Art of Ash Wednesday
Image by Whitney Leigh Carlson
“That which is to give light, must endure burning.”
-Victor Frankl
Today is Ash Wednesday.
Ash Wednesday, in the liturgical sense has been a day of remembrance of our own finitude, our morality, acknowledging the shadows “of dust you are, and to dust you will return.” Some of us honor this occasion with the long-standing tradition of the imposition of ash, a cross marked on the forehead as an observance that our days are numbered, or as the Psalmist writes, “our days are like grass; like wildflowers, we bloom and die."
Ash Wednesday ushers in the Lenten season, between now and Easter of penitence and negation, where some of us may give up desires like meat, chocolate, alcohol, social media, etc. to make more room for silence over chaos, abundance over scarcity, solidarity over estrangement.
Although this is traditionally a season of deep reflection and solemnity, joy, renewal, rebirth are all here too, waiting to be unearthed. After all, God made humans of dust, of earth, ash, an element of creation.
I don’t know what the Spirit will be inviting you into these days, but here is an invitation. If you are in a season of delight and goodness, lightheartedness, a relative ease that accompanies your days, I would invite you to lean more heavily into grief. May you bravely step into the darkness, to pay attention, to lament with.
If you are in a season of unthinkable loss or pain, I invite you to welcome moments crammed through with joy and celebration, wonder and creation. To "be joyful, though you have considered all the facts," as Wendell Berry aptly says.
Perhaps more likely we find that "even as we grieved, we grew, that even as we hurt, we hoped," as poet laureate Amanda Gorman brilliantly spoke in her poem The Hill We Climb. We hold the glorious and gut-wrenching, gorgeous and heartrending, one in each palm. This is what it means to be human.
Dust, a symbol of death.
And dust, a material for creation.
On this Ash Wednesday, I will leave you with a poem I wrote inspired by Genesis 1:1-2 and Psalm 139. The text is here for you, and I hope as you read these verses anew that God would be ever-present, that you might marvel at the unbounded beauty of your own createdness, and the wonder that it is to participate in the sacramental work of creation, ongoing and generative and bracing to be born.
On earth as in heaven.
Still Good.
Scripture for reflection
"In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters."
-Genesis 1:1-2
"O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from far away.
You search out my path and my lying down,
and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
O Lord, you know it completely.
You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is so high that I cannot attain it.
Where can I go from your spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
If I take the wings of the morning
and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me fast.
If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light around me become night,”
even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is as bright as the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
For it was you who formed my inward parts;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
that I know very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your book were written
all the days that were formed for me,
when none of them as yet existed."
-Psalm 139: 1-16
Poem: Of ash and celebration
Darkness covers the face of the deep
Spirit hovers over waters
The earth, formless, void
God dreams
Stars form their being
And scatter across the expanse
The dome of sky is vast
Night as bright as the day
God creates
Man is formed and framed
Of dust, particles sparkling gold
Fashioning breast and bone
God breathes
Nefesh sings into soul,
Suffusing with holy worth
Woven into the depths of earth
God gazes
Beholds our unformed substance
We are but dust
And to dust we shall return
God amazes
Becomes dust crushed into earth
Tastes death
defeats it
Like a seed, like a promise
Rises new
Shake the dust from your feet,
You who are fearfully and wonderfully created
Ash are the elements- of creation
Restoration
God makes, and unmakes
All things new.
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