We kick off our Lenten Writing Project with a late (technically it's now Thursday, but God's grace is magnanimous) Ash Wednesday post. Read the sidebar for directions on how to participate, and I hope that you do!
If this blog inspires you to post thoughts you have on faith, welcome!
If you want to post things you have written in the past that are relevant to the day's topic, welcome!
If you only post a few times, welcome!
One of the great things about this project is that, in setting aside time to write about your thoughts about God, your relationship with God, and God's creation (including yourself) and God's world, you are deepening your connection with the divine. As writers, we are always looking for ways to have more discipline in our writing. What better season to do this than Lent?
So start right now. Commit to *try* to write each of the 40 days of Lent. If you fall short, guess what? God is still there, cheering you on for your next piece - and so is a whole community of Spirit 2 Spirit writers.
Today's writing prompt is about what you think Ash Wednesday is all about. Does it give you the creeeps with the ashes on the forehead and reminder of mortality? Is it a time of denial or of theological curiosity? Is it a time that you look forward to or that you have deep wounds or bad feelings about? What is your understanding of ashes on foreheads? Do you envision any link to stardust? Tell us everything you want to share!
When I first thought about this prompt, I realised I had to make a distinction between Ash Wednesday and Lent. Before I describe what Lent means to me, I will wait to see if there is a prompt.
ReplyDeleteSimply said, Ash Wednesday for me is the beginning of Lent. The day before is Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, Pancake Tuesday, Carnival, etc.; the last day of indulgence (in the non-theological sense), when alcohol, food, sex, and most likely many other stimulants and intoxicants for the senses are consumed in inordinate quantities. Ash Wednesday, then, is "the morning after", when many will wake up and say "I am never going to do that again" and don't say "until next year, maybe".
Ash Wednesday for me is also a day of action. In the days and weeks running up to Ash Wednesday, I think about what I am going to do (or not do) for Lent. What am I going to do (or not do) this year to strengthen my spirituality? What am I going to do (or not do) this year to improve my relationships with my family, my friends, my neighbors, my colleagues, my environment, and even people I will never meet (which are all actually intricately related to spirituality)? Ash Wednesday is when I convert these thoughts and contemplations into action. Actually, this is not all that different from New Year's Resolutions, except the focus is more explicitly on spirituality than on general self-improvement (and again, the two focii are intricately related to one another).
While I have spent many Lenten seasons developing my spirituality in different ways, I have not, until now, thought much about Ash Wednesday itself. I am thankful for the opportunity to spend a bit of time thinking about this one day. I am also thankful for the opportunity to blow off the dust and brush off the cobwebs of my writing faculties. I hope I can maintain the enthusiasm and strengthen my spirituality through writing.
-- Aaron
Well said, Aaron! It is a bit like New Year for me too - a time to assess and start fresh. I hope that I get to see more writing from you, when you get the chance - don't worry about writing every day, but even spending a little time in contemplation when you can is a great way to re-evaluate where you stand, right? Great to hear from you : )
DeleteIt tickled me to see C with a similar approach. :)
DeleteYes Aaron, self reflection is one of the ways we become. Being intentional about s it's own gift.
DeleteReflections on Ash, on a Wednesday
ReplyDeleteDoug Millar 2/27/20
I turned the plate over and there was my name- the last one in a long list that stretched back almost a hundred years. “Pastors of Nordland Lutheran Church”, it said. I flipped over the plate and there was a black and white picture of the little country church I served in in 1977. It held about a hundred people and looked like a lot of others. It was built in the 1880’s and was one of the first buildings in the town. I was the last pastor listed because I was the one who ordered the plates to be made and sold back then. I hadn’t seen one since 1978. I got this one off an internet auction site. Someone brought it to Montana at some point and it found its way to a rummage sale and then on line. As I held it I couldn’t believe my good fortune.
Of course, seeing the plate and the picture brought back a flood of memories. I remembered the dusty road in front of the church, the embossed tin plate on the walls and the ceiling. I remembered that the bell rope used to come off the pulley pretty often and it would leave us without a bell until we could get someone out to fix it. That is, until I trained a group of normally mischievous boys, who used to sneak up on the roof anyway, how to fix it. People would watch and call out to them to be careful and worry about their safety, not knowing all the other unsupervised visits they had made to the same spot- many at night.
I often thought that if I made it to heaven, I wouldn’t occupy a seat in the front pew or the pulpit. I always felt more comfortable on the kitchen steps with a cup of coffee and maybe a guitar, talking to someone or playing a favorite song or tune.
I remember the time I cleaned out the old crusty percolator coffee pot the church had. I got it to make pretty good coffee one Saturday. The Sunday morning kitchen crew evidently had a different standard and couldn’t figure out how the coffee suddenly tasted so bad. They threw it out and got a new one. I never said anything.
One of my great victories was to finally talk them into replacing the WWII hand cranked mimeograph with a newer electric one. The old one had to be constantly re assembled as the gears and screws kept falling out of it. I was impressed that the company in Fargo where we got the newer one took it in trade. It is sad to think there might have been some poor organization or church for which the old thing would be a welcome upgrade.
All of these memories and more seemingly rose up out of the plate like big flakes of ash from a fire and were wafted away from my sight. Many pieces had faces on them of people who probably passed away long ago. Ole, Hilda, the Arnesons, Orville and Torvil were some of them. Ash I suppose. Those old memories are just ash.
I wonder, though, if some of that ash became fertilizer for the continued “doings” at the church and the people who kept it going. Maybe there is a newer plate somewhere.
Fun to read about the memories of the church I spent my first yeas in. I think I would like to hear a series of stories about an "Orville and Torvil duo". Perhaps inept crime fighting (no disrespect to the actual people). Definitely there were ashes, but perhaps there is some phoenix-like rebirth that can come from it. As you looked at the plate, no doubt you could see your face reflected off the surface, superimposed onto the picture of the church. The seeds of your ministry are reflected in the holy shenanigans of the bellboys as well.
Delete10-year-old C's answers:
ReplyDeleteThe way I feel about Ash Wednesday is that it is time for change - it's almost like a religious new year - you make resolutions to change and a lot of times you change something and put something in.
The way I feel about the ash on our foreheads, I feel like God is saying 'you are dust' because we have made mistakes in the year and I feel like God is saying, "You are dust because you have made mistakes, but I am taking your dust and making it stardust because even though you'll still make mistakes, I forgive you". Then next year we come back and have made more mistakes, but he forgives us and turns us into stardust.
I find Ash Wednesday very evocative - the contrition and the ashes are so ancient and guttural. Rituals and symbols are inn some ways poetry i n themselves - if we get out of the way. Two writings for this year
ReplyDeleteBlown Away
Blown away by a breath
Floating in the air
Landing in the cracks
Ashes
will get away from you
Blown away by a breath
Floating in the air
Landing in the cracks
Your ashes
will slip away from me
Carried away by the Spirit
Floating toward home
Landing in love
You
Will never get away from Grace
Ashes and Signs
Six months ago I scattered my wife’s ashes,
in a place that is holy for both of us.
My son’s ashes sit on my mantle,
where they have been for the last two months,
a sacred reminder of his short life.
In the middle of this week
on Ash Wednesday,
I will gather with friends
and I will have ashes smudged on my forehead,
a reminder of my own mortality.
I am not sure I need that reminder this year.
I have lived with and am still living intimately
with ashes already
I walk in the valley of the shadow of death.
But those ashes will be smudged
in the sign of an empty cross,
a sign that life is bigger than death
a sign that hope is greater than despair
a sign that love will hold us
when time no longer does.
That hope gives breath to this old body.
A body that's on its own journey towards ashes,
and on its own pilgrimage towards love.
Once again, I audibly said "wow" after reading something you have written. I always look forward to reading what you write and I am honored to get to see it here - your raw, real, 'brutiful' work.
DeleteMy daughters are well-acquainted with my love for Oingo Boingo. I played “Dead Man’s Party” on the way to the Ash Wednesday service this year and they were absolutely not impressed.
ReplyDeleteWe listened to “It’s a dead man’s party, who could ask for more…everybody’s coming leave your body at the door…” on our way hear “From dust you were created, to dust you will return” and have that smudge of ash, created from burning palms from last year, waved in joyous celebration before things got completely off the hook and the confusing and terrifying narrative of Good Friday set in.
Honestly, I have to work to reclaim Ash Wednesday from the traditional narrative. I don’t love the idea of remembering my mortality by smudging that non-subtle black – almost aggressive-looking cross on my head. It’s like shouting, ‘I’m going to die one day – we all are” when we are all working so hard to stay alive and do all the things. It definitely magnifies this feeling to have your own children smudged with that mark. Everyone gets the mark in the whole congregation and we sit during the rest of the service with crosses on our foreheads feeling very different than when we get marked with the invisible oil at our baptism and you are “marked by the cross Christ forever”.
But are they that different?
The oil at baptism is also scented with ancient embalming scents. It is also marked on your forehead and even when no one else can see it, you can still smell it. It also marks that you will one day die, but don’t forget that death is not the end of the story because we are God’s story.
I love the poem by Jan Richardson who states, “So let us not be marked for sorrow…but for claiming what God can do within the dust, within the dirt, within the stuff of which the world is made and the stars that blaze in our bones and the galaxies that spiral inside the smudge we bear”.
Looking at it this way, the ash is a mark of personal renewal to be what God has planned us to be: our best selves, our hopes and dreams, a force of love in this world. And love can be very forceful and insistent. That persistent love of a parent when their child is in their own wilderness of self-destruction. That never-faltering love of a spouse when their loved one is feeling weak or closed off. That magnanimous love of a child for their parent, who is trying their best to give a love that they know is imperfect at best – maybe screwing their child up at worst. That love of God for us, God’s creation. Our very breath is tangled up in God. God is there, holding our hand for every wonderful – and terrible – decision we make and God both celebrates and weeps for us and with us during all of it.
This year at the Ash Wednesday service, one of my youngest preschool students was carried up by her dad to get ashes on her forehead with the others. She was tiny and her light brown curls bounced around her forehead and cheeks as she smiled delightedly the whole time. Her Dad received ashes on his forehead first, and then it was her turn. Her smile came from her eyes first and then her sweet little mouth as she peered around at her Daddy and then at the congregation, everyone sitting stoically with black crosses on their foreheads. She seemed thrilled to be part of this silly and fun grown up tradition of getting messy foreheads. Her own hands had just been covered in mud and sand earlier in the day in the mud kitchen outside. It was so fun to get deep into God’s creation and let the beautiful chaos reach all the way up to her elbows – then just wash it off and feel fresh and then start again the next day. The grown ups were finally beginning to understand.