Tag: ash wednesday

Categories
bible study Holy Days lent Reflections for worship services

Ash Wednesday, Isaiah 6, and the blessing in our limitations

Painting by Justin “JUST” Simmons.

The below reflection is cross-posted from Daily Ripple; see the end of this post for more information. Furthermore, if you prefer to listen instead of reading, you can listen to this piece in the latest episode of the Blessed Are the Binary Breakers podcast.

I said, “Mourn for me; I’m ruined! I’m a man with unclean lips, and I live among a people with unclean lips. Yet I’ve seen the king, the Lord of heavenly forces!”

Then one of the winged creatures flew to me, holding a glowing coal that ze had taken from the altar with tongs. Ze touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips. Your guilt has departed, and your sin is removed.”

– Isaiah 6:5-7

Did the glowing coal leave a mark? A smear of dark? A bright burn?

Reading this text on Ash Wednesday, I can’t help but connect Isaiah’s coal and our ashy crosses:

He confesses himself unclean — admits his limits, where he and his people have failed.

We profess ourselves dust — acknowledge our limits, the finite time we have here and now, and how often we’ve failed to cherish that time.

In the confession, we open ourselves to blessing. Accepting our limits, we fall into God’s limitless love.

Why these physical, ritual actions — coal to the lips, ashes to the brow — to mark these limits and the blessings they yield?

God knows, respects, loves our existence as embodied spirits, inspirited bodies. She pairs spiritual gifts with tangible signs to help us experience Her truths with our whole selves.

A glowing coal — dead plants packed deep, transformed over eons, unburied at last and set alight — touches truth-telling lips to set them free.

Ashes of palm branches once waved in worship, burned down to begin the cycle anew, mark us as individually finite, but gathered into an infinite love.

Take time to prayerfully consider your own limits. What blessings, what liberation can you imagine flowing from our individual finitude? How can you connect your limited time and gifts to a greater whole, in small ways with great love?

Photo of a bowl of black ashes, with a small dried palm leaf cross in the middle of the ashes. The bowl sits on a green palm branch.

About Daily Ripple!

I am delighted to have joined the creative team at Daily Ripple — starting with posts this week, including what you just read!

If you want to incorporate queer-affirming, justice-oriented snippets of biblical reflection written by a diverse range of Christians into your everyday life, Daily Ripple is a lovely option. It’s free, and every weekday, subscribers receive a short reflection, ending with a question meant to guide you towards action. 

I’ve been writing the daily posts for this week, incorporating queer and autistic theology into readings of Psalm 119, Mark 4, and Isaiah 6. Check them all out at the Daily Ripple.

Categories
Catholic vibes Holy Days lent My poetry Reflections for worship services

Lent births herself this year – Pandemic 2021

Lent births herself this year, no midwife braving
the cold to come to her and coax her out
with strong sure hands
into a thankless world.

Lent crackles like a sheet of ice this year
creaking underfoot her timeless chant
memento mori
remember the sudden plunge the icy fist that grasps the lungs
to beings sick to death of that same song
and bodies wrung bare
from holding themselves at arm’s length for so long.

Unbidden
Lent comes.

Unwanted
Lent comes.

Yoke gentle
this year
Lent comes.

One fist opens to expose the ash
she’ll paint upon your brow
if you’ll let her.

In a year bereft of touch
you may shiver as her fingertips brush flesh
and startle at their warmth.

And once
you’ve let yourself be marked by dust
Lent’s other fist will open for you
gentle as spring’s first petals.

This palm glows with embers
that flicker out Lent’s second song:
This too remember
o frail Dust — you’re born from Splendor
and Splendor thrums within you even now.

…

Lent births herself this year
into a world already stripped bare

and beckons to the embers in her palm.
Come. This year
they need only the faintest breath to stir them.
Come.

This poem was written by Avery Arden. If you use it in a service, credit them and link to this site.

About this poem:

I wrote this before the sun rose this Ash Wednesday morning, my sleeping wife’s warm limbs embracing me, her breathing a steady rhythm at my back. Be gentle to yourselves and to others this season, beloved.

Many souls are already weary in this time of pandemic, and Lent is the last thing they feel like embracing. But Lent is not suffering for suffering’s sake, or increasing our burdens as some kind of challenge for ourselves. Lent is for acknowledging what suffering already is present in the world, and bearing it together; Lent is an intentional remembering of what binds us, all of us, and nourishing those ties.

Lent is stepping into solidarity – alongside Jesus on his journey to crucifixion – with the tortured and discarded of the world.

Lent may just be what our tattered spirits and weary bones need right now.

The concept of splendor comes from Sister Macrina Wiederkehr, who writes in A Tree Full of Angels:

“Why shouldn’t our experiences be filled with God? Who do we think it is who is breathing in us? Where do we think this ache has come from? And has it ever crossed our minds that God, too, has a deep yearning for us? …You are the dwelling place for the Source of All Life. You are an offspring of the One who said, ‘I Am who Am.’ If the One who gave you birth lives within you, surely you can find some resources there in your sacred Center. An expert lives within you. An expert breathes out you. Your life is entwined with the God who gave you birth. Frail dust, remember, you are splendor!”

Categories
Holy Days My poetry

poem for Ash Wednesday: dust to dust

there is something liberating
about being dust.

i ease my clenched fists open
release control over my own life
and let the breath of God
blow me where it will.

if i am stepped on,
it is no humiliation
and maybe the foot that smashes
will carry me down paths

unknown, to worlds
surprising.

dust has no need for food or drink
or all that ties down weary bones.

dust is not concerned with things
too big for it –
it simply is.

God if i must be dust
let me be
your dust.

let me be
packed into a brick on a lonely woman’s cottage
or built into the child’s mud pie
or let me lie
at the base of a weed
and nourish it with all that i am.

even as dust i am
your beloved;
i am beloved and safeguarded by you.

God i am dust
and i am yours:
shape me as you will.

If you use this piece, please credit it to Avery Arden and link this website. I also invite you to email me at queerlychristian36@gmail.com to let me know how you’re using it!

I ruminate further on the themes in this poem in this YouTube video.