Ashen Crosses

I rushed into church with the burdens of the day heavily upon me. Our Ash Wednesday service was already underway, and I had to hunt around in the hushed and dimly lit sanctuary to find my family. As I dropped myself into a pew, I could feel my heart pounding in my chest, as if it were counting off all the worries that had chased me around for the past twenty-four hours.

So much for the calm and meditative presence I had hoped to bring to this service, one of my favorite days in the Christian calendar. But I tried to shrug it off with good-humored resignation. I don't really do calm and meditative all that much, anyway.

After a while, the music and the words and the time-honored rituals settled in upon me.  They softened the edges of my anxieties. They opened up enough space to let the experience in. Then came that familiar, but always unsettling, moment in the service when you look around and see everyone marked, everyone bearing a sign of their transcience and fragility, everyone displaying a symbol of mortality that seems almost as old as mortality itself.

Everyone. That elderly couple. That middle-aged woman. That strapping teenage boy. That beaming little girl. I thought of Shakespeare's maudlin pun: golden lads and girls all must,as chimney sweepers,come to dust. Unsettling, indeed.

But what I love about this ritual is the sacred paradox that it parades in front of us. Because there they are, those ashen crosses, talking with each other and walking around the room and singing and praying and embracing and making plans for Friday and heading off to warm the car up so grandpa doesn't get cold. There they are, those ashen crosses, lighting the candles and serving the bread and wine and going about the work of the Lord even, perhaps especially, in the sobering presence of a crazy smudge on the forehead that symbolizes our common origin and our common destination.

So has it always been: death, even in the midst of life.

And so, praise God, shall it always be: life, even in the midst of death.

Amen.