Christianity has always been counter-cultural, and what could be more counter-cultural than Ash Wednesday, a day in which we Christians remind ourselves that we are dying and will one day all be as dead as so many door knobs.
What could be more counter-modern than awareness of our own impending death, despite our mortality being the only fact of life that really matters, since death alone determines how we live.
Hallmark ain’t making Ash Wednesday cards.
Thank God.
This is one of days on which Ash Wednesday and the St. Valentine’s Day, a secular observance custom-made for your friendly florist and the good folks at Hallmark, fall on the same Wednesday.
That said, I urge you to click on the link here and listen to the terrific poet and Christian thinker Malcom Guite read his “Sonnet for Saint Valentine.” Every day, Guite makes poetry come beautifully alive even for those who usually don’t get poetry and generally can’t abide it.
Our Christian tradition grew and flows from Judaism. The Old Testament scholar and preacher Walter Brueggemann notes in The Message of the Psalms that “the remarkable thing about Israel is that it did not banish or deny the darkness from its religious enterprise. It embraces the darkness as the very stuff of new life.
“Indeed, Israel seems to know that new life comes from nowhere else.”
Check out a sample of Brueggemann’s great book here.
I’ll be trying from now through Easter Sunday to post daily reflections here.
In the meantime remember that “by the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” — Gen. 3:19
Jitterbugging for Jesus 
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