The Transition from Epiphany to Lent

Here we are as the season shifts from Epiphany to Lent.  Some of us will celebrate Shrove Tuesday--pancakes for all!  Some of us will have even more fun with Mardi Gras and its more extreme celebration of Carnival.

But those of us who are poets have much to work with:  stars that appear suddenly, ashes, transfigurations of all sorts.  I like the idea that human bodies are composed of decomposed stars. 

We think of Transfiguration Sunday as this transcendent moment on the mountain--and it is. But the important part of the story, one that may be overlooked, is that we don't get to stay on the mountain. We can't build our booths up there. We have to come back to the muck and the mess.

Our lives are made up of so much muck and mess. And Ash Wednesday reminds us that this muck and mess dries up eventually--we're ash, and all too soon, we'll blow away.  In cosmic time or geological time, we're here for a blip.

Transfiguration Sunday reminds us that God has other plans. God can take dust and create a world. God can take the dust of all our dashed hopes and turn them into a creation of glowing wonder.

I tend to think of Ash Wednesday metaphors in terms of what is decomposing: stars, bodies, all sorts of biological matter. But decomposing takes many forms.  I'm thinking of the loss of history, the layers we build upon, the deconstruction of buildings to create the structures we prefer, the concrete that smothers the land.  I'm thinking about how dreams decompose.

How can we transfigure this muck and mess? Ash Wednesday BEGS us to wrestle with this question, now, before it is too late.