Jitterbugging for Jesus

Looking forward to doing one of several Ash Wednesday worship services we chaplains will conduct at the hospital today, crossing the ashes on the foreheads of the worshippers. I’ll also get requests all day and night, while on hospital duty, from patients and families and staffers requesting ashes, which I’ll be glad to do, even if it does make for an exhausting work day on top of regular pastoral calls.

This is also the day, inevitably, every year, that I encounter people who look at me in strange ways, wondering what in the world the smudge of “dirt” on my forehead is. Many people even tell me, “Uh, you have something on your forehead, sir.” That always makes for a bit of an awkward moment, having to explain that it’s a Christian church thing.

For the edification and education of those who may not know:

– Ash Wednesday ushers in Lent, a season of forty days, not counting Sundays, which begins on Ash Wednesday and ends on Holy Saturday. Lent comes from the Anglo Saxon word lencten, which means “spring.” The forty days represents the time Jesus spent in the wilderness fasting and praying before going public with his ministry. And his 40 days connects back to the time when his ancestors wandered the wilderness lo those many years. (Never forget, Jesus, a rabbi, was Jewish to the bone.)

– Lent is a time of repentance, fasting and preparation for the coming of Easter. It is a time of self-examination and reflection. In the early church, Lent was a time to prepare new converts for baptism. Today, Christians focus on their relationship with God, often choosing to give up something in a fast, or volunteering and giving of themselves for others, or practicing some other spiritual discipline. Sundays in Lent are not counted in the forty days because each Sunday represents a “mini-Easter” and the reverent spirit of Lent is tempered with joyful anticipation of the Resurrection.

– The ashes on Ash Wednesday are an outward symbol of the inward purification and penitence we are seeking in the Lenten journey.

– Lent provides an opportunity to teach our children the necessity of self-denial in our permissive and consumer-society. A spirit of fasting can include restriction of luxuries such as television watching, shopping or some such habit.

– Observance of Ash Wednesday and Lent is by no means only a Catholic or Orthodox Church tradition. My own beloved United Methodist Church provides all kinds of Lent services, studies, resources and such, starting with Ash Wednesday observances.

I love this life God has called me to, and relish every step of the journey.

My main man the mystic Thomas Merton wrote in that greatest and ever-bestselling autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain:

In one sense we are always traveling,
Traveling as if we did not know where we are going.
In another sense we have already arrived.
We cannot arrive at the perfect possession of God in this life:
That is why we are traveling and in darkness.
But we already possess God by grace.
Therefore, in that sense, we have arrived and
Are dwelling in the light.
But oh! How far have I to go to find You
In Whom I have already arrived!”

THOMAS MERTON, ONE OF MY FAITH HEROES AND SPIRITUAL GUIDES IN THIS JOURNEY THAT IS LIFE