Ash Wednesday
As we prepare our hearts for Lent, I wanted to share with you an Ash Wednesday reflection to meditate upon. May the start of this Lenten time be humbling, so that we may see ourselves as God sees us and so that we may see God as He is—so that we may continue becoming the heart of this city.
Ash. The ashes of palm fronds. A seedling once made its way through the layers of earth, erupting into the wind and sunlight of existence. It grew towards the sky, reaching for its Creator. Then its fronds were laid before the hooves of a donkey, its life spilled for the new life that would come after it, that would come from it. It returned to the earth it once came from.
Ash. It’s the remembering of one’s origin. It’s the returning to where one once came from. It’s the contented worship of the humble soul.
As we celebrate Ash Wednesday today, we enter a time of Lent—of self-discipline, of humbling ourselves to the surreality of our existence. We return to our Origin. We contemplatively return to the One Whom we once came from.
In a lot of ways, Lent is a time to contemplate our pride. Pride is the words we speak—to ourselves and to others. Pride is the moves we make—in relationship to ourselves as well as to others.
Pride is one of those things we talk a lot about but never seem to have a satisfactory enough grasp of. We frequently fall into rhythms of inordinate pride—thinking too much of ourselves or else thinking too little—never really knowing how to meaningfully resurface, and stay resurfaced.
Lamentably, it’s also all too easy for each one of us to fall into these rhythms of inordinate pride.
It can be as simple as sharing more than you feel you should have with someone new, and suddenly feeling a wave of insecurity spread over you. The self-defeating thoughts which follow are often incredibly difficult to stifle. It can be as simple as already feeling insecurity, and sharing too much to try and make yourself feel like you have worth.
It can be frustratingly challenging to surface from these self-defeating rhythms of inordinate pride. In fatigue, we may fall asleep to our rhythms of inordinate pride.
When our pride is inordinate, when we think too much or too little of ourselves, we not only create distance between who we are and who we feel we are, we create distance between ourselves and others—we create distance between ourselves and the One who created us. Because of the inordinance within us, there is a dissonance between ourselves and our relationship to the universe: nature, others, God, our own selves.
To think too much of oneself, to think too little of oneself—neither is glorifying to the One who created us. And neither is a fulfilling way to live.
Which is one of the reasons Lent is so powerful a time for us, if we embrace it in all of its significance. Ash Wednesday is a day to mindfully let our hearts embrace the time of Lent.
Earth. It’s everywhere. It’s the beginning of everything. It’s naturally recycling, replenishing, infusing life into all it touches. And from it, indeed, flows life—like the seedling from which the palm frond is eventually harvested. The palm frond which then turns to ash, and, as ash, returns to the earth. It remembers its origin. It remembers what it is to be life.
The earth is not concerned with becoming more than it is or with becoming less than it is, for to be more or less is absurd: it is meaningless. The earth does not become more or less by trying to imitate the fluidity of the ocean. It does not become more or less by trying to imitate the intensity of the stars.
With humility, the earth respects its significance as it is—as the fertility of life. And ash, it remembers it is the earth, and it returns.
Earth. We are earth.
Ash. We are ash.
As we move into Lent, let us surrender ourselves to the discipline of embracing ourselves for the significance that we are, of remembering and returning to the One from Whom we once came. Because it is in remembering and returning to the One from Whom we came that we are givers of life.
