Ash Wednesday

Growing up almost-Baptist, Lent did not become a significant (or even noticeable) part of my religious experience until college. My experience was much like that of Ted Olsen, a Christianity Today author who writes, "'What did you give up for Lent?' I had grown up in Baptist and other conservative evangelical churches, so my friend's question held no meaning. I figured it was like a second chance at a New Year's Resolution for those who had already abandoned theirs."

These days, my view of Lent is shaped greatly by the ways that I see myself and humanity around me struggling to consume, to desperately hold on to, what we believe will bring us happiness and preserve our lives. Yet it is only through rejecting these fearful indulgences (as relationship with God draws our attention to their selfish root), through relinquishing our pathetic attempts to control and placing our well-being fully in the hands of God that we can get over ourselves, love our God for who he is and how he alone provides rather than for how he makes us happy, and therefore love his world. Although we as humans are constantly deteriorating (ashes to ashes, dust to dust), God is faithfully bringing new life and transformation. Henri Nouwen writes, "The season of Lent, during which winter and spring struggle with each other for dominance, helps us in a special way to cry out for God's mercy. For forty contemplative days, the season of Lent calls us to the wakeful awareness that we are human, we are dust, and we are falling short, but that there is a story reaching beyond our lifetimes, our deaths, and our shortcomings, speaking new life where death stings and tears flow."

What is beautiful about Lent is that it is a time for the community, the body, to together focus on self-denial as a means of better understanding grace. My faith, my salvation is not about me as an individual, it is about us as God's people, and as God's people, we are being restored.

In his poem, "Ash Wednesday", TS Eliot depicts our fruitless ineptitude and the power of God to sustain and save (my apologies for butchering the poem by only including stanzas 1,3, and 6).

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know again
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessed face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgment not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

...

At the first turning of the second stair
I turned and saw below
The same shape twisted on the banister
Under the vapour in the fetid air
Struggling with the devil of the stairs who wears
The deceitful face of hope and of despair.

At the second turning of the second stair
I left them twisting, turning below;
There were no more faces and the stair was dark,
Damp, jagged, like an old man's mouth driveling, beyond repair,
Or the toothed gullet of an aged shark.

At the first turning of the third stair
Was a slotted window bellied like the figs's fruit
And beyond the hawthorn blossom and a pasture scene
The broadbacked figure drest in blue and green
Enchanted the maytime with an antique flute.
Blown hair is sweet, brown hair over the mouth blown,
Lilac and brown hair;
Distraction, music of the flute, stops and steps of the mind over the third stair,
Fading, fading; strength beyond hope and despair
Climbing the third stair.

Lord, I am not worthy
Lord, I am not worthy
but speak the word only.

...

Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn

Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth This is the time of tension between dying and birth The place of solitude where three dreams cross Between blue rocks But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away Let the other yew be shaken and reply.

Blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.

So even if you are not a regular adherent to Lenten practices, I encourage you to take time over the next 40 days to reflect on this often-neglected aspect of Western Christianity - self-denial and fasting as a means of expressing our submission to God. Look for real ways in these next 40 days to express your submission to God's greater will.