Song for Ash Wednesday

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, and as I said to my mother yesterday on the phone, the beginning of Lent has caught me off-guard. The whole world feels as though it's been in the Lenten season, I told her, and we're just about to get a few glimmers of hope. Why can't Lent start at the end of January and Easter burst forth joyfully, like a firework, with the first crocus?

I may take the three girls down for a service at the college tomorrow, but I really don't feel like it. Tomorrow's going to be beautiful outside, after a long rash of frigid weather, and besides, it makes me so sad to see my beautiful, healthy children marked with ash and to hear that we are all dust and to the dust we will return. And they, so unsuspecting! Give me Easter, and the water of baptism sprinkled upon us. No ashes.

Here's the bleak reality, though: even if I keep their smooth, unwrinkled foreheads from ashes, the mark is still upon them. They are dust, and to dust they will return. The truth that someday the faces I love will disappear into the earth is not one I care to dwell on too long. Long ago I felt that this Christian hope we profess would seem easier to believe in if, at death, we disappeared completely with a puff of smoke, or perhaps our bodies broke into something wonderful, butterflies, perhaps (or moths or crickets, depending on our dispositions) and flew away into the eternity, an eternity that is unmapped and completely mysterious.

But I love bodies. I love my funky accordion-pregnant-with-three belly. I love Elspeth's bitten fingernails and her tough little toes. I love the sprinkle of freckles under Merry's right eye. I love Beatrix's jagged new teeth and I love Martin's solid, large hands, mapped with lines that have been the same all his life. I love my Dad's wild white hair and my mother's laugh lines. I love. . .

Dust? Everything in me cries, NO! Not dust! And yet, there we all go, filing down to a priest to receive our cross of ashes.

In the affirmation of our temporal bodies and our brief blip on this fragile earth, I affirm life, the precious life breathed into every person and tree and bird on this planet. And I affirm that life is sudden and brief. I bow my head with humility when I repeat that we are all made from the same substance. Despite our disparate journeys, despite those we heal or wound or birth or kill, we will all end up as dust.

I remember the absolute terror I felt once at a fairly young age (perhaps sixteen or so), when I considered suddenly that I had the power to end my own life. It was not that I wanted to die--this realization did not spring from depression--it was just that I saw the vulnerability of my own naked wrist, and the fact that if I chose, I could destroy it. For a moment, I peeked through the veneer of my own speedy, gorgeous youth and realized that not only was I naked to great harm, I was also capable of inflicting great harm.

This sort of horror returns to me when I hear about or see pictures of senseless killing and destruction. Most of the time I feel fairly hopeful about humans and myself, but news like this makes me feel powerless and confused. The realities of our broken world are not "good dinnertime conversation;" they do not make for pleasant reading; they are not helpful in trying to live carefree and carelessly. They force us into grief, a mourning for ourselves and for each other and for the world. Mercy! we cry, and in anger, Why? Why? Most merciful God, why?

Must we be broken? Must those we love be taken into places where we cannot comfort them? The cross of ashes says, Yes. In that cross lies so much acceptance, so much letting go, so much trust. It is not the cross of giddy optimism and false promises that if we trust, everything will be okay. No, this cross, the same cross Jesus bore on his own back, demands that we look, with trembling, at the face of death, of ugliness, of horror and fear. And then, God! What idiots we must seem! We offer up our foreheads and receive that cross. And somehow, as we bear that cross of blood, of body dust, of earth dirt, we find our fear cast out and receive the mysterious mercy.

And so lent begins with wailing. In my own rational, optimistic mind, I am deeply uncomfortable with wailing. And yet we are called, like those before us and those who will follow, to grieve.