Ash Wednesday...In Other Words

Reading: Joel 2: 12-13
“Return to me with all your heart…tear open your heart, not your clothes. Return to Yahweh, your God, who loves you as a mother ~ quick to forgive, abundantly tenderhearted ~ and relents from inflicting disaster.”


Lent – the word dredges up memories of spiritual athletics of an earlier time: who could give up the most for the longest. It was more of a contest than a spiritual practice. Today I know of folks who will not drink alcohol, or eat M&M’s from Ash Wednesday until Easter to prove to themselves (and others) that no, they, don’t have a problem with alcohol or with sweets. The adult version of the spiritual athlete.

Tradition says that the ashes placed on foreheads on Ash Wednesday are a reminder of our mortality. They also are a public statement of our sense of sinfulness and our desire to re-direct our lives, our need for reconciliation, re-connection with broken relationships that may be with other people, or ourselves, or with our God.

The reading from Joel reminds us that re-direction or its synonym, repentance, is about a disposition of the heart rather than about spiritual athletics. Our public statement becomes the way we live in the everydayness of our lives with the people, places, and events that we encounter, in the small and large choices we make.
The real work comes in the effort to see ourselves in relationship to all creation. And relationship is the operative word. The work for us in Lent and all year is around reflection on the nature of those relationships. ~ Do we accept our relational existence? Are our relationships caring or indifferent or hostile? Do we hold up our part of the relationship? Do we know what our part is? What of our relationship with ourselves? With our God?

When you think about a Lenten practice, consider one that connects with that disposition of your heart that most needs attention. Choose one that will affect one of the myriad relationships you are part of. (If you also decide to take on candy or alcohol, do it as a reminder of how stuck we can get and how hard change is sometimes.)

And a last word about ashes….they are composed of star dust…as are we…as is everything.
Repentance, Lent, re-direction, reconciliation, whatever the synonym that works best for us, is about our desire to become aware and live out of our little place in the grand scheme of things, to become “right sized” as the person and in the place we are called to be…