Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust -- and That's Just Fine

Due to my work schedule today, I wasn't able to make it to an Ash Wednesday service.  That's fine, though, for I was able to find a couple pockets of time today for some good reflection and prayer, and I feel like my Lent is off to a good start.  (Most years, I end up not really getting started on Lent -- ashes on the forehead on Wednesday or not -- until a week or so has gone by, and by half way through Lent, I've usually written it off as another failed part of my so-called Christian walk.  Just have to be honest about that.)

This year, however, I made a brief detour so as to drive through a cemetery near where I work.  It was, roughly speaking, the equivalent of having ashes imposed and hearing someone tell me, "From ashes you have come and to ashes you shall return; repent of your sins and live the Gospel."  (If it had not been so cold and damp, I might have climbed out and walked amongst the graves for five or ten minutes.  I may be a strange fellow, but I've always found cemeteries to be exceedingly peaceful places.  Nothing like the common human fate to lend one perspective on the foibles of daily life.)

I remember reading once that Jim Carrey, early in his career, at a time when he wasn't successful at all and could barely pay his bills, wrote a check to himself (undated) for a million dollars.  He believed in his future success; he promised himself he would be able to cash that check some day.  It's good to believe in yourself that way, I suppose; it's healthy to give yourself goals.  Yet my occasional trip through a cemetery has a somewhat analogous purpose in my life -- and I do not mean this in any morose way, not at all.  But the truth of the matter is, I am sure I will die some day, and I will be completely dependent at that moment (and for all of eternity, yes indeed!) on the grace and great mercy and love of God.  So when I trip through the graveyard, that is sort of my own simple way of saying, "I'm one of you; here too lies my fate; and yet there's a resurrection awaiting me some day as well, even if these stones seem incredibly solemn."  I'll be worm food or ashes in a blink of an eye.  And yet God's love ever surrounds me; I am, through Christ's loving substitution of himself for me, God's darling one.  (Yeah, honest, me.  And you too!)  Proud indeed to be in this club, this group of souls who are not forever confined to this world, even though it's a great place to be for right now.  In a bit (a few decades? a few years?) I'm out of here and on to more of God's love.  Amen.

Happy Ash Wednesday and a good Lent to all.

Ash Wednesday: I Shall Die Someday, and Thank You for Reminding Me

I am indeed The Mighty Ambivalent Catholic (one of millions, I suspect), but one part of Catholicism that I am not ambivalent about in the least is Ash Wednesday. Ash Wednesday is a day when I remember -- when my faith community actually goes out of its way to remind me -- that I will die. Not only will I die, but I will die within decades or years or months or days or (hold on here) possibly the next few hours.

None of us know the exact time or circumstances of our deaths. What a truism. Yet what an important realization, once we get past the truism and let this idea really settle upon us. If my life is to matter -- if I am to express my love to my wife or my son -- if I am to write that kind letter too long delayed -- if I am to learn to pray better or live better or teach better or simply listen to the important sounds and voices that I should listen to --I had better start doing that soon. Or better yet, now.

Ash Wednesday reminds me to be humble. I am a sinner; I am limited in what I can see or understand clearly; I will some day come to my end through a heart attack or car crash or disease. Yet even with those obvious limitations, I am embraced and saved by a God who loves me dearly. God is, for some reason I do not understand fully, not ambivalent in His love for me. Consequently, yes I can easily embrace Ash Wednesday -- and the ashes on my forehead -- and my mortality -- without much ambivalence. I come from dust, and to dust I someday surely will return. And in the end, things will be fine.