Confession, and Consolation
What do we do when it's all too much? Like now - when it's all waaay too much...
Yesterday was Ash Wednesday, a profoundly significant day in the Christian tradition.
Confession: I didn’t observe Ash Wednesday
To be more precise, I didn’t observe it in the formal way I have for several decades. [*Maybe you know I’m ordained in the United Methodist Church, recently retired? So, for a few decades, I’ve led and participated in the formal worship experience of marking ourselves with the sign of the cross, using ashes as the marker.]
Yesterday, I didn’t do that. I didn’t say or hear the words, or wear the dark cross-shaped smudge that reminds us to “remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.” Morbid? Yes, that’s the point. We acknowledge our mortality.
And maybe it’s hubris on my part, but I don’t need reminding. I remember. Always. Constantly. Tom’s ashes, my sister’s ashes, my father’s ashes – I remember. Ashes and dust, everywhere.
So, yesterday, instead of going to church, I fed the birds. They too are mortal. But for now they fly, they sing, they are alive, and feeding them is the least I can do to honor their presence before they are gone. It’s a practice of bearing witness, a little seed of gratitude.
All of life is living, and dying. This is the beautiful truth.
And I don’t know about you, but the immensity of this privilege of life and the ever-present stark evidence of mortality undoes me on the regular. It’s too much. In a good way. And in a terrifying way. In a sobering way. In a Don’t miss this! Don’t waste this! way.
And that’s the consolation: This is gift. All of it. Gift and grace.
This messy, terrifying world, full of messy broken sometimes-beautiful-but-sometimes-awful humans doing sometimes-beautiful-but-sometimes-awful things like feeding the birds but also failing to care for the fragile and the frightened – all of this is a gift, an invitation to steward, to tend, to nurture. To love.
It’s overwhelming, isn’t it? And sometimes the overwhelm can be paralyzing. Like watching the news, or the weather, or a newborn infant, or the gentle care with which the nurse takes blood for the labwork, or the kid on the bike wheeling in joy, or the tender silent moment of understanding when we see the one we love and we know we too are seen, or we miss the one we love and we know the love remains.
And so: We listen to one another. We see one another. We take a brave step or two in the direction of connection. We choose compassion. We choose mercy. We choose generosity of spirit, and generosity of resources. We choose justice. We feed the bird-fragile family of humanity, we fill a giant tray of grace and set it out for everyone. This is how we resist the darkness, this is how we wage hope. This is how we live.
Toward the Center
One step
again
one more
toward the Center
i don't know
Ash Wednesday asking questions without answers
again
tears like the tides
eternal and salty
again
another step
toward the longing
toward the absence
in the presence
of the ashes always here
this jar of ache
this heart of hope
this healing wounded walk
through questions
i can't know
the whole
the holy
Tell me, where are you finding consolation?
How are you waging hope?
How are you loving the world today?
Thank you for this beautiful passage. Yes, it all can be too much and I am finding it a challenge to see the good these days. Losing several family members in very tragic ways has me in a "questioning" stage. I am thankful to be back in the Lowcountry for Spring and early summer. Seeing the flowers getting ready to bloom and the beautiful water views brings me joy.
Last night, as I received ashes at one of the alters where you've dispensed ashes in your service as a pastor, the enormity of what we are saying on Ash Wednesday really hit me. I probably should say the reality of what we are saying. And it was good. How weird is that? Perhaps one of the wonderful things about believing in a God who will love us forever is that we can face mortality in a profoundly different way. As Charles Wesley wrote, "Where O death is now thy sting?"