Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your hearts,
with fasting, with weeping, and with sorrow; tear your hearts and not your clothing.
Return to the Lord your God, Who is merciful and compassionate,
very patient, full of faithful love, and ready to forgive.
— Joel 2: 12-13
Today we take up the burnt palm leaves from last year’s Palm Sunday celebration. The green leaves have dried and yellowed. They are only the memory of some portion of our lives that we’ve clung to — preserved for a year — now released by flames.
Once verdant green, those palm leaves have changed to black and gray. They are transformed to charcoal, soot and ash. Today we gather up whatever is left, whatever didn’t go up in smoke. Combine ashes with the oil of anointing, and wear them.
Today we bow our heads or fall to our knees, so we can rise again. We Rise: revealed. Rise: beloved.
Today is a confession. It’s a submission. It’s a surrender. It’s a turning and re-turning.
Oh, to be sure, we don’t become suddenly perfect as we confess. We’re as imperfect as ever. We’re as messy and broken as before, and also as beautiful and possible, as before. Yet we are also accepted and forgiven.
Afterward, sooty leftovers grace our skin as thumbprints, crosses, or circles. We wear Christ’s fingerprints. Mark ourselves. Allow ourselves to be marked.
In this moment, we drop our guard. Look into the face of God, or ask God to look upon our faces. Doing so, we invite the experience of being fully seen, fully known.
It makes a difference, when we choose to participate, and to offer ourselves to the Love that sees us. Especially when we then turn toward the world, bearing the mark of being seen and known: beloved just as we are. — Rev Gail
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Blessing the Dust: For Ash Wednesday
—Jan Richardson
All those days / you felt like dust, / like dirt, as if all you had to do
was turn your face / toward the wind
and be scattered / to the four corners
or swept away / by the smallest breath
as insubstantial— did you not know
what the Holy One / can do with dust?
This is the day / we freely say / we are scorched.
This is the hour / we are marked
by what has made it / through the burning.
This is the moment / we ask for the blessing / that lives within
the ancient ashes, that makes its home
inside the soil of / this sacred earth.
So 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