Ash Wednesday
The Dirt Smeared on Your Forehead is Fertile Soil for Seeds of Growth
Yesterday was Ash Wednesday, the first Day of Lent. Lent is a time when we reflect, repent and renew our relationship with one another, and with God. It’s a time when we turn around, or turn back to find our way home. A time when we change the patterns that cause us to drift away from our True Selves. A time when we reflect on who we are and why we’re alive. A calendarized time for us to return to our true home in God - where we are truly loved and known, totally accepted and embraced, fully forgiven and healed.
Ash Wednesday is an invitation, not an accusation. It’s a relief, not a threat. It’s a day we reflect on passages like this one from the prophet Joel. (2:12-13)
“Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, with mourning; rend your hearts and not your clothing.”
“Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing.”
It begins with the words, “Yet even now,” which sounds like another way of saying, “It’s not too late to change.” It’s not too late to “return” home. Just come. Bring your tears, your disappointments, your sorrows, your grief. Bring Your Self, Your True Self.
Home is a safe place. A place of Grace and Mercy, Patience and Love. God holds no grudges. Home is a place of Embrace and Acceptance, Welcome and Forgiveness. In one word - Home is a place of “Healing.” Returning Home is returning to Health.
As I reflected on the Joel passage, with its call for me to return home, I couldn’t help thinking of Jesus’ story of The Prodigal Son. The youngest son of his father had wandered far from home, far from his father, and far from his prior way of being in the world. In that far-off place, he experiences what we might call, “hitting bottom”, after trying more and more “of what doesn’t work.” So he decides to head home, rehearsing his apology all the way there.
Meanwhile his father spends his days gazing at the horizon, hoping against hope that his boy would return. One day he sees him coming in the distance, and runs toward him. Brushing aside his son’s apology, he hugs and kisses him and throws a big party to help him feel at home. The same home as before, only now imbued with newness and hope.
The other day, my spiritual director ended our time together with a saying about the Ash Wednesday. He said, “The dirt smeared on your forehead is fertile soil for the seeds of growth you’ll plant during your journey through Lent.”
As we go into the world today, to work or whatever, May we have our own experience of newness and hope. May we feel at home with ourselves, with the world and with our own understanding of God. And May we plant the seeds of growth that come our way into the ashes of life so that they become for us a place of Healing and Well-Being.
Peace,
Joe