A Smudge of Ashes

It was Ash Wednesday, 1980. I remember the day very well. I had just left my job as a newspaper reporter so that I could work on a congressional campaign, and I was also starting a new job at the local Episcopal Church where we were creating a new interfaith organization for nuclear disarmament. That Wednesday was busy at the campaign office: a big fundraiser was coming up, and we were sorting through donor files and addressing envelopes. We were in a frenzy of working the 3x5 card files, the phones, the mail, fueled by bad coffee and keen hope.

As evening rolled around, I decided to duck out of the campaign office and sneak down the street to the church. I knew it was Ash Wednesday, and I was curious about the ashes business. I wasn't a real regular at the church in those days. But I was intrigued by a church that cared about social justice and would take a public stand on something like nuclear disarmament, and so I had just started attending. And I liked the sermons.

But I wasn't interested that Ash Wednesday in anything "too religious." In my 20s, I was proud to declare that my religion was politics. But something drew me to that church that night. Something pulled me inside that door.

I don't remember much about that service. I remember being embarrassed to participate in something that didn't seem to have relevance in the world I knew. I remember thinking my buddies in the newspaper office would never believe this.

And then, I remember the smudge of ashes on my forehead. I remember feeling clean, as if that smudge on my forehead scoured my soul.

And something shifted, a huge seismic shift deep down inside. I didn't know then what the shift was. All of that would begin to come clear in the months and years ahead; it's still coming clear. But that smudge of ashes stopped me in my tracks and turned me in a new direction.

That was the first time I knew that Lent had something to do with direction: a time to take a good look at the direction we've been traveling in and see maybe if it's time to change direction, time to see what in our lives may have turned to ash, what may be leading us to the fire, the spark, of new life.

Perhaps that night I heard those words from Joel: "Return to the Lord, your God who is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing." Somehow, I knew that I was beginning again, that what had turned to ashes, the things I thought might keep me from God, in fact drew me closer to God. It was a beginning, a meeting of a God I hadn't yet found, yet had always yearned for, a God to whom I could return, a God who would accept me as I am, a God "abounding in steadfast love."

Something began with that smudge of ashes that continues still, although not in a steady, linear progression of improvement. It's been more like a dance, and not always a graceful one. The intricacies of the dance with God cannot be contained in some sort of linear movement from bad to good or tempest to serenity or fear to faith. The dance weaves through this life with twists and turns and surprises and collapses and tragedies and triumphs, all caught up in the complexity of human and divine relationship.

It was the smudge of ashes that invited me into that dance. That smudge of ashes reminded me of things I had learned in my earliest days of Sunday School, and at the same time told me that now I was in startling new territory. I believe now that that mix of the bone-deep familiar and the terror of the untried are the hallmarks of the spiritual journey.

I believe that smudge of ashes introduced me to the power of symbol, the power of a symbolic act to point beyond itself to the truth it represents. I knew that smudge of ash would look silly when I went back to the campaign office. I knew I couldn't rationally explain it. I could not do so today. But something in the combination of inner impulses and intuitions and outer ritual gives us a hint of the divine in our world.

So I could say that God "spoke" through that smudge, through the words and symbols of that liturgy and the actions of that community ritual, right in the middle of that odd Wednesday night gathering. God spoke, not with a clap of thunder, but in the touch of some burnt and crumbled palm leaves. God spoke, and invited me into a life that was brand new and at the same time as ancient as the creation itself.

You never know what will happen when you enter into a community's ritual, its sacred dance. You never know what a smudge of ash, a touch of a hand, an exchange of the peace, a sip of wine or morsel of bread will convey. But it is always an invitation into "another intensity," as T. S. Eliot said, "a further union, a deeper communion." Ash Wednesday is one of those invitations to dance.

 

 

 

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Comments

[ninetailedfox]

08:26 AM on 03/10/2011

My childhood years are long gone. I no longer have the same beliefs I did as a child, and frankly, I doubt that I will again. I hear about people, "returning to christianity" but ive become disenfranchised with the whole buisness. Ive met too many bad christians for me to crawl back to a faith I no longer belief is moral, ethical, or even remotely true. The Christian holidays hold no meaning to me, The Pagan ones would, if it werent for the fact that I feel so sad everytime a holiday, which was stolen by christians, rolls around.

[elijah24]

01:25 PM on 03/10/2011

I feel exactly the same. I've met lots of really great Christians too, but just as many really great non-theists. This leads me to assume that there is no tangible connection between religion and ethics, and without that, what is the point of religion? It's just a bunch of stories most of which probably aren't true. Part of me misses the innocent, blind faith in "things not seen", but no moreso than I miss believing that Star Wars was based on a true story that really did happen "long ago, in a galaxy far far away..."

[MirrorMonkey]

01:37 PM on 03/10/2011

So you are unhappy, bitter, judgmental, and resentful. How nice. While that fact is no doubt endlessly fascinating (because you certainly do harp on it), do you perhaps have anything else to add that is not about you, but which might be (imagine!) related to the content of the article at hand?

[ninetailedfox]

01:48 PM on 03/10/2011

The author talks about her experiences. I thought it fitting to talk about mine.

[Cinche]

08:31 PM on 03/09/2011

Thank you for this! This morning I was oddly drawn to receive ashes as I had not done so in perhaps over thirty years. I made it a point to go to the local church early evening and felt that sense of ritual that was quietly transformational. I felt more connected to our source and my path; ready to take on expanded spiritual growth with confidence by "burning up" peacefully that which does not serve me and igniting the fire within for expression of deeper yearnings.

[arabia]

07:45 PM on 03/09/2011

"You never know what will happen when you enter into a community's ritual...."

Possibly because the ritual's ancient endurance provides the community with a glimpse of something greater than itself or deeper than itself. We can't experience this alone, off in a room alone. No one judges a person's gesture or place in the ritual, either. There is nothing to dispute in a ritual. Everyone has an equal presence -- in the moment of exchange or interaction. T.S.Eliot is right. Possibly we enter into a deeper intensity or awareness of God's human permanence (or solidarity) among us.

Anyway, thanks for the reflection.