Ash Wednesday Meditation from Mother Martha+

As we receive the cross of ashes on our foreheads on Ash Wednesday, we hear these sobering words: Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return. As I come again to the beginning of Lent this year, I am reminded that these words are hard words to hear; yet, in a sense, these words have a certain reverence and awe to them. At Education for Ministry class last night, we spent time reflecting on what “reverence” and “awe” mean. One of our classmates shared a piece of text from the preacher and theologian Barbara Brown Taylor which Erv+ had used a few Sundays ago in his sermon. The text was quoting classical philosopher Paul Woodruff who wrote: “Reverence stands in awe of something—something that dwarfs the self, that allows human beings to sense the full extent of our limits—so that we can begin to see one another more reverently as well.” (quoted in Altars in the World by Barbara Brown Taylor, p. 21)

 On Ash Wednesday, we come up against the big “something that dwarfs the self”—death itself. We remember that our time is limited. That indeed we are limited. The text from the Gospel of Matthew appointed for today underscores this theme: Do not lay up for yourself treasures on earth where moth and rust consume and thieves break in and steal.

Where our treasure is, so we our heart be also.

 In our February of historic snow, I have been reminded of human frailty in the face of the grandeur of nature. As the blizzard rumbled through the night of week or so ago with lightening and thunder, I lay awake in my bed in awe of the mighty power of nature---much as I had lain in bed in awe of the power of a small hurricane some summers ago on Hatteras Island.    As we began to try to plow out from the deep snow, again and again we saw human technology grind to a halt---man-made machines had limits in the face of the storm. We too had limits as to how much we could shovel or do in those snow-filled days. Most of us could not go to work or school or church or the gym. It was hard to even take a walk outside some days. We could not keep our routines in any way. Many of us grew weary of it all. Many of us grew just a tad grumpy as a few days turned into a week plus. Human nature was at its best (digging out others) and its worst (yelling at others, seeing parking spaces as one’s own possession, driving madness). Surely it is disorienting to have our routine schedules disturbed. Schedules are a good thing. Yet, a disruption of our schedule can make us realize something more disturbing---we are limited. When our routines and ways become our treasures, our God, then we are in dangerous territory. As Terry Hershey said, “We don’t want our life to be our inconveniences, but our inconveniences are our life.” Not only our inconveniences, but our loved ones, our neighbors, our communities, our creation, our world.   There is reverence and awe abounding everyday if we can take off our blinders of rigid schedule, possessions, routine—the assumption that if we just get those things right, all will be well. All will be well, but not because we get those things right. All will be well because God’s love and grandeur are all around us even when our parking place is gone or our health fails or life is inconvenient or worse.

 Poet Gerard Manley Hopkins maybe said it best:

The World is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do man then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade: bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot fell, being shod.

 And for all this, nature is never spent:
There lives in the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
(1918)

This Lent, as you take your blinders off –whatever may keep you from God, self and neighbor-- may you feel the grandeur of God, the dearest freshness of deep down things in daily life, in creation, in the love of a friend. When you see these things, feel these things, stop for just a moment from the routine and be in awe. 

In Christ, Martha+