Today begins the journey once more. That is, unless we are preoccupied with everything from battered women, staff denials, and wondering what will happen to the dreamers. Or maybe just thinking of that loved one you lost or trying to undo some credit card scam or waiting quietly but scared of that lab report and what the Doctor just might say.
Alongside cold February comes Ash Wednesday--the beginning of the Lenten journey. So for seven weeks, if we can squeeze it into our busy schedules we might just lift our eyes above the too-muchness of our lives to something higher and deeper.
Lent lasts for Forty days. The church looked back to those 40 years God's people wandered around, from pillar to post, in some desert. And then the church remembered those 40 days that Jesus spent in his own wilderness where he would meet temptation after temptation.
Some of us know well the desert. T.S. Eliot, the poet captured this desert:
"The desert is not remote in southern tropics,
The desert is not only around the corner,
The desert is squeezed in the tube-train next to you,
The desert is in the heart of your brother."
But that's not all, Mr. Eliot. Most all of us know about the desert. That place where we live hand to mouth. Wondering, wondering if there will be enough--maybe food or water or investments or just enough strength to get us there. Knowing full well we can get lost in the desert. Knowing we have to watch out for all sorts of dangers: scorpions and warring tribes that would slit our throats, to those inner demands that come when we least expect them and wreak havoc in our bodies and often in our souls.
Without sounding too preacherie--those wondering Israelites found God in their forty year journey. Something happened to them out there where the wind blew and it was cold. They became a people with ties that last even to this day. Out there not knowing which way to go they hammered out the Ten Commandments--which it looks like we are trying to pigeon-hole today.
But there in that wilderness they learned something about themselves--good and bad. They were weak as water and they could be mean as hell. Yet underneath their bragadossio they were all looking for a place maybe where the men were strong and the women were good-looking and the children were above-average. Not only that but a place where, as the old book said: "...they shall all sit under their own vine and under their own fig tree and none of them will be made afraid." (Micah 4.4) They learned that in the desert and maybe we, in these desert days, still find a hope to keep us going.
In Jesus' wilderness he almost lost it. Tempted over and over by the Devil--temptations more alluring than any Stormy Daniels--he fought and wrestled with who he was and what he was to do. Those 40 days toughened him and he left there to begin his own journey and now we know the rest of that shining story.
And so--as we stand in this long line waiting to kneel and be touched by the ashes--maybe something more than "you are ashes and to ashes you will return" will take place in that kneeling. God knows most of us in our own special wilderness struggling with so much and so many--we need what we find at the end of the long line. The terrible truth that we really are mortals and that our days really are numbered. But more--something in the kneeling, in that silence, and the stained glass windows--or looking around at people just like us--we know that long ago they made it through their own terrible wilderness and with the help of the Almighty we may too.
And so, even bearing this mark of our ashes and humanity we push up from our kneeling and walk out into the sunshine believing that somehow even here--our own wilderness we will find what we all need. Maybe somewhere in these forty days we will be lead up to a craggy hill and an open tomb. And the Easter we desperately need.
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| photo by Jay Mallin / flickr |
--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com
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