July 8th, 2010

One of the gifts given to me on an almost daily basis is the gift of birds and animals that come visiting near my little cement sitting porch just outside my lakehouse basement study room.  From where I sit, write, and read, I look out toward the lake where, about ten feet from the glass door, bevies of birds, a single chipmonk, the neighborhood dogs, squirrels, and–now and then–a stray rabbit, come over to the feeders, the bird feeders and bath, and the various saucers set out with seeds, bread crusts, and cut-up fruits like oranges and apples.   Some of my guests are quite regular, and all seem to get along quite well as when the squirrels and chipmonk nibble at the base of the suet cages.  For the first time I have some very special guests: a pair of blue birds have taken up residence in the new Audubon nesting box I nailed to a deck post several months ago and already, as I discovered yesterday, they’ve managed to deliver a clutch of four light-blue eggs, soon to be hatched.   The presence of these friends reminds me of something Ernesto Cardenal who wrote:

All animals who lift their voices at dawn sing to God. The volcanoes and the clouds and the trees cry to us about God. The whole creation cries to us penetratingly with a great joy about the existence and the beauty and the love of God. The music roars it into our ears, the landscape calls it into our eyes. In all of nature we find God’s initials, and all God’s creatures are God’s love letters to us.

All of nature burns with love created through love to light love in us. Nature is like a shadow of God, a reflection of God’s beauty. The still, blue lake is a reflection of God. In every atom lives an image of the trinity, a figure of the trinitarian God. And also my own body is created to love God. Each of my cells is a hymn about the Creator and an ongoing declaration of love.

In the morning it’s not uncommon for the Carolina wrens and an early hummingbird to join me in Morning Prayer, and sometimes in the evening a blue heron stands watch over the cove waters when it’s time to do Evening Prayer.  I’m blessed with noisy blue jays, pairs of cardinals, a red-bellied woodpecker, nuthatches, and finches.  Once when a dead catfish washed up on the cove shoreline, a troop of Georgia’s best turkey vultures flew in to feast and pick the skeleton clean, leaving the bare skull a memento mori, the size of a softball.   Best of all, if I chant and sing the Office quietly, the more timid and social of these birds and animals seem unafraid to come sit in the choir and join in with an antiphon or two.   Just so the creation honors the Holy Trinity.

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Remembering Jan Huss, Martyr, on July 6th

July 5th, 2010

Our Lutheran calendar, along with that of the Episcopal and Moravian Churches, asks us to remember and commemorate the life and witness of Jan Hus on June 6th.    John Huss (1372-1415) also spelled John Hus, Jan Hus, and Jan Huss, was the key pre-reformer in Bohemia (modern day Czech Republic).  Philip Schaff writes:

Across the seas in Bohemia, where the views of Wyclif were transplanted, they took deeper root than in England, and assumed an organized form. There, the English Reformer was called the fifth evangelist and, in its earlier stages, the movement went by the name of Wycliffism. It was only in the later periods that the names Hussites and Hussitism were substituted for Wycliffites and Wycliffism. Its chief spokesmen were John Huss and Jerome of Prague, who died at the stake at Constance for their avowed allegiance to Wyclif. Through Huss, Prague became identified with a distinct stage in the history of religious progress. Distinguished among its own people as the city of St. John of Nepomuk, d. 1383, and in the history of armies as the residence of Wallenstein, the Catholic leader in the Thirty Years’ War, Prag is known in the Western world pre-eminently as the home of Huss. Through his noble advocacy, the principles enunciated by Wyclif became the subject of discussion in oecumenical councils, called forth armed crusades and furnished an imposing spectacle of steadfast resistance against religious oppression. Wycliffism passed out of view in England; but Hussitism, in spite of the most bitter persecution by the Jesuits, has trickled down in pure though small streamlets into the religious history of modern times, notably through the Moravians of Herrnhut.

To learn more about John Huss, please visit the following websites:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Hus
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/hcc6.ii.vi.vii.html
http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bio/7.html
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/hutton/moravian.iv.ii.html
http://www.greatsite.com/timeline-english-bible-history/john-hus.html
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07584b.htm

Here is a prayer Jan Huss wrote:

Most  kind God, without you we can do nothing, and unless you draw us we cannot follow you:  Give us, we pray, a courageous spirit, a fearless heart, a true faith, a sure hoope, and perfect love, that with great patience and joy we may offer our lives to you;  for the sake of Jesus Christ oour Lord, who lives and reign with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. 

Sources for this posting:  Reformation Art; Philip H. Pfatteicher, New Book of Festivals and Commemorations, 324

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Preparing for Next Sunday, the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, July 11, 2010

July 5th, 2010

An Icon: Amos the Prophet

As we have come to expect, Daniel B. Clendenin on his weekly Journey with Jesus has written another fine essay on one of the lectionary readings for next Sunday, the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost.   Here’s how it begins:

 This week’s reading from Amos relates one of the most dramatic encounters in all of Scripture. If the dust-up occurred today, it would go viral on YouTube. The actors in the drama come right from central casting. The script should come with warning labels like “not recommended for children,” or “side effects include severe political and spiritual discomfort.”  

Read the rest of the essay.

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Can we do something “evil” while doing something good—like praying?

June 12th, 2010

Here’s one of my favorite sayings by one of the Desert Fathers:

Abbot Pambo questions Abbot Anthony saying, “What ought I to do?  And the elder replied, “Have no confidence in your own virtuousness.  Do not worry about a thing once it has been done.  Control your tongue and your belly.”

A few days ago I shared some coffee with my friend Harry who uses the same prayer book that I use for Morning and Evening Prayers.  Our prayer books provide us with four daily readings: in the morning we read a selection from the Hebrew Scriptures and one from a New Testament epistle; in the evening we read from one of the Gospels and a selection from Christians who have written over the centuries.

pray-front-others-200X200As we were chatting, Harry said that one of his recent readings made him realize that as a believer in Christ even his so-called good works (what Abbot Pambo called “virtuousness”) markedly tainted (and sometimes saturated) with his personal sinning.  “Even when I’m trying to do good,” he said, “I’m usually guilty in seven ways.”  I knew what he was talking about because I too had recently read the fourth reading, one written by St. John of the Cross in The Ascent of Mount Carmel (Book III, Chapter XXVIII).  Here is what St. John tells us as to how we can “fall through vain rejoicing” in our good works:

The principal evils into which a man may fall through vain rejoicing in his good works and habits I find to be seven; and they are very hurtful because they are spiritual.

 The first evil is vanity, pride, vainglory and presumption; for a man cannot rejoice in his works without esteeming them. And hence arise boasting and like things, as is said of the Pharisee in the Gospel, who prayed and congratulated himself before God, boasting that he fasted and did other good works.

 The second evil is usually linked with this: it is our judging others, by comparison with ourselves, as wicked and imperfect, when it seems to us that their acts and good works are inferior to our own; we esteem them the less highly in our hearts, and at times also in our speech. This evil was likewise that of the Pharisee, for in his prayer he said: ‘I thank Thee that I am not as other men are: robbers, unjust and adulterers . . . .

 The third evil is that, as they look for pleasure in their good works, they usually perform them only when they see that some pleasure and praise will result from them. And thus, as Christ says, they do everything ut videantur ab hominibus [so men will see], and work not for the love of God alone . . . .

 The fourth evil follows from this. It is that they will have no reward from God, since they have desired in this life to have joy or consolation or honor or some other kind of interest as a result of their good works: of such the Savior says that herein they have received their reward. And thus they have had naught but the labor of their work and are confounded, and receive no reward. There is so much misery among the sons of men which has to do with this evil that I myself believe that the greater number of good works which they perform in public are either vicious or will be of no value to them, or are imperfect in the sight of God, because they are not detached from these human intentions and interests . . . . In these good works which some men perform, may it not be said that they are worshipping themselves more than God? . . . . In order to flee from this evil, such persons must hide their good works so that God alone may see them, and must not desire anyone to take notice of them. And they must hide them, not only from others, but even from themselves.

 The fifth of these evils is that such persons make no progress on the road of perfection. For, since they are attached to the pleasure and consolation which they find in their good works, it follows that, when they find no such pleasure and consolation in their good works and exercises . . . , they commonly faint and cease to persevere, because their good works give them no pleasure. In this way may be spiritually understood these words of the Wise Man: ‘Dying flies spoil the sweetness of ointment.’

 The sixth of these evils is that such persons commonly deceive themselves, thinking that the things and good works which give them pleasure must be better than those that give them none . .  . .

The seventh evil is that, in so far as a man stifles not vain rejoicing in moral works, he is to that extent incapable of receiving reasonable counsel and instruction with regard to good works that he should perform. For he is lettered by the habit of weakness that he has acquired through performing good works with attachment to vain rejoicing; so that he cannot consider the counsel of others as best, or, even if he considers it to be so, he cannot follow it, through not having the necessary strength of mind. Such persons as this are greatly weakened in charity toward God and their neighbor; for the self-love with respect to their good works in which they indulge causes their charity to grow cold.

All seven evils become possible in doing virtuous things, even in doing prayer.  We may (1) take pride and self-congratulatory satisfaction in our praying, (2) compare ourselves favorably with others who prayer differently, (3) find our prayer enjoyable when others see us doing it, (4) find ourselves miserable when prayer brings no reward from God (5) give up praying when we discover little or no progress, (6) deceive ourselves by thinking that enjoyable good works must be preferred to prayer, and (7) when not stifling such thinking, we refuse to receive reasonable counseling and instruction.

What are we to do when we realize how self-centered we are, not only by doing wrong, but also when doing what is right, right in prayer itself?  St. John provides something of an answer when discussing the fourth evil:

In order to flee from this evil, such persons must hide their good works so that God alone may see them, and must not desire anyone to take notice of them. And they must hide them, not only from others, but even from themselves.

This advice is good advice when confronting all seven evils.  One suspects that St. John in giving this advice is thinking of what Jesus says to us in Matthew,

When you do something for someone else, don’t call attention to yourself. You’ve seen them in action, I’m sure—’playactors’ I call them— treating prayer meeting and street corner alike as a stage, acting compassionate as long as someone is watching, playing to the crowds. They get applause, true, but that’s all they get. When you help someone out, don’t think about how it looks. Just do it—quietly and unobtrusively. That is the way your God, who conceived you in love, working behind the scenes, helps you out. (The Message, 6.2-4)

It’s important to note that right after this advice, Jesus immediately give us his recommendations for doing prayer: 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/7682623@N02/3311369859

http://www.flickr.com/photos/7682623@N02/3311369859

Here’s what I want you to do: Find a quiet, secluded place so you won’t be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace.  (The Message 6.5-6)

This, of course, is the environment for centering prayer, something my friend Harry practices.  And in so doing he prays against the seven kinds of evil when being “virtuous” and doing something good.   And in centering prayer, his left hand has no idea as to what his right hand is doing.

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Thoughts on the Oil Spill after a Morning’s Walk

June 12th, 2010

For quite some time now it’s a habit of mine to take two walks each day: one in the morning from 5 to 6 by myself, another in the evening from 8 to 9 with June.  During my more quickly striden morning walk, I carry a walking stick, a small camera, and my prayer rope, finding it a good time to say The Jesus Prayer, take a picture now and then, and use the stick as an aid to arm swinging.  The early morning walk takes me into Kentucky’s farmland, fields drenched in dew and fireflies, birds doing their chorus work, horses and cattle munching on grass, ponded bullfrogs,  and dogs sometimes barking as they hear my shoes scuffing the pavement.  Now and then “Moose,” a neighborhood canine trots along with me, following me home for a biscuit and fresh bowl of water.

One of the ponds I see on my morning walk.
One of the ponds I see on my morning walk.

It’s in the morning that walking somehow takes me into the often palpable Presence of God. Not always, but often.  Just before dawn, especially when there’s a heavy cloud cover, I enter what seems like a foggy place outside and inside.  My thinking slows down; my thoughts are few.  After such times, Rumi’s little poem, “A Single Note,” comes to mind:

With a single note the nightingale
Make me notice the rose
Falling into that place
Where everything is music.

After coming home, I drink a cup of coffee with a slice of homemade bread and read the newspaper I picked up in the driveway.  These days one can’t do such reading without being reminded about the horrific oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.  Of course, we’re concerned about the economic impact the tragedy has brought upon the marshlands and Gulfd waters.  We should be.  This morning my prayers included intercessions for everyone so profoundly affected by that disaster. 

Dying in Oil
Dying in Oil

But something else is happening to the people of the Gulf. I don’t know how to put it except to say that in the destruction of their environment, God is disappearing.  Of course, I don’t mean that absolutely, but surely in some real sense, the beauty of the earth within which God so often wraps himself has now turned to an ugliness quite repellent to any lovely hinting of God’s presence.

Having lived near Louisiana’s marshes and swamps where Fr. Alexander Sigour, a Roman Catholic priest friend, often invited me out to his get-away shack on a bayou some miles south of Lafayette, I know the smell of the place, the sound of snakes falling out of trees into waters, and the moistness of the marsh’s evening air.  I’ve eaten my piles of crawfish and Creole rue smothering so-called “dirty rice.”  Back in the 60’s, I listened to Creole radio stations still broadcasting in that soulful language, the music of Haiti.

Much of that has already disappeared, and more is disappearing fast.  What I feel about what’s happening in the Gulf, Wendell Berry says so well in one of his Sabbath poems:

Not again in this flesh will I see
the old trees stand here as they did,
weighty creatures made of light, delight
of their making straight in them and well,
whatever blight our blindness was or made,
however thought or act might fail.

The burden of absence grows, and I pay
daily the grief I owe to love
for women and men, days and trees
I will not know again.   Pray
for the world’s light thus borne away.
Pray for the little songs that wake and move.

As the terrible and seemingly unreversable devastation of the Gulf’s coastlands continues to condemn wildlife, grasses, oyster beds, and fish waters to death, I also count the going away of God’s palpable Presence as perhaps the greatest horror.  Yes, God is there; but it will take considerably more faith to see Him.

In “The Universe as Communion,” Thomas Berry has said all of this better than I shall ever manage:

The universe is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects. And we have this from our first awakening to the universe. Your first impression when you see a flower or see a tree or see a sunset or see the ocean, or see anything in the natural world, your first impression is a communion experience. How wonderful this is: to live in the universe where there’s a sun in the heavens; where there’s so many wonderful creatures of Earth; where the song of the birds and the butterflies and the cicada in the evening.

There’s one experience that I think has had a very deep influence on my life. When I was about ten years old I saw a meadow and I saw it first in spring time — in early May.  How wonderful this is to live in the universe where there’s a sun in the heavens; where there’s so many wonderful creatures of Earth; where the song of the birds and the butterflies and the cicada in the evening.

What is all this? Obviously, it’s not a collection of objects to be used. Obviously, it’s a world to be venerated. It’s a world to be communed with, to be present, to be delighted in, and together to have a certain experience that might be called ecstatic experience.  A good economy is what makes that meadow survive.  Good politics protects that meadow. A good religion is what enabled me to understand the deep mystery in the meadow.

If we don’t have certain outer experiences, we don’t have certain inner experiences or at least we don’t have them in such a profound way. We need the sun, the moon, the stars, the rivers and the mountains and the trees, the flowers, the birds, the song of the birds, the fish in the sea. All of this evokes something in our inner world, evokes a world of mystery. It evokes a world of Sacred and gives us that sense of awe and mystery.

The next time you take a morning amble, walk into God’s Presence.  Take along a prayer rope for The Jesus Prayer and maybe a walking stick to help arms to swing as you pray.  

__________________

Note:  Berry’s poem came to me by way of Krista Tippett’s radio broadcast and podcast download, “Land, Life, and the Poetry of Creatures,” an interview with Ellen Davis, available at Speaking of Faith.

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“One who sings well prays twice”

June 2nd, 2010
"Joyous Light of Heavenly Glory" from Holden Evening Prayer by Marty Haugen.

"Joyous Light of Heavenly Glory" from Holden Evening Prayer by Marty Haugen.

Over the past several years, June and I have sung Holden Evening Prayer with others in our parishes and by ourselves.  The Holden setting for Evening Prayer is especially beautiful and has become enormously popular, especially in Lutheran churches.  It is called Holden because it was composed by Marty Haugen at Holden Village , a year-round Lutheran Center located in the North Cascade mountains of Washington State.

Most frequently used on Wednesdays in Advent and Lent, Holden Evening Prayer is also often sung mid-week in many parishes like that of St. John Lutheran Church in Griffen, Georgia, where the youth lead the worshippers in this form of Evening Prayer.  Accompanied by guitar and piano, these young Christians sing with exceptional clarity and enthusiasm as they come together for an evening meal, worship, and Scripture study.

On a more or less regular basis, June and I have incorporated two Holden songs into our Evening Prayers:  “Joyous Light of Heavenly Glory, ” which comes at the beginning of our prayers, and “Let My Prayers Rise Up,” sung just before we sing three or four psalms.

Adding songs and music to one’s Evening Prayers is a wonderful way  not only to enliven our time of worship and prayer, but such singing also slow us down in our use of Scripture and canticles so that we pay more attention to the words of our prayers.  Moreover, because the melodies of these songs are so easy to learn and beautiful, we find ourselves humming the tunes and quietly singing the words throughout the day, sometimes at the oddest moments—like when I was looking at a Scotch thistle last evening during our evening walk.

It’s my suggestion that everyone who prays regularly at more or less set times during the day might well add music to her or his prayer time.  One can use a hymnal to sing a song, a collection of songs like those published by the Taize community, or a favorite setting made available by musicians in one’s church tradition.  Remember that we Christian faithful gather and pray together as people waiting for the Lord’s coming as instructed by the Apostle Paul.  We are to sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs (cf. Col 3:16). Singing is the sign of the heart’s joy (cf. Acts 2:46).  ”Singing is for one who loves” (Saint Augustine), and “one who sings well prays twice” (Martin Luther).

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Back after 100 days

June 1st, 2010

It’s been some time since I last posted on Daily Prayer Blog. In fact, my last post was on February 24th, one week after Ash Wednesday.  Now that I look back on the past little-more-than three months, I wish I could tell you that my absence from blogging here was deliberate.  It wasn’t.  Perhaps it was because I found myself quite overly tired during Lent’s second week.  Perhaps it was because I thought I was spending too much time on the Internet.  Perhaps it was because something inside of me wanted more time to reflect quietly and less technologically on the shape of my life.   Maybe it was a combination of all three reasons–or something else or more.  I don’t know.

 What I do know is that although I continued to pray daily, I haven’t posted on the Praying Daily Blog for one hundred days.  While I wish I could tell you that this 101st day is particularly fortuitous, once again I simply cannot.  For whatever reason (might it be that the Holy Spirit is telling me something?), I’m now ready to begin blogging again, knowing that I’ll be reasonably faithful in my postings.

Over the past three months my spiritual life has been profoundly and profusely deepened and refreshed.   Why?  I’m not sure.  In late March and early April I went with

Andy in front of the Erechtheum on the Acropolis in Athens, Greece

Andy in front of the Erechtheum on the Acropolis in Athens, Greece

friends to Haiti to work at Grace Orphanage and Theophile School in Port au Prince.  It was a good trip.  Upon my return, June and I traveled to Italy, Greece, Turkey, and Egypt.  That journey took me to places I’ve always dreamed about seeing: the Acropolis, the churches of Rome, the great museums of Florence, Assisi, Greek Orthodox churches and Coptic monasteries. Tiring as that trip was, perhaps it had something to do with my refreshment of energies.

 Then too, beginning in Lent and continuing on, I’ve been observing the fasting tradition of the Eastern Church in an progressively deepening way and have lost more than twelve pounds in the past three months.  My blood pressure was beginning to climb, and my physician started me on medication and encouraged me to exercise more.  Following his counsel, I’ve been walking, with more regularity than I anticipated, about four miles a day.   Then too my considerable reading in the past three months has given me opportunity to find much needed quiet time for renewed reflection on the centering of my life.  As a consequence, although physically tired at times, I’m rested and finding myself living in a new sense of harmony with June, my large family, the Church as a whole, God, and life itself.  Need I tell you, it’s a good and blessed feeling.

Lest I begin to take too much credit, however, I found in this morning’s newspaper an article indicating that I should not be surprised at the emerging joy and happiness I’m experiencing.  Nicholas Bakalar in ”Happiness increases with age, poll finds” writes that such feelings are the common experience of many—many more than we might has guessed—older folks. It all seems to be a part of getting older, more mellow, less frustrated with life.  “It’s inevitable,” the research indicates.  It’s a good article; you should read it.

All of this is preface to my next posting which I’ll think about tonight and write tomorrow morning.  I have no idea as to what it will be about, but I’m anxious to find out.  In one way or another it’ll have to do with prayer.   In many ways that’s what the past three months has been about, quietly so.

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About the past two weeks

February 23rd, 2010

About two weeks ago my wife and I drove up from Georgia to Kentucky;  since arriving here I found it helpful not to do much writing, just enough to fill out a grocery list, a list of disciplines that I need to strive for during Lent, perhaps a letter or two, and the barest of email postings.  In lieu of writing sentences, I’ve been reading them, especially those in these four books:  The Cambridge Companion of Orthodox Christian Theology, Vladimir Lossky’s The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, The Works of Dionysius the Areopagite, and Karen Armstrong’s The Case for God (especially Chapter 4 on ”Silence”).   Slowly, but what seems surely, I’m seeing more clearly what Eastern Orthodoxy is about, especially as it differs from our Western theological heritage; and, as I told my friend Harry this morning over coffee at Hardy’s, I find much of Orthodoxy more theologically and spiritually satisfying than what has been given to me in the Western church.  On a napkin this morning, I drew out (in an admittedly crude fashion diagrammatically) a rough sketch of Orthodoxy’s understanding of the Incarnation, quite wonderful in articulating the Biblical announcement of God’s enfleshment and our subsequent theosis. 

Years ago it was the pratice among some Lutheran churches to confess The Athanasian Creed on the Feast of the Holy Trinity, and I can remember always being profoundly unable (and in a larger sense I still am) to understand what the Creed asked me to confess when I said the following:

Furthermore, it is necessary to everlasting salvation; that he also believe faithfully the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. For the right Faith is, that we believe and confess; that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and Man; God, of the Essence of the Father; begotten before the worlds; and Man, of the Essence of his Mother, born in the world. Perfect God; and perfect Man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting. Equal to the Father, as touching his Godhead; and inferior to the Father as touching his Manhood. Who although he is God and Man; yet he is not two, but one Christ. One; not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh; but by assumption of the Manhood into God.

By the assumption of the Manhood into God.  This week I have come to more than simply an inkling as to what Athanasius and the Cappadotian Fathers were urging Christians in the Church to embrace in order to preserve and treasure rightly the fullest Presence of God in Christ and the Holy Spirit among and within us.   I now see that such an understanding can be appreciated best (some would say only) by those Christians and churches who understand the Gospel sacramentally in the strongest sense of that adverb.  Fortunately for me the Lutheran Church as I have lived within it has been profoundly sacramental (if not always orthodox in its articulation of the Incarnation).   Why it has taken me so long, now near the completion of my life, to be within my present understanding and enjoyment of the Incarnation, I don’t know.  Much has to do with the wayward life I have led.  All I know now is that I am grateful for the vibrant witness of the Orthodox Church and daily ask God to bless her as she witnesses to those like me outside her ecclesial embrace.

If any among my readers is an Orthodox Christian, I would deeply appreciate hearing from you.  Perhaps you might help me further my understanding of the Incarnation, my veneration of the Theotokos, my immersion in the Scriptures, my deeping appreciation and participation in apophatic prayer, and the gift of the Holy Spirit.

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A Merton observation

February 23rd, 2010

The contemplative Christian is, of all religious people, the one most likely to realize that she or he is not a saint and least anxious to appear one in the eyes of others.  –Thomas Merton

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Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

February 23rd, 2010

ash wednesday 2Realizing that Ash Wednesday came to us almost a week ago, nevertheless I’d like to share with you the fine homily Pastor Ron Luckey at Faith Lutheran Church, Lexington, Kentucky, gave to us on the first day of Lent before we received the Imposition of Ashes and Holy Communion.

The Homily                            

ash wednesday     Christians are known for doing a lot of odd, eccentric things in church.  We cross ourselves.  We kneel.  We bow at the waist when the cross passes in procession.  We lay hands on people’s heads and pray for their healing.  But there is probably no more eccentric act in the church than the ancient practice that we perform on Ash Wednesday.

     The palms from last Palm Sunday have been burned and mixed with olive oil to make a paste.  And in a few minutes from now well-dressed, educated, relatively sane adults with their bright young children in tow and their beautiful babies in their arms will come forward to have their foreheads smudged with those ashes.

     A primitive act really—worthy of a spread in National Geographic.  When you think about it, it runs counter to everything we hold dear in this society.  We live in a society that idealizes beauty and flawless complexions.  We spend billions covering up wrinkles and hiding the dark circles under our eyes and getting rid of blemishes and even risking skin cancer to make ourselves darker than we are.  And yet, once a year what do we do?  We make a choice to get up from whatever we’re doing, drive on wintry streets and come to a place like this where we know good and well that somebody like me is going to undo what we spend so much time and money doing.

     It’s really quite amazing.  In a world that promotes cover ups of all kinds—from cosmetics to politics . . . In societies that encourage us to pretend to be what we are not, people have gathered in churches all over the world today as they have for centuries to drop their guard and stop their pretending for awhile and admit who they really are.  In a world where a good name means everything and where unblemished credentials are a ticket to success, we come here on Ash Wednesday leaving our academic degrees at the door and all the things we may have going for us—our our reputation, our jobs, our bank accounts.  And we become marked men and women   wearing our true identity on our brow.  

     The mask comes off on Ash Wednesday.  And the church tells us who we are and where we’re headed.  ”Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”  The same words God spoke to Adam way back in Genesis, chapter three, God says to us.  God says it, not to make us grovel.  But just to set the record straight.  To get us oriented again.  ”Remember that you are dust,” God says.  Not self-made like we are so fond of saying in this country.  “Remember that you are dust.”  Not self-sufficient, able to make it on our own.  

     The ashes remind us that when all is said and done, none of us has anything to write home about.  Everything we have comes from God.  And any good thing we are is God’s doing, not ours. We are simply dust.  Fragile and easily moved this way and that depending on how the wind blows. “And to dust we shall return.”  Which is God’s way of reminding us that there are limits to this life.  Boundaries that enclose our years.  Soon or late, “Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.” Someday we will fall and not be able to get up.

     The ashes say we don’t have all the time in the world.  So we must not wait to tell our sons and daughters that we love them.  We must not wait to reconcile with someone with whom we are at odds.  We do not have the luxury of time to wait until it feels right to be compassionate to the poor and just to the unfairly treated.  We do not have the time to put off confessing some sin that separates us from God. “To dust you shall return.”

     The city installed speed bumps in our neighborhood a few weeks ago.  People were going too fast down a particular street a block from our house that has lots of children on it.  So, it was a good thing to do.  But at some level, I resent those speed bumps. They slow me down to ten miles an hour.  They get in my way.  But, if I were to complain, someone would say:  “They get in your way?  That’s why they’re there.  To get in your way.”

     Ash Wednesday is the speed bump the church puts in our way each year.  It’s the church’s way of blocking our path and forcing us to consider the danger our sin causes to ourselves and others.  It’s the church’s way o getting in the way so that God can have the last word with us and set us straight about who we are and give us a proper sense of urgency about our lives.  So that maybe…just maybe, we will pray and give alms and fast and work for justice and recommit ourselves to God and to one another.

     The church is not polite on this day.  It tells us in a blunt and curt manner things we don’t want to hear.  But things we need to hear. “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”  We can run from that truth on a lot of days.  But not this day.  And that’s a good thing, because then we’ll be in a position to truly appreciate and truly receive the fact that the mark on our brow is the mark of the cross.  The mark that keeps us under God’s protection even though, by our merits we don’t deserve it.

   This is not just any smudge we wear today.  This is a sign of who we are but also, thank God, of whose we are.

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