On Mortality

Dust, Ash, and Meeting Our Limits

Last night I went down the street to kneel in an unfamiliar church, have someone rub ash on my forehead, and remind me that I will one day return to the dust from which I came. This may seem morbid, particularly for a pregnant person. But pregnant or not, it gets me every time. People flocking to receive the blessed reminder of their mortality with honest words and gentle touch.

Last night I kept company with a frail woman pushing her walker and exchanging it for the kneeling rail, babes in arms, 20-somethings seeking a ritual reminder that college isn’t the be all end all, children laughing at the smudges on each other’s foreheads because they couldn’t see their own.

Last night was the first time in fifteen years when I wasn’t serving a church in some capacity on Ash Wednesday. The honesty and vulnerability of the day makes it one of my favorite holy days of the whole Christian year. And while I was sitting in worship last night, I was also traveling in time and space to other Ash Wednesdays in other places.

¹To the Jackson Park hospital on Chicago’s south side. I served there as a chaplain for a year out of divinity school. And while the imposition of ashes was not part of the religious tradition of most of our patients, they clamored for it. Something about the season when the body is broken or has betrayed us makes having someone acknowledge the blessed truth that we are dust a kind of oasis. There was no smoke or shining on. Just truth in our limits. Just true blessing.

To the children’s service at Plymouth in Des Moines. Fingers still greasy from pizza, young children sharing what they know of God and love and then eagerly extending a hand or raising their forehead to be smudged and blessed. Some tiny. Some still barely earthside. Some still in their mothers’ arms.

To Immanuel in Latimer where two separate services stick out. The first being my first ever Ash Wednesday as a solo pastor. A bat was found swooping around the sanctuary about 15 minutes before the service was to begin. It decided to find a resting place at the highest peak of the highest window at the very front of the sanctuary. There it stopped and stayed. So the congregation kindly kept one eye on it and the other on me (leading service from the middle of the center aisle instead of the chancel), ready to warn me if I needed to duck.

The second was a season in which I was as sick as I’d ever been. So sick, in fact, that my mom came to stay with me for a few days to take me to the doctor and make sure I was getting enough to eat and drink. Somehow, neither of us caught the correct dosage of the codeine cough syrup I was prescribed. Instead of taking 2 tsp at regular intervals, I was taking 2 Tbsp. (Roughly four times the prescribed dose.) So I was definitely whacked out on goofballs as I laid on the couch, drifting in and out of sleep while watching episodes of The Bachelor, featuring that farmer from Iowa. Maybe that’s why it didn’t occur to me as at all suspect that one of those episodes should become the inspiration for my Ash Wednesday homily. (Even so, I still remember and stand by that message!)

There was a woman who didn’t get a rose. Of course there was. And in her final interview in the back of the SUV that would drive her away, she was crying as most of the women did. But it was different. She wasn’t gnashing her teeth asking, “Whyyyy?” and wondering what was wrong with her. Instead she confessed through tears how proud she was of herself. That she understood the limiting factors of the reality TV format. That she’d learned a lot of important things about herself that she was taking with her. And, that maybe under different circumstances things would have shaken out differently. She wasn’t fooled by the funhouse mirrors all around her. She knew she was worthy and so were the other women in the house.

I think I said something in that homily about Lent being a season of repentance and fasting. But that that’s not about twisting ourselves up into knots of guilt and shame and self-blame. It’s about acknowledging our own limits and the limits on our lives that are outside our control, remembering that we’re not God, and doing what we can to turn around (away from the twisted reflections of funhouse mirrors) and aim true with our lives in a Godward direction.

Reckoning with our own limits and aiming true in a Godward (Source-ward, life-ward) direction, these are the gifts of Lent.

Last weekend I was at a women’s retreat at Prairiewoods that deserves (and will probably get) a whole post of its own. It was magical. AND it was more concentrated and sustained activity over three consecutive days than I’ve had in a while. I didn’t want to miss any of it. When I got home on Sunday afternoon, my ankles were the size of grapefruits and my body’s demand to be horizontal precluded any other activities that day. This is not what I would prefer.

But I am entering a season in which the limits of my mortal body teach me so much. Even things I’d prefer not to know. A postpartum/4^th trimester class I’m taking encouraged learning how to “delete, delay, and delegate” anything in life that it’s possible to, basically starting now until at least three months after babú arrives. I think this is my Lenten discipline. Delete, delay, and delegate.

And when I inevitably grab for control or overreach my limits or get down on myself for not being able to do more, I’ll return to the feeling of that gentle smudge. I’ll return to the spoken truth that I am dust and ash, same as the stars, but still not God. And I’ll probably cry a bit or chuckle knowingly and clear my eyes as I do my best to turn back in a Godward direction. I hope the same for you.

Much love,

Lindsey

1. Image credit: Grzegorz Krupa from Pixabay, https://pixabay.com/photos/great-post-calcine-ash-wednesday-4808839/