Remember

Remember that you are dust and to dust you will return.

Today is one of those days when I am so glad to be a pastor in a liturgical denomination.

Last night we ate sausage and pancakes, preparing for our Lenten fast. We went out into the baptismal garden to burn last year's dried out palm branches to make ashes for tonight. "We remember that nothing in this world lasts," I said before igniting the match, "not our Hosannas, and not even our sadness. We burn the remnant of last year's celebration even as we trust that God will bring us back to this same place six weeks from now to sing Hosanna once again." Today my coat still smells like smoke and maple syrup.

Tonight the seminarian and I will dirty our hands mixing those ashes with oil. We will mix the ashes with the sweat of people's brows as we speak a hard truth to them, one-by-one, "remember that you are dust and to dust you will return." I will feel the grit of the ashes marking the wrinkled faces of the old who know the truth of these words, the smooth faces of children who will quickly look to compare their crosses, and the tender skin of babies whose parents don't want to hear anything about dust. Marked for death and for life. Named broken and blessed. One by one.

Sins will be confessed. We will turn to God. Candles will burn. Psalms will be chanted. The Holy will be touchable. And so, Lent begins once again. The great journey from death into life.

(Blogging does not qualify as a Lenten discipline -- at least not for me. But I will try to write more consistently this season, nonetheless.)