Month: February 2021

We have 40 days. 
We should be able to do something with that. 
  
Old Noah bobbed
up and down in hell for that long. 
Carcass like driftwood sounding Morse code outside—
     —All has been killed here. 
  
When the sun shone again, even the giraffe had to
     step high not to knock over the
     piles of family trees now cut down
     to debris. 
  
Who gets off in a world like that? 
58,000 names on a sloping wall. 
20 children to 1 gunman. 
  
Still,
the old man walks down the plank. 
When we’ve had
     enough,
     start something new. 
We have 40 days. 
  
Let us go into the wilderness where
God wants to take us. 
Learn to trust in what we cannot
earn.  God will be our shepherd who
feeds us, and
  
our daily bread, God’s daily word. 
  
Throw down the weapons that defend
and define.  Be known as those
who have come through the waters carrying in our
hands a towel and basin, and
  
upon our backs, a cross. 
  
In the wilderness, there is only one
  Beloved Community to which
  all belong. 
Let us be a people who
walk together. 

We will
 starve ourselves of hatred.  And
 feast on love.  Sacrifice
 power for humility. 
 Look out over the world and call it
 our temple of service. 
  
Let us go into the wilderness. 
 

Ash Wednesday.  What does the name mean to you?  If you didn’t know that on this day, millions of Christians around the world—from Catholics to Protestants, Baptists to Episcopalians, Rhode Island to Russia—put ashes on their foreheads in the sign of the cross to remind ourselves that we belong to the God who through death gives life, what would you think this day is all about? 

Two words: ash and Wednesday.  Ash is the image of gray, of black.  It is color without being colorful.  It is what’s left over after the fire.  After the house and everything we have loved and worked our whole life for is burned up. 

After the cigarette we’ve been dragging on all day long—to distract ourselves, to calm ourselves, to keep ourselves from having to deal with what’s hard—after we’ve run out of easier and better options, ash is what’s left. 

After this life is over, at 5 or 95, and our last breath has escaped us, and the friends and family gather around to sum us up in eulogy and song, and the preacher says, “Into your hands, Almighty God, we commend your servant,” ash is the part of us that gets lowered into the ground, or spread to the wind. 

Ash is what remains of us when nothing else does.  When all the identifying markers have rotted to bone, and bone has deteriorated beyond recognition, ash is that part of us that goes out into the ether, and becomes one again with the earth. 

Wednesday is that day of the week we work so hard to get to, and then to get over. Hump Day.  It’s not the beginning, or the end. It’s just, the middle.  It’s not Sunday or Monday—full of newness and possibility. Nor is it Friday—full of relief and completion.  It’s just Wednesday.  To make it even less significant, less wanting, today we call it Ash Wednesday.

It shouldn’t surprise us, perhaps, to discover that the setting for Ash Wednesday is the wilderness.  For like Wednesdays, the wilderness is just out there, in the middle somewhere.  People who find themselves in a wilderness will struggle to know which way they came from, or which way they are going.  The land can look vast, empty, and desolate, with few signs of life, and no road signs to follow.  Whatever regrets we have about the past are just that. We can’t go back now.  We’ll have to deal.  Should I turn to the left or to the right? Which way is north, and which way south?  Stuck in nowhere land, we sit down in the only seat available—the ground itself—to think about who we are, and what we’re becoming. 

The ground, of course, is the place of our ending.  It’s the ash heap. And yet, the fact that we are here, that we are still pulsing, tells us that we are not ended, and the ash heap may be good for more than just endings.  It may also be good for beginning again.

So sit down today. Right where you are. On the ground. The same and only ground everyone else has to sit on. Sit deep. Feel the cold, hard ash of the earth. Know the embrace of God our Maker. And give thanks that this is the place, and this is the time, and this is the stuff of our redemption.