Category: Ash Wednesday

Where You Go, I Will Go: Savor the Bitterness of Earth and Ashes

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This is a litany to earth and ashes,
to the dust of roads and vacant rooms,
to the fine silt circling in a shaft of sun,
settling indifferently on books and beds.
This is a prayer to praise what we become,
“Dust thou art, to dust thou shalt return.”
Savor its taste—the bitterness of earth and ashes.
~Dana Gioia from “The Litany”

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
~T.S. Eliot from “The Wasteland”

…let us be marked
not for sorrow.
And let us be marked
not for shame.
Let us be marked
not for false humility
or for thinking
we are less
than we are

but for claiming
what God can do
within the dust,
within the dirt,
within the stuff
of which the world
is made,
and the stars that blaze
in our bones,
and the galaxies that spiral
inside the smudge
we bear.
~Jan Richardson from “Blessing the Dust” in Circle of Grace

God’s people are reminded today, through dust and ashes,
that our stay here is temporary.

This reality recently became very clear to me.
So I follow Christ where He goes,
He paused to gather me in – one more lost sheep.

This earth quakes and floods and burns and shatters,
as does my frail human heart in all its dustiness.

His light splinters, spilling into colors and hues through that misty veil -God’s people are smudged with no longer bitter ash,
no longer opaque, but shining luminous and eternal and glorious.

This year’s Lenten theme:

…where you go I will go…
Ruth 1:16

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Fixing Eyes on the Unseen – From Earth and Ashes

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This is the liturgy of rain,
falling on mountain, field, and ocean—
indifferent, anonymous, complete—
of water infinitesimally slow,
sifting through rock, pooling in darkness,
gathering in springs, then rising without our agency,
only to dissolve in mist or cloud or dew.

This is a litany to earth and ashes,
to the dust of roads and vacant rooms,
to the fine silt circling in a shaft of sun,
settling indifferently on books and beds.
This is a prayer to praise what we become,
“Dust thou art, to dust thou shalt return.”
Savor its taste—the bitterness of earth and ashes.

Until at last it is our litany, mon vieux,
my reader, my voyeur, as if the mist
steaming from the gorge, this pure paradox,
the shattered river rising as it falls—
splintering the light, swirling it skyward,
neither transparent nor opaque but luminous,
even as it vanishes—were not our life.
~Dana Gioia from “The Litany”

Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears,
for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts.
I was better after I had cried, than before–
more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle.
~Charles Dickens as “Pip” in Great Expectations

God’s people are reminded today, Ash Wednesday, that our stay here is temporary. That reality always makes me weep. I tend to fix my eyes on what I see around me as part of my daily life, like breathing in and out. The world lures me with its beauty, yet when it quakes and burns and shatters as it surely does at times, I am devastated to acknowledge my own eventual return to dust and ashes.

Even so, the rain falls, gathers into rivers and oceans, but rises again as mist back to the heavens. Light splinters and spills into colors and hues in that misty veil — God’s people become the unseen, no longer bitter ash, not transparent nor opaque but at once luminous and eternal and glorious.

Over the next few weeks of Lenten preparation, I hope to better understand what I cannot yet see, trusting that what comes next far surpasses any glory my eyes have witnessed here.

This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is taken from 2 Corinthians 4: 18:
So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

The Stones Themselves Will Start to Sing: We Came From Dust

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You came from dust and dust would be 
Without the Great Son’s victory. 
The gift is free yet must be claimed 
By goodness lived and evil tamed. 

Prepared to walk this Lenten trail 
They face death’s dark and shadowed vale. 
Rememb’ring Christ who led the way 
They bravely march beneath his sway. 
~Ash Wednesday’s Early Morn

And so the light runs laughing from the town,
Pulling the sun with him along the roads
That shed their muddy rivers as he goads
Each blade of grass the ice had flattened down.
At every empty bush he stops to fling
Handfuls of birds with green and yellow throats;
While even the hens, uncertain of their notes,
Stir rusty vowels in attempts to sing.

He daubs the chestnut-tips with sudden reds
And throws an olive blush on naked hills
That hoped, somehow, to keep themselves in white.
Who calls for sackcloth now? He leaps and spreads
A carnival of color, gladly spills
His blood: the resurrection—and the light.
~Louis Untermeyer from “Ash Wednesday”

May the light shine on our dusty darkness.
May we be stilled,
stunned to silence
by the knowledge of the Lord,
who sees us as we are,
knows us as we are,
and loves us anyway.

O people,
we who are His loved children,
who too often turn away from Him
so only our ashes remain.
His touch ignites
us to light again,
His blood has been
spilled across the sky.

This year’s Lenten theme for Barnstorming is a daily selection from songs and hymns about Christ’s profound sacrifice on our behalf.

If we remain silent about Him, the stones themselves will shout out and start to sing (Luke 19:40).

In His name, may we sing…

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He Sees Us As We Are: O My People

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O my people, what have I done to you?
Micah 6:3

The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word.

O my people, what have I done unto thee.
~T.S. Eliot from “Ash Wednesday”

We spin uncontrolled in our individual orbits,
impervious to the silent stillness of God.
He is there, steadfast and faithful,
whether we acknowledge Him or not,
whether we listen to his Word.

The Word is within, the Word is for the world
yet we, so unstill, whirl out of control.

May the light shine on our darkness.
May we be stilled,
stunned to silence
by the knowledge of the Lord
who sees us as we are,
knows us,
and loves us anyway.

This year’s Lenten theme on Barnstorming:

God sees us as we are,
loves us as we are,
and accepts us as we are.
But by His grace,
He does not leave us where we are.
~Tim Keller

Turn Aside and Look: Earth’s Crammed with Heaven

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sunset223173

The theme for this year’s Lenten series on Barnstorming is “Turn Aside and Look” — we are invited to stand, barefoot and awed, on holy ground as we prepare for the sacrifice of the Savior on our behalf, and His Resurrection.

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Now Moses was pasturing the flock of Jethro His father-in-law, the priest of Midian; and He led the flock to the west side of the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God.

And the Angel of the Lord appeared to him in a blazing fire from the midst of a bush; and He looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, yet the bush was not consumed.

So Moses said, “I must turn aside now, and see this marvelous sight, why the bush is not burned up.”  When the Lord saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush, and said, “Moses, Moses!” And Moses said, “Here I am.”  Then God said, “Do not come near here; remove your sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”
~Exodus 3: 1-5

snowybarn2

Earth’s crammed with heaven,
and every common bush afire with God;
but only he who sees, takes off his shoes —
the rest sit around it and pluck blackberries.
~Elizabeth Barrett Browning from “Aurora Leigh”

 

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I need to turn aside and look,
to see, as if for the first and last time,
a Brightness that illuminates even the darkest day.

We are invited, by no less than God Himself,
to shed our shoes, to walk barefoot and vulnerable,
and approach the dawn, even when it is midnight.

Only then, only then
can we say:
“Here I am!”

sunset831141

Between Midnight and Dawn: Before the Morning Watch

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Lord, you have been our dwelling place
    throughout all generations.
2 Before the mountains were born
    or you brought forth the whole world,
    from everlasting to everlasting you are God.

3 You turn people back to dust,
    saying, “Return to dust, you mortals.”
4 A thousand years in your sight
    are like a day that has just gone by,
    or like a watch in the night.
5 Yet you sweep people away in the sleep of death—
    they are like the new grass of the morning:
6 In the morning it springs up new,
but by evening it is dry and withered.
from Psalm 90

 

Between midnight and dawn, when the past is all deception,
The future futureless, before the morning watch
When time stops and time is never ending;
And the ground swell, that is and was from the beginning,
Clangs
The bell.
~T.S. Eliot from “The Dry Salvages”

_____________

Today we confront mortality~
our eventual return to dust
on a timeline not our own.
With each headline about tragic accidents,
dire diseases, senseless shootings,
we know this death, this life swept away
could be ours:
is ours.
We do not walk this darkened path alone.
Each death is His as well.

During this Lenten season, I will be drawing from the new devotional collection edited by Sarah Arthur —Between Midnight and Dawn

 

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photo by Joel DeWaard

Prepare for Joy: Word for the World

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sunset21615iphone

O my people, what have I done to you?
Micah 6:3

 

The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word.

O my people, what have I done unto thee.
~T.S. Eliot from “Ash Wednesday”

 

Who calls for sackcloth now? He leaps and spreads
A carnival of color, gladly spills
His blood: the resurrection—and the light.
~Louis Untermeyer from “Ash Wednesday”
The Word
Who was given
within and for the world
reaches out to us unstilled
dwelling in darkness–
O people,
His loved children
who turn away,
only our ashes remain.
His touch ignites
us to light again,
His blood has
spilled across the sky.
~E Gibson

Lenten Grace — The Unstilled World

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photo of lenticular clouds near Mt. Rainier by Kathy Yates
photo of lenticular clouds near Mt. Rainier by Kathy Yates

If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word.
~T.S. Eliot from “Ash Wednesday”

We spin uncontrolled in our individual orbits, impervious to the silent stillness of God.
He is there, steadfast and faithful, whether we acknowledge Him or not, whether we listen to his word.

The Word is within, the Word is for the world
yet we, the unstilled, our world still whirls.

May the light shine on our darkness.
May we be stilled,
stunned to silence.

Lenten Grace — Great Gaps

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photo by Kathy Yates
photo by Kathy Yates

Where God tears great gaps we should not try to fill them with human words.
They should remain open.
Our only comfort is the God of the resurrection,
the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who also was and is his God.
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer from “Circular Letters in the Church Struggle”

No greater gap was torn
than when Christ was separated from the Father,
forsaken,
choosing suffering for his brothers and sisters
by paying with his life a ransom we could never satisfy,
so dead broke are we
and captive to our sin.

Only the Word can fill
what remains open and gaping,
until we accept the comfort of his grace
freely given.

Grace great enough
to fill every hole
bridge every gap
bring hope to the hopeless
and restore us wholly to our Father
who was and is our God.