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On this Wednesday, we submit our ashen way to you —
you Easter parade of newness. Before the sun sets, take our Wednesday and Easter us, Easter us to joy and energy and courage and freedom; Easter us that we may be fearless for your truth. Come here and Easter our Wednesday with mercy and justice and peace and generosity.
We pray as we wait for the Risen One who comes soon.
~Walter Brueggemann {for entire poem click here.}
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Spring Change
Change is happening around us.
While the snow still loiters on sidewalks,
over the last few weeks the light has lingered longer in our neighborhoods.
On the occasion when the temperature
rises above freezing, birds begin to sing. Their song is a welcome sign to ears
that have been deafened by the sound of snow’s frequent falling.
This Sunday, a significant
human-imposed sign of change happens when we set our clocks to “spring forward.” Instead of setting at 5pm the sun will escape to the other
side an hour later.
Change is happening all around us.
Even when the cycle of change feels
familiar, it is exciting to see what this new season in the year will bring.
Knowing they lie beneath the frozen earth, we expectantly await emergence of
spring flowers, transforming the brown scenery that has consumed our yards and
parks into beautiful blankets of color. If you are like me, you are ready for
the trees to change their clothes by putting on their green leaves—passing from dormancy to life that is springing forth.
Today is Ash Wednesday, and for many
of us this means the appearance of our foreheads will change as we participate
in an ancient ritual known as ‘the
imposition of ashes.’ Today
we change the color of the fabric, the paraments, in our sanctuary from green
to purple. Ash Wednesday begins our journey of Lent.
Every year, Ash Wednesday calls us
back to the paths from which we have strayed, refocusing our attention on both
the path and the goal of our journey through life. From this point forward, our
Lenten Sundays will plunge us into the center of our faith, reminding us of who
we are and who we are striving to become.
Ash Wednesday, which echoes the Hebrew
Testament’s
ancient call to sackcloth and ashes, is a continuing cry across the centuries
that life is transient, that change is urgent. On this day, with ash smudged
onto our foreheads, we are both confronted with the masks we wear and reminded
of our journey toward our true selves. “Indeed,
Lent, we learn on Ash Wednesday, is not about abnegation, about denying
ourselves for the sake of denying ourselves.”[1]
Perhaps: but Lent is also about much
more than that. It is about opening our hearts one more time to the Love of God
in the hope that this time, hearing it anew, we might allow ourselves to become
ourselves.
Ash Wednesday begins our journey into
the wilderness.
It acts as a call to prayer.
It acts as call to action.
It acts as a call to forgiveness.
Ultimately, it acts as
an invitation
to change our ways,
to get beyond the negativity in our
lives,
and
to become new again, no matter what
our lives have been like until now, and to pursue our lives fully.
Change is happening all around us.
Soon, from nothing will emerge the ‘something’
of spring.
May these noticeable changes remind us
that life is right in front of us
and
that you
never
ever
wander too far
away from who
God
created
you
to become.
Friends, on this Ash Wednesday, with ashes
smeared on our forehead, may we accept the life we have received and the love
we will find, both now and forever...
[1] Joan Chittister.
“The Liturgical Year: The
Spiraling Adventure of the Spiritual Life.”
(Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2009),
120.
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