Ash Wednesday Reflection

Like many other churches throughout Christendom, my church held Ash Wednesday services yesterday to mark the beginning of the season of Lent.  I love all of the opportunities that we have to join together as a community in worship, but there are a few worship services throughout the liturgical year that speak to me on another level.  It says a fair bit about me, I guess, that these are the more solemn, somber worship services: Christmas Eve at midnight, services of healing and wholeness, the Good Friday Tenebrae service, and the Ash Wednesday service.

Part of the reason I love these services so much is because they give me an opportunity to stop and reflect on some of the more startling truths of Christian faith.  They give me an opportunity to think about what it truly means to commit ourselves to God, to try to live for those around us, to follow the path to which Christ calls us.  Moments in my worshiping life when I am challenged to truly reflect on these things are some of my most memorable.

We have two Ash Wednesday services: one at noon and one at 6:30 pm.  We do an imposition of the ashes at each service.  For those of you who may not be familiar with the practice, it is when Christians rub ashes on their foreheads in the shape of a cross.  We do this using the words, "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return."  During the first service, I participated in this ritual, which I enjoy playing a part in.  But something felt different when I was rubbing ashes on the foreheads during the 6:30 service.

For the first time, as I placed the ashes and said the words, I actually looked into the eyes of each individual, and something dawned on me.  I realized that I was standing there telling each of these people, "You are going to die."  That is essentially what we are saying with this ritual.  "Remember that you are created by God from the dust, from the carbon of this world, and one day you will die, your body will decay, and you will return to the dust."

It became a moving moment for me because I also realized that the meaning behind my words was, "You are going to die, and I am going to love every step of this journey.  Your death is not going to separate you from God's love, and it's not going to separate you from my love either."  It almost brought me to tears in the middle of the worship service to have such a raw, intimate encounter with each person in which our eminent deaths was the focus of the exchange.  I loved it.


On another note, my mother shared this TS Eliot poem with me yesterday.  The poem is called Ash Wednesday.  I think the language is about the Word is fantastic.  (Don't be too) Happy Lent!

If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word.