Awareness of Ashiness

I have written before about being an ash smudger on Ash Wednesday; for example, see this post, where I said, "I smudged each forehead at the back of the church, and when we were done, I walked to the altar with my little pot of ashes.  I turned to go back to my seat and felt breathless at the sight of the whole sanctuary full of smudged foreheads."

On Wednesday, I was an ash smudger again.  I was at the front of the church where people came up and knelt at the rail or stood.  I smudged each forehead and felt this overwhelming tenderness.

This year felt different from past years.  There have been years where I've felt surrounded by wreckage.  This is not one of those years.  But I am in an Ash Wednesday frame of mind, which I wrote about in this blog post:  "I am wrestling with profound sadness this year, a sadness which is both part of the human condition (everything we love will be lost!) and unique to me (colleagues gone, teachers gone, houses and offices gone, writing projects slipped away, lonely, lost, lonely, lonely, lonely)."

A few weeks ago, I heard about a former colleague who has pancreatic cancer and isn't likely to be with us next year.  Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, I got the news that my favorite undergraduate English professor died. 

As parishioners came forward, I realized how many of us are in tenuous situations:  OK for now, but fearful of the cancer that may come back, the depression that may roar up, family members causing heartache, on and on I could go.

I realize that in many ways, my realization is part of the whole purpose of Ash Wednesday, to remind us that life is short and uncertain.  Some years, that realization is more sobering than others.  This year I felt shaken to my shoes.

Now to use that Ash Wednesday insight to move me to more gratitude.  Now to use that awareness of our impending ashiness to prompt me to work on projects.  Let me remember to tell everyone how much I love them, while they are still here to hear those words.
 

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, March 9, 2014:

First Reading: Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7

Psalm: Psalm 32

Second Reading: Romans 5:12-19

Gospel: Matthew 4:1-11


This week's Gospel tells us the story of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness. Notice that Jesus is human in his temptations: he is tempted by the ideas of fame, power, and immortality.  Henri Nouwen says, "There [in the desert] he was tempted with the three compulsions of the world:  to be relevant ('turn stones into loaves'), to be spectacular ('throw yourself down'), and to be powerful ('I will give you all these kingdoms')" (Show Me the Way, p. 82, excerpted from Way of the Heart).

In her book, Things Seen and Unseen, Nora Gallagher points out that Jesus will indeed accomplish these things that Satan asks him to do. Jesus will reverse these days in the desert: he will multiply bread, he will hurl himself from the cliff of his crucifixion and be caught by angels, he will be worshipped, but by humbling himself in service (page 85).

Of course, we, too are tempted. We are tempted as a church. We want to be powerful. Many of us look back to a time when the church in America was a social force, when everyone went, and not just once a week. We want to be important. We want to be the megachurch, not the small church.

Just as Jesus went to the desert as a spiritual quest, the church, too, needs a time of discernment to discover the kind of church we want to become. And we, as individual humans, need to spend some time in the wilderness as we wrestle temptations and discern our the true purpose of our lives.

Gallagher says that we face the same kinds of temptations that Jesus did: “Magical powers, helplessness, rescue, fame and power—they beckon me every day of my life. Just around the corner lies happiness; a new lover will provide lasting bliss; if I had what she has then I would be . . . They are the fantasies, the illusions, that suck out my vitality, that keep me from discovering my own rich reality. To come to terms with illusion is one of the great jobs of our lives: to discern what is fantasy and what is reality, what is dead and what is alive, what is narcotic and what is food” (page 84).

We may want to tell ourselves that Jesus could resist temptations because of his Divine side. But I would posit that Jesus' special powers of resistance were less about his supernatural side, and more about his spiritual discipline. He's in the wilderness, making a retreat to pray, when he’s tempted. He resists. Throughout the life of Jesus, we see him hard at work honing his powers through his spiritual practices.

Here's the good news. These practices are available to you, as well. Great disciples are not born, they are created. How? We turn ourselves into great disciples the same way that a doughy person transforms himself or herself into a great athlete, the same way that a creative person becomes a great artist. We show up, day after day, logging the training miles, working on our art.

In his book Living the Resurrection, Eugene H. Peterson lists the ways we form disciples:  celebrating the Eucharist, "visiting the prisoners, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, welcoming the stranger, healing the sick, working for justice, loving our enemies, raising our children, doing our everyday work to the glory of God" (p. 56).  He points out the ordinariness of these activities:  "It doesn't take a great deal of training or talent to do any of it" (56). 

Soon enough, we wake up to find out that we've transformed ourselves into different people.  And perhaps, along the way, we've helped to transform our communities into something that God intended for creation.

To Dust We Shall Return

When I was a child, I hated Ash Wednesday.  To me, the message of Ash Wednesday was that we weren’t good enough, we would never be good enough, and all too soon, we would die.

Did the Lutheran pastors of my childhood really preach that message?  Probably not.  But that was the message, I heard.  As I think about it, having a pastor smudge ash on a forehead and solemnly say, “Dust you are, and to dust you shall return” probably does seem excessively gloomy to an elementary school child.

As a grown-up, however, the message of Ash Wednesday seems increasingly relevant.  I remember one Ash Wednesday driving to services with my car windows rolled down.  As I drove past the latest development site, I smelled the burning of trees being cleared away to make room for a paved over shopping center/condo complex.  I heard the Ash Wednesday message in a different way that night.

The most poignant Ash Wednesday for me was the one where my mother-in-law lay unconscious in the ICU ward of the hospital.  I went to visit her before the service, and I saw the black cross of ash on her forehead.  I wondered if our pastor had already been by.

But then, I realized that all the patients in the ICU lay there with a black smudge on their foreheads.  I asked the nurse about it.  She told me that a priest had come through to bless everyone.  I wanted to ask her all sorts of theological questions about the implications of letting a priest smudge everyone without knowing their religious backgrounds, but I knew that she had patients to monitor, so I let it go.

My younger self would have been outraged, but my older self continues to ponder the implications of smudging crosses of ash on the foreheads of unconscious ICU patients.  The ICU is the place where I find my belief in resurrection most challenged; it seems that viruses and bacteria will inherit the kingdom of God long after they’ve killed us all off.

But after all, isn’t the ICU experience an essential element of the Ash Wednesday message?  We are here for such a short time. We try so hard to preserve what we have, thus ensuring that we will have to watch what we love flake away from us. We are dust, and we will return to dust sooner than we care to think about. As an adult, Ash Wednesday has become one of my favorite services. I need to be reminded of the importance of prioritizing, and that God's priorities may not match those that the world would tell me is important.

Ash Wednesday also reminds us that we are resurrection people.  We know that God is working to redeem creation in ways that we can't always see and don't often understand. We rinse the ashes out of our mouths with the Eucharist bread and wine. 

 

Possibilities for Lent: a Photo Essay

Today we prepare for Lent, as Mardi Gras and Shrove Tuesday offer us a last chance to use up all the luxuries we will forsake for the next 40 days, plus Sundays, plus Holy Week.

Will we go to a Shrove Tuesday pancake supper?  Will we bake a festive bread?

Most of us will not have time for bread baking or pancakes.  Hopefully we can carve a bit of time to think about our Lenten disciplines. 

Perhaps we will try to harness time by a practice of prayer.

Maybe we will simply meditate.  Maybe we will reflect on the way that light shifts through the window as the sun moves across the sky.

Maybe we will walk a labyrinth.

Hopefully we will return to our desks, to write a bit more often.

Is Weariness a Lenten Discipline?

Christians around the world are gearing up for Lent.  Some of us will give something up.  Some of us will add something.  We will probably hear a lot about our Lenten disciplines in the coming days.

It feels like we just travelled through Lent a month or two again.  I can't believe it's time for Lent again.

In past years, I've made all sorts of Lenten resolutions.  If you want to know more about the possibilities, click on the "Launch Into Lent" label in the column on the right of the screen.  If you're casting about for ideas, you'll find plenty of them.

This year, I'm going to take a low-key approach.  I'll return to Henri Nouwen's Show Me the Way.  It's got two readings and a prayer for each day of Lent.  The readings are taken from his other works, but they stand alone just fine.

I'll go to our church's contemplative service, but I won't be there every week.  Some weeks, I won't even go to church, because we have a lot of guests coming through during Lent.  They are not church going guests, and it feels inhospitable to say, "Make yourself at home; we're going to church."

I hope to do an art project that's not writing here or there.  I'll keep up with my various writing projects, but that's hardly a Lenten discipline; it's just something I do.

This year, I just feel weary.  Can weariness be a Lenten discipline?

Perhaps it can lead to my Lenten discipline.  Perhaps I should make a concentrated effort to pray about my weariness.  I can pray for those who are making me weary.  I can talk to God about the situations that make me so tired I can barely pull myself together to leave the house.  I can talk to God about my tiredness that comes from being in the house.

It's certainly not a splashy Lenten discipline.  It's quiet and contemplative.  It just may work.

A Poem for Transfiguration Sunday

Transfiguration Sunday puts me in mind of many things, the ways we long to be transfigured, the ways that life can transfigure us.  As I've gotten older, I've realized how many ways life is fragile, and that realization itself has transformed me.  I'm not going to get seethingly angry, especially about things that are out of my control.  Life is very, very short, and we are not here very long.

Those of you who read my poems, my blog posts, any of my writing at all--you recognize this theme. 

It's also interesting to me the many ways that we move through the liturgical year and the resonances that my haunt us.  This year I have a colleague who has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and a friend who struggles with the last stage of kidney failure.  It's also the time of year that is the anniversary of a different friend's mother's death after an agonizing struggle with breast cancer that moved to the brain.

Was I thinking of that friend and her mother when I wrote the poem below?  Probably.

This poem was published in The Healing Muse. It's part of my series of poems where I imagine Jesus moving through our modern lives (going to spin class, playing putt putt or softball, helping with hurricane clean up).

Transfiguration Sunday on the Cancer Ward

He waits with them because who knows
better how disconcerting
it is to discern one’s disjointed bones
dissolving into water. He remembers
how it feels to be forsaken.
He remembers feeling life flow out of him,
only a husk of his former humanity remaining.

Here, he can’t do much.
In a world of free will, cancer cells can multiply,
bright sons of the morning who would rather reign
in hell than serve in heaven.
Here on the cancer ward, he can’t do
much, but he does what he can.

He brings ice chips and water to those annoyed
by their drought desert mouths.
He offers consolation to the woman who complains
that she can see all her bones through her translucent skin.
He offers tales of transfiguration,
and holds out the hope of resurrection.
He reminisces with those who are too far
gone to remain on the earthly plane much longer.
They trade tales of what they’ll miss most:
crisp sheets on a fresh-made bed,
long lingering meals,
birdsong in the morning,
the change in light that signals a new season,
homemade bread,
the soft rains and gentle sunsets,
a perfect bottle of wine.

Another Way to Serve the Prayer Shawl Group

I have a friend who knits and crochets--she has other friends who knit and crochet.  A few months ago, she talked about all the odds and ends of yarn that she has.  She wondered what to do with them.  I offered to take them to my church's prayer shawl group.

I was expecting a grocery bag full.  But the bag that she gave me takes up half of my car's back seat.  The prayer shawl group is in for a treat.

It's not the textured yarns that I favor.  Of course, I have trouble doing much work with those nubbly yarns with their multiple fibers per strand.

It's a collection of yarns of one color, but what a collection of colors!  There are leftovers from baby blankets and sweaters.  There's a variety of greens from a forest landscape that my friend knitted.  All sorts of treasures.

When she said she had leftovers, I was expecting a small ball here and a tiny scrap there.  But many of the yarns she gave me have most of the skein left.

I'm glad to be able to save these yarns and to give them a new purpose.  I don't have time to make the prayer shawls myself these days.  But I'm happy to be a resource in other ways.