Evangelicals and Ashes

Elementary school introduced me to many new ideas, among them, surprisingly because I went to public school, Lent. What I initially learned came not from my teacher but from the girl in my class who sat in front of me in class. Turning around in her seat one day she told me her mother told her she was giving up watermelon. "We can't get watermelon in winter," my friend said, adding that it would serve her mother right if someone offered her mother a big, juicy slice during Lent. "What's Lent?" I asked her.

I'm still asking that question.

Some years ago some in our evangelical faith community began to stretch our Good Friday and Easter Sunday observances and celebrations 40 days backwards; for our very first Ash Wednesday service, I asked a friend who heats her house with coal if she would bring in ashes from her stove for our evening meditation. Formerly Catholic, she gave me a puzzled look but brought them in anyway.  The askes were placed in a bowl and then placed on the communion table. Later we passed the around for people to look at but did not attempt to depose onto our foreheads. Later I learned hat the churches who know what they are doing on Ash Wednesday use the ashes from last year's palms for the crosses, so I began saving the fronds from Palm Sunday and storing them to dry for burning the following year. In the process, I discovered that I am alergic to the palms and had to store them elsewhere.  

Shrove Tuesday, shrove coming from shrive, which means"to confess," was also a new thing. When we began lenten explorations, one friend came forward to explain the tradition of King Cake parties-a gathering where a tiny plastic baby is baked into a cake. The person who bites into the baby gets to host next year's party. Darva and I introduced this tradition to our staff. Because this practice was unfamiliar to everyone, we had to badger everyone into leaving their desks and computers for punch (the making of which pretty nearly destroyed the downstairs kitchen) and cake. We had baked 12 plastic babies into our King cake, and even though nearly everyone got a slice of cakek with a baby in it, no one offered to continue the tradition.  

After the party, Rusty and I burned the palms on the back porch of the church. Before long, a friend, working in an upstairs classroom, came down to tell me that we were setting off smoke alarms so we moved the smoking pot farther away from the building. Picking up the can, I burned my fingers and a pot holder, then set it down in the snow where the palms continued burning in peace. Truly a Levitical moment (read Leviticus 6:11 ). When the palms had fully burned and the can had cooled off, Rusty retrieved it, dumped the ashes into a styrofoam cup and set them on my desk.

On the morning of Ash Wednesday I offered words of committal for my friend's sister, only 54, who died very unexpectedly in her sleep the Wednesday before. Her sister's final resting place lay beneath a frozen blanket of snow that crunched beneath our feet as we gathered to say goodbye. Among the family members was Kerri's grandson, age two, who stood quietly beside his mom, holding a red lollipop in mittened hands. The golden urn, bright beneath the winter sun, was bedecked with calla lilies, roses, and mums. After leaving the cemetery, I returned to the  styrofoam cup on my desk.

That we burn last year's palms for the Ash Wednesday's service is a rich meditation on life and death even though we evangelicals (this one anyone) might be a little clunky at it. For one thing, we hold the serivce at night; get our crosses and then got to bed rather than bear witness at home, in the market or workplace. This year I combined the ashes with olive oil; I learned my lesson about that when last year's ashes with no oive oil were too dry they flaked off our foreheads and onto our clothing, I had no recipe, so the the mixture was dense-so dense they didn't budge when I accidentally dropped the bowl on the floor. Nevertheless, those who attended the service received the signature of Jesus, and we all entered into the space of his wilderness, giving ourselves to wind and sand that might "blow the self away.*" Let's hope.

God knows our substance--that we are, as the psalmist puts it, "but dust" (not butt dust as Kara understood our pastor to pray one Sunday, but maybe we partly are). In contrast, God's steadfast love is ever, ever, everlasting.

There is a reason for this meditation, beyond lent an Ashe Wednesday beneath this reflection, one I'm still exploring. I meant to post this on the anniversary of the death of our stillborn daughter Laura Anne because it was on Ash Wednesday we learned she had died. Though we had not yet begun observing the Lenten season, we still entered a wide wilderness nonetheless and found it to be not only a place of mourning, but also of some unexpected hope and even joy because we experienced Jesus walking with us. We learned how well he knows the qualities of desert life and that he has the right to speak of loss as blessing. Should we enter with open hearts, we may discover that there are gifts in the sand, under rocks and in caves. Blessed are all who follow Jesus into poverty and wealth, sickness and health, longing and satisfaction.

Though the Lenten space may be spare and sometimes uncomfortable, beautiful things can grow from the ashes of our crosses. As Isaiah 61:3 puts it, beauty from the ashes, oil of joy for tears, clothes of praise for weakness--plantings of the Lord.