| Remember…. you are dust… you are beloved |
The Lord is full of compassion and mercy, slow to anger and of great kindness. For he himself knows whereof we are made; he remembers that we are but dust.
(Psalm 103:8,14)
Dear Friends,
Recently a friend asked me, “Does it bother you to put ashes on children’s foreheads?”
I said no.
It used to bother me. I had been raised in the Roman Catholic tradition. It was and, in some ways, continues to be difficult to reorient from the experience that the core focus or purpose of Ash Wednesday and Lent is death and sin and penitence. And maybe that is how much of Christianity views this day and season.
Our Collect for every Ash Wednesday reads,
“Almighty and everlasting God, you hate nothing you have made and forgive the sins of all who are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of you, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Words like penitent, sin, worthily lamenting, and acknowledging our wretchedness loom so large to me that they dull the sights and sounds and power of the first words.
Almighty and everlasting God, you hate nothing you have made and forgive…
And the first words are the point really. They tell us who our God is, and then who we are, by extension of the One who formed us by hand and of earth. Of dirt. Of dust. To impose ashes is to recognize from whom we were made, are ever held, and ever beloved; beginning to end without end.
To make the not-first-words first, makes God into something God is not; us into something we are not. Putting ashes on our head is a sacred remembrance. The psalmist says God remembers. And so shall we.
I’ll explore this more in tonight’s meditation during our service of Holy Eucharist with Imposition of Ashes at 7pm. Please, come be with us.
And may we all have a blessed Lent.
In Peace,
Dina+