Lent Day 1: Ashes

I've thought about death a lot in the past two years. 

I bet you have, too.

I wouldn't say I've become obsessed with it, exactly. But beginning in early 2020 with the pandemic, and continuing into 2021 when I turned a new, big, round number on my birthday, and even when the little things--aches and pains--reminded me of my age, and the limitations of human bodies... well.  I've thought about death. 

I've imagined my own death, sure, but more than that, I've run the scenarios that might lead to the deaths of the people I love. My partner, for whom every day after thirty was a glorious gift. My children, who moved home for a while to remind me of how much I love them, but then had the audacity to move back into the world with all its threats and indifference to my love. My family, my friends, close and far. My congregants, the people I love because my work introduced me to them, and then, of course I fell in love with them. And if I love you, I have thought about your death.

It is Ash Wednesday today, and like countless other pastors, I've checked to make sure I had the ashes ready. (I do. Thanks Scott!) 

The ashes we put on one another's heads on Ash Wednesday are meant to remind us of death--there's really no getting away from that. But they remind us of other things, too. Because they are the burnt up remnants of the dried palms we carried on a Palm Sunday, they remind us of how quickly things can change--how Jesus went from being adored and admired to being strung up on a tree, lickety split. Ashes also remind us of the earth, the dust of the earth, from which, it is said, God created humanity. (Evolutionarily, add a gazillion years or so, and I think this is more or less right, but scientists, feel free to correct me.) 

But that creation part... if we stay with that, and maybe even stay with the image of God playing in the mud, which God seems to have done, we find something else at play. God is creating something (us), not because God must, but because God can. God is creating humanity--fractious, cranky, often not-getting-it-right us--because God needs us. Not in the sense that God can't get along without us, but in the sense that God is so purely and essentially love, that God's love must have a direct object, and that would seem to be us. 

God creates us to love us. That's the truth behind the ashes. Remembering that we are "beloved dust"* opens our eyes and hearts to a season that, sure, has its ups and downs, but that always returns home to that love. 

God creates us, beloved dust that we are, to love us. Let's start there.

~~~

Throughout Lent I will be trying to write here. No promises of every day, but a sincere effort, that I do promise. Some of the thoughts I will be sharing will reflect the themes suggested by @sanctifiedart's Lenten series "Full to the Brim," I will indicate these by use of *.