Ash Wed... the journey begins

This year we’ll be looking at a number of things; our health ministry team will be looking at efforts to encourage Physical Health in various ways as a means of taking on some positive health behaviors during Lent, we’ll be looking at the idea of pilgrimage in various ways, and we have some Lenten evenings planned on Tuesdays during Lent.

But today though, our Lenten Journey begins. It begins with Ash Wednesday. Ash – A pretty stark reminder of our mortality.

Here is a meditation from Deacon Patricia Marks from an Episcopal Church in Georgia from a few years back: God Bless!

Lenten Meditations – By Deacon Patricia Marks, Christ Episcopal Church, Valdosta Georgia, 2006

Ash Wednesday

Ashes. Dead in the hand—dark and powdery, with a strange oiliness reminiscent of smoothing once living. Ashes. Indistinguishable remains of something, anything. The final end, when all is charred and reduced beyond recognition, beyond, it would seem, all hope.

Ash Wednesday is a reminder that we have died to this world, It is a reminder that we must die to our intemperate love of worldly things, our vainglorious exploitation of people and environment, our anger, envy, and hypocrisy.

And we die with a with a gesture. Look, we say, this black smudge on our foreheads has marked us as those who know what we have done. We have laid waste our Eden, twisted our enormous potential into war, disease, and hunger. On this day we acknowledge our wrongdoing and more: we acknowledge our impermanence. This smudge on our foreheads marks us those who have soberly looked Death in the face and called him Brother.

Today, we confess that we are dust.

Yet that smudge is the sign of the cross, the hope that arises from ground zero. The ashes with which we are marked were once vibrant and green; they are the remains of the palms we carried last year to hail the Messiah’s coming.

These palms, dried and burned, become the ashen crosses we carry into Lent, where the sign of death—the ashes—becomes the sign of life—the cross! And bowed down in penitence for giving our heart, soul, and mind to other loves than God, for loving ourselves more than our brothers and sisters, we are scrubbed clean and set back on our feet . . .

. . . so that we may go back on our knees in Eucharistic thanksgiving.

The wonder is that on the day of fasting that begins a forty-day trek into the wilderness of our own selves, we are fed abundantly. No matter how many wolves howl in that wilderness, we carry with us a promise. We have looked Life in the face and know that we are God’s children.

The ashes will wash off, but the cross is inscribed on our hearts. That is what gives us the courage to go into the world to love and serve the Lord, giving thanks for the power of his grace.