Ash Wednesday is a holy day that brings reflection and contemplation to the center of life. Perhaps for me it's a day to reflect on spiritual matters that I am too busy to notice. Or maybe it is the meeting of slowing down and preparation with the Lenten season being married to the coldest and bleakest times of year in my region (WNY).
Either way I love this slow and sad day. It's a sadness that marks the shadows and valleys of life and instead of diminishing or avoiding them - embraces death wholly and if even so bold to mark its presence with a mark on our foreheads. Ash Wednesday and Lent is a time to be honest about our vulnerability and limits. This marking of who we actually are is important, and good, and sad - and probably why I love this melancholy day.
As Lent has begun for 2015 I think it will be a time of relenting for me. Relenting seeking something-anything more. Relenting from being better, seeking perfection and longing for someone to see something special in me.
This Lent I pray for the grace to embrace my humanity - unique, growing, and lovely - but by no means perfect. I am human. From dust I came and to dust I shall return.
God help me to rest as this imperfect person. Help me to be like bread dough patiently waiting in a blue Pyrex bowl. Cozily on pause and covered by a muslin cloth. Relenting while rising -becoming something that can be kneaded by the hands of God to be someone - an imperfect and lovely someone - that can be a vessel for feeding others - in their own imperfect yet lovely state.
We are ashes, we are resting bread dough, we are imperfect - but perfectly loved by a God who really knows each lovely lump of clay.
Lent is a very good place to rest.
Thank you God for Ash Wednesday and this time to relent from rushing to rest and eventually rise again.
Image found at: http://i.ebayimg.com/t/vintage-PYREX-glass-Medium-MIXING-BOWL-Blue-w-white-SNOWFLAKE-Pattern-/00/s/OTYwWDEyODA=/$(KGrHqZHJBIE9t!e7KVFBPibQ)Qwnw~~60_57.JPG
Comments