us there.

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