Reflections on "Ashes-To-Go"

Jim Richardson, left; Peter Carey, right

I must admit I was a little nervous about the idea of vesting up in full Anglican regalia and standing on a street corner with a container of ashes. Yes, I even felt a little strange.

But yesterday, Peter Carey and I took part in a nationwide movement in the Episcopal Church of bringing the ashes of Ash Wednesday to the streets. Our crew put up a sandwich board on the sidewalk with a sign that said "Ashes-To-Go," and under it "Renew your faith this Ash Wednesday -- God loves everyone, no exceptions."

Our location: "The Corner," the sidewalk across from our church that is a major footpath to and fro the University of Virginia.

We stood out there in the morning smearing ashes on foreheads and blessing people. I was out there again in the afternoon, and by then people were lining up. The buzz about it traveled down the street and people came out of the restaurants to get their ashes. They stopped their cars. They told their friends, and more came. We even had a television crew that stopped and filmed a segment.

It was among the most remarkable Ash Wednesdays I've ever had, and among the most extraordinary and holiest days I have ever experienced as a priest.

Don't get me wrong. I adore the Ash Wednesday liturgy. It is among the most moving liturgies we have, and I find it deeply meaningful every year. I wish everyone would come.

But they don't.

So this Ash Wednesday, we brought Ash Wednesday to them. We took the ashes to the streets where the people are. We brought the blessing out of the church building and gave it away.

Isn't that what we are supposed to be about? Giving away blessings? Free of charge? Free of guilt? No strings attached?

Each time I gave the ashes to someone on the sidewalk, I said the traditional words: "Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return." But something inside me had me add a little more:  "And remember God loves you, will heal of you of all that hurts you, and may you know God's love all the days of your life."

Many, many stopped. Students on their way to class, or going to Starbucks. A delivery truck screeched to a halt and the driver got out and asked for ashes. Three young women joggers stopped, and one said (line of the day): "This is so practical."

I lost count at 80 for the day.

I know that some folks are critical of this idea of giving away the ashes. It sounds gimmicky, a little like fast food. But don't be too quick to judge. Holiness sometimes comes in small packages and in unexpected ways and unexpected places. Shouldn't we be about providing windows -- many windows -- into the faith?

Something inside me also changed as stood on the side walk, my thumb gray with ashes. As people stood in front of me, I could see that many were having a "moment." I could see it in their eyes. Some shed a tear, and others smiled. The idea of "prayer unceasing" became true for me. The Holy Spirit moves this way, doesn't she?

James Richardson, Fiat Lux

Ashes to ashes

Dear friends,
The Holy season of Lent begins in a few hours. For me, Lent begins when I burn the palms from last year's Palm Sunday. I did that on Sunday in between snow storms. Lori made this photo essay of the process. It takes a lot of palms to get a hand full of ashes. The smoke is greasy and smells like a brush fire (no surprise; palms are a type of grass).

I hope to see you at one of our Ash Wednesday services (7:30 am; 12:15 pm; 5:30 pm; and 7:30 pm). We will also be doing something we've never done before: Standing on the Corner with "Ashes to Go." We hope a few students and other passersby might find this as a way to renew their faith. We also will have some of our Stephen Minister there to talk with anyone who might feel the need to talk.

Here are the photos:

Ashes to ashes

Our Ash Wednesday services were fuller than last year. I am not sure why, or what that means. I saw a lot of University of Virginia students throughout the day, many I have never seen before.

For me, Ash Wednesday is a powerful experience on many levels. It is a little like going to your own funeral. It takes a certain amount of courage for those who come to hear words of certain mortality and have ashes smeared on foreheads.

It also takes a certain amount of honesty to kneel and admit where we've lost our way in our walk with God and each other. There is a lot going on with Ash Wednesday.

For me, it was an exceedingly long day that began when I arrived at the church at 6:30 am and ended when I got home a little after 9 pm. I brought a pinch of ashes home for Lori who was feeling a little under the weather and missed the services. Somehow having ashes on her forehead and hearing that "to dust you shall return" perked her up. Ash Wednesday is definitely an experience like no other.

Here is the sermon I preached this Ash Wednesday.

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Whether you’ve experienced this a dozen times or this is your first Ash Wednesday, let’s hit the pause button to be candid about something:

Ash Wednesday is as strange as it gets.

Tonight we use words not heard in ordinary conversation, like “wretchedness” and “lamenting our sins” to describe our human condition.

In a few moments, we will have grimy ashes smeared on our forehead. We will hear “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

And after that, we will admit our sins, that as individuals, and as the human race, we’ve made a mess of this world, and we will pledge to do better – though we know we might not – and seek forgiveness, though we might not believe that we really are.

On the face of it, the words we use on Ash Wednesday are definitely not the most comforting, joyful words in the English language, or in the Christian religion, or for that matter, in any religion. This is not a warm and fuzzy feast day we are celebrating, not a day designed to attract new members. Ash Wednesday is probably one of those occasions that church growth experts would like us to forget.

The biblical lessons for Ash Wednesday are the same year after year, and they are reminders of how tough life can be, and how very thin we find the line between life and death.

In all candor, “To dust I shall return” is not something I particularly like to think about as I go through the daily drumbeat of my life.

There are no Christmas trees or Easter lilies today.

Just ashes.

Today we are asked to consider that we are mortal finite beings, that we will one day die, and that our bodies will disappear into the ashes and we will leave this world.

We are asked today to be a little brave and do something. We are asked to stand at the gate of our own death, and embrace the fact that we cannot reach new life without first passing through that gate.

Here on Ash Wednesday, we are doing something startling that goes totally against everything our culture teaches us:

Tonight, with ashes on our forehead, we proclaim that there is more to life than death, more to life than what we see now.

We declare there is more to the story than death – that death does not, and never will, get the last word.

With ashes on our forehead, we proclaim our defiance of death, and we embrace the promise of forgiveness and salvation that begins in this life and in this world.

The word salvation means healing. The root word of salvation is “salve,” which is healing ointment.

There can be no healing – no salvation – without the death of all that harms and hurts us, the death of all that enslaves us and holds is, the death of all that blocks us from the fullness and grace of life. That is the treasure Jesus speaks of, and that is where our heart should be. That is the gift of the ashes on our forehead.

If we can look through the ashes of our disappointments, the ashes of our wounds, the ashes the injustices in the world, we might just catch a glimpse of the healing that is the promise of new life today for us – now.

As Paul reminds us, “see, now is the day of salvation!”

That is why Ash Wednesday begins this season of Lent.

That is the true purpose of Lent – this season for simplifying, for the “giving up” of those things that get in our way of experiencing the fullness of God’s amazing grace.

Begin Lent with honest self-examination about your life, about your whole being. Self-examination can be hard, and takes courage, but it is a gift for your whole self.

Ask yourself this: What is it that gets in your way of experiencing the fullness of God’s love in your life? What do you need to give up that is a barrier for you?

Let me suggest we can start here today by giving up this: The fatalism that pervades our collective life and culture that says grab for all you can get because that is all there is.

Let’s give up the idea that death is all that there is.

Yes, we will die, but we will be made new again beyond the limits of what we see now, in ways we cannot yet experience.

And then maybe we might go one more step beyond the ashes to find another gift.

If we can embrace the gift of God’s love given to us, maybe we can see that the gift of God’s love is given to all people everywhere, of every tribe, every nation, every religion. Ours is not a small God.

Maybe when we see that, we might grasp, at the depth of our soul, that every pain, every wound – every injustice on this planet, is shared by us, too.

Maybe in these ashes, we can see ourselves as truly the brothers and sisters God intends us to be, and then do what we have been given to do to bring God’s Kingdom alive on earth as it is in heaven. If we can do that, it would be truly the gift of these ashes.

Amen.

James Richardson, Fiat Lux

From the ashes will come Easter

Another Ash Wednesday has come and gone. With its emphasis on death, it is something of an acquired taste. This year's Ash Wednesday was fuller than the previous three I have experienced at St. Paul's, and we had many more students than in the past.

Late yesterday, the verdict was handed up in the trial of George Huguely; he was convicted of second-degree murder in the death of his girlfriend, Yeardley Love, when both were students at the University of Virginia. Her death has rocked this tight-knit community in ways that we are now only beginning to perceive.

We saw quite a number of women students (many I did not recognize) at our Ash Wednesday services yesterday, and I wonder if the trial had something to do with it. Somehow we were the right place to be for them, thanks be to God for that.

Ash Wednesday is a reminder of our mortality, that we are from dust and to dust we shall return. It is a reminder that our bodies will die and will become dust. But Ash Wednesday also has within it the spark of hope, that healing and wholeness can come even from the ashes. Easter will come. Not quite yet. But soon.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust

Today we begin Lent, the season of fasting, simplicity and penitence. We begin again in the ashes, with the stark reminder of our own mortality.

We will kneel in silence, and we will be branded on our foreheads with the ashes burned from the palms of last year's Palm Sunday.

For a few brief moments we are reminded that we will leave this earth, our bodies will die and disappear, but we will be made new and whole.

Our own mortality is not an easy topic, and why would it be? Maybe the poets grasp this fact better, and can help us to see it with a little less fear. I was looking through a remarkable book of poems last night, The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief and Healing, edited by Kevin Young, and I came across this poem which I share with you:

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Notes from the Other Side
By Jane Kenyon

I divested myself of despair

I divested myself of despair
and fear when I came here.

Now there is no more catching
one's own eye in the mirror,

there are no bad books, no plastic,
no insurance premiums, and of course

no illness. Contrition
does not exist, nor gnashing

of teeth. No one howls as the first
clod of earth hits the casket.

The poor we no longer have with us.
Our calm hearts strike only the hour,

and God, as promised, proves
to be mercy clothed in light.

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Please join us today for one of our Ash Wednesday services:

7:30 am
12:10 pm,
5:30 pm
7:30 pm (with choir)

We are again offering a special booklet of reflections for each day of Lent written by members of the St. Paul's congregation. The booklets are free, and you can pick up a copy at the church. Or you can read each day's reflection on a special blog by clicking HERE.

Pancakes and ashes: Preparing for a Holy Lent

 Today in the last day before Lent, and we traditionally have one more celebration with pancakes on "Shrove Tuesday." The word is past tense of "shrive," which means to confess. The idea came that we "shrive" by eating up the remaining fat from the pantries and prepare for the 40 days of Lenten fasting and devotion.  Today is also sometimes called "Fat Tuesday."

Tonight our young adults at St. Paul's will serve pancakes, so come if you can. The pancakes will be drenched in real maple syrup.

Tomorrow our Ash Wednesday services will be at 7:30 am, 12:10 pm, 5:30 pm and 7:30 pm (with choir). The ashes are made with the palms from last year's Palm Sunday. I burned the palms and ground the ashes on Monday.

There is a great deal going on at St. Paul's this Lent. For now, let me commend to you a series of meditations written by members of St. Paul's for each day of Lent, beginning with a reflection tomorrow Anna Askounis. The mediations are a gift from the people of St. Paul's Memorial Church, and come in a booklet that is yours for the asking.

We've put the mediations on a blog; a new mediation will appear each day on this new blog. The name of the blog is Lenten Devotions 2012, and you can access this site at lenten2012.blogspot.com or  by clicking HERE. I hope you will bookmark this site and go back each day for a few minutes. You can also leave your own reflections in the comment section of each entry.

Thanks to all of our authors, and especially to Ann Ribble for coordinating and editing this huge effort.

Burning palms, ashes of pain

Today begins Lent, and we begin again in the ashes. As we did last year, members of St. Paul's wrote reflections for each day of Lent, and the reflection for today was written by Doug Vest, who is retired priest from the Diocese of Los Angeles who now lives in Charlottesville.

We've posted all of the reflections on a special blog, and the daily reflection will appear at midnight each day. You can find the blog by clicking HERE. You can also get to it by clicking on the purple Lenten cross on the left.

The readings for Ash Wednesday are Joel 2:1-2,12-17, Isaiah 58:1-12, 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10, Matthew 6:1-6,16-21 and Psalm 103 or 103:8-14.

May you have a blessed Lent. My homily for today is below:

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Ash Wednesday 2011

The ashes are oily and grimy and they smell. 

The ashes came from palm fronds – the palms that we blessed and carried on Palm Sunday a year ago. We carried those palm fronds around this church and sang hymns and carried them into Holy Week. 

Then, many of you saved your palms, maybe in a dresser drawer, or on a mirror, or pinned to a bulletin board. 

The palms dried out, cracked, and turned pale. 

Then many of you brought your palms back here, and on Monday, they were burned.
When palm burns it makes a thick gray smoke that smells like a brush fire, no surprise because palms are a type of grass. 

Many years ago, when I was news reporter, I covered a few huge wild fires in Southern California of the sort that destroy entire neighborhoods, 300 homes at a time, and trap people, sometimes to their deaths. 

The fires spread because palm fronds catch fire and fly through the air like flaming arrows, carried by the intense Santa Ana winds.

In one such fire, in 1980, in San Bernardino, I was nearly trapped, unable to get anywhere, and my eyes froze shut from the smoke. I was rescued by a news photographer and taken to a hospital. Of course, not before he got a few more pictures. 

The smoke of burning palm smells like death to me, and it still brings a pit in my stomach.

The pain and tragedy of the world are in these ashes, and they are a reminder of how quickly life can burn away. 

As we descend into Lent on this Ash Wednesday, we are reminded again that life can be tenuous, that many people live on the edge of living, and that the pain of the world is not far from our doorstep – and for some of you, has crossed your doorstep. 

The ashes remind us again to put first things first. 

First things first are not power and prestige, or titles and prizes, or degrees and social status. 

First things first aren’t houses, cars, and toys. 

All of those things are fleeting, all of that disappears eventually in the ashes. 

First things first: the people we love, the people who love us, the relationships we hold dear.

First things first: our loving God who holds us, pick us up, and is with us even when we don’t see or notice – no matter what, no string attached. 

In a few minutes, we will have ashes smeared on our foreheads to remind us of our own death. We tell ourselves that “it is to dust that we shall return.”

What an odd thing to do. 

Why do we do this? To remind ourselves that we cannot get to the promise of new life without passing through the emptiness of the grave first, whether at the end of our mortal life on earth, or in all of the graves big and small we fall into in this life by our own doing, or through no fault of our own. 

We don’t get to Easter without being lifted from the ashes. 

Think of these ashes as a gift to the heart. 

If we can catch a glimpse of our mortality in the ashes today, maybe we will see more clearly those things that really matter. Maybe we will see that our own death does not separate us from each other. 

Maybe we will see first things first. 

Instead of only seeing only ashes today, maybe we will catch a glimpse of how we are ultimately bound together by the Christ who promises we will get out of whatever hole we are in. 

Traditionally Lent is a time of austerity, and we “give up” something for Lent. Often, we give up something trivial, like chocolate. 

But maybe we should give up something more important. Maybe we should give up that which gets in our way of seeing God and seeing each other. 

The crucial sentence in the words of Jesus is the last: “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

See Lent as a gift to the heart. Look at Lent as a break, a forty-day Sabbath – a time of slowing down and being extra intentional about taking care of yourself. 

See Lent as a time for rest, and prayer, and being with the ones you love. 

See Lent as a time to take care of yourself: the health of your body, mind and spirit.
And see Lent as a time for shedding away that which gets in your way of seeing and touching God. 

Lent should not be an ordeal, but a true gift to the heart. And we can do this one-day at a time, starting here, together, now. 

Take time every day this Lent to look inside yourself. See again truly who you are, and whose you are, and who loves you unconditionally. Repent, a word that means “turn around,” and see what’s right in front of you. 

And then look outside yourself: Look for the Christ in everyone you meet and in everything you do – and look for the Christ in even in the ashes.

Ash Wednesday and our journey through the valley of Lent

Tomorrow we descend again into the valley of Lent, into the darkness before the dawn, into the time of introspection and repentance -- the time of confession and turning back to the saving grace of God. It is also a time to simplify, slow down, and fast. It is a time to be more intentional in prayer, and a time not just to "give up" something, but to give to those who are neediest.

And Lent is more than that.

The liturgy of Ash Wednesday is a reminder of our mortality and the finite nature of life on earth. Easter and new life will come, but first comes this humbling reminder of our limits. I hope you will join us for one of our Ash Wednesday services and the imposition of ashes.

Our Ash Wednesday services at St. Paul's are at 7:30 am, 12:15 pm, 5:30 pm and 7:30 pm. We also have a booklet of Lenten meditations; you can receive a copy at the office, and we will be posting each meditation on a special blog which you can reach by clicking HERE. I will say more about that tomorrow.

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has recorded her Lenten message for this year, and I commend it to you:

Presiding Bishop Lent Message 2011 from The Episcopal Church on Vimeo.

Ash Wednesday is as different as it gets

This is my sermon from the 12:15 pm Ash Wednesday service today. It is based on 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10, Matthew 6:1-6,16-21:

Ash Wednesday is as different as it comes.

On Ash Wednesday we use words not heard in ordinary conversation, like “wretchedness” to describe our condition. In a few moments, we will have grimy ashes smeared on our forehead. We will hear “from dust we come and to dust we return.”

It just doesn’t get more different than that.

On the face of it, the words we use are not exactly the most comforting, joyful words in the English language, or in the Christian religion, or for that matter, in any religion. This is not a warm and fuzzy feast day we are celebrating today.

In all candor, “To dust I shall return” is not something I particularly like to think about as I go through the daily drumbeat of my life. There are no Christmas trees or Easter lilies today.

Just ashes.

Today is the day when we stand and look squarely in the face of our own certain death.

What we do today, and what we are asked to think about today, is not only different, it is as countercultural as it gets.

Our culture works overtime to insulate us from death. We are bombarded daily with the message that we can endlessly stall off death with luxury cars or extravagant clothes or botox, or with a bottle or a pill or the perfect job.

Underlying our culture is a deep fatalism: That nothing we do will change anything – so we may as well grab all we can get until our luck runs out: Life is a stall game.
We don’t even like the word “death” or “dying” in our culture; we use euphemisms like “passing away” or simply “passing” or “parting.”

We rarely die at home, we segregate death into nursing homes and hospitals. We sanitize and domesticate death into oblivion to make it clean, two dimensional.
Our culture takes all the soul out of death.

Not all people in our world sanitize death the way we do. In Mexico, on the Day of the Dead, people parade through the streets with skeleton masks and bring feasts to their dead relatives in the graveyards.

In Louisiana, where my wife’s Cajun relatives live, they regularly hold picnics and outdoor dances in the town cemetery so that all of their dead friends and relations can be part of the festivities. They live St. Paul’s declaration that “love never ends.”

And, here on Ash Wednesday, we do something very different. We celebrate our own death before it happens. And by so doing, we proclaim our defiance of death.
Today, with ashes on our forehead, we proclaim that eternal life begins right now, and that although the death of our physical bodies will touch us in this mortal life, there is more to life than what we see now.

As Paul reminds us, “see, now is the day of salvation!”

Not tomorrow or the next day. Today.

On Ash Wednesday, we reach across the horizon of time and space and touch those who have gone before us and who are still with us, even though, for a little while, we cannot see them.

We celebrate with them that there is more to our existence than what we see now.
That is the treasure Jesus speaks of, and that is where our heart should be.

If we can catch a glimpse of our death in the ashes today, maybe we can see that our own death does not separate us from each other, but binds us together in the future that Christ has promised for all of us.

But things we do get in the way of our living into that promise.

That is why Ash Wednesday begins this season of Lent, set for personal introspection and the “giving up” of those things that get in our way of experiencing the fullness of God’s gift of life.

It is a time for self-examination, for working on our physical and spiritual health and looking into our deepest self for the God within us.

Also do something more. Look outside yourself for the God all around you. Do not simply withdraw, but look for the Christ in everyone you meet and in everything you do.

Saint Thomas Aquinas once observed that we should think of our souls differently than we do. Instead of seeing our soul as inside our body, we should see our bodies as inside of our soul.

That is another way of saying our soul is bigger than our mortal bodies, and our souls reach outside ourselves to touch other souls.

And that makes Lent something more than about me personally, but really about all of us together. If we can embrace a Holy Lent that is both inside us and beyond ourselves, may we can see that the hunger and pain of the world is ours, too.

I would suggest we can start here today by embracing our own death with hope. We can declare that death is not the end of the story, not for us, not for those we love, not for anyone.

If we can embrace this kind of hope, maybe we can find a way to embrace all people – all who are alive today, all who are beyond this horizon, and all who are yet to come – and see them as individuals who are connected to us.

By embracing our own death with hope, we can stand in communion with all people as fellow human beings who are truly loved by God. We can become the brothers and sisters to each other that God has intended us to be, on earth as it is in heaven.
AMEN

Ash Wednesday: May you have a Holy Lent

I hope you will join us for one of our Ash Wednesday services today with the imposition of ashes and Holy Eucharist. Our services are at 7:30 am, 12:15 pm, 5:30 pm, and 7:30 pm.

We also have a gift for you from the members of St. Paul's: A booklet with mediations for each day of Lent, written by members, beginning with a poem today by Anna Askounis. I've read this several times, and I hear something new each time. I leave you with these verses for your day:

Ash Wednesday

By Anna Askounis

Rend your hearts
return to me
broken and contrite
reconciled
let us journey together
pilgrim
into the
wilderness
keep me, these forty days,
in the dark
secret
quiet
of your
heart