Ashes to Ashes

March 2, 2003

"Life is in relationships, human and divine, in purposes."

-Henry Sloane Coffin

When I was growing up, Lent and Ash Wednesday were con- sidered to be Catholic Holy Days. I was told that it was a 40-day period to consider and report one's sinfulness and to prepare for the resurrection of Jesus. [Recently] I discovered that Ash Wednesday has taken on an ecumenical flavor. Unitarians and Universalists are now receiving the cross of ashes on their foreheads with the remembrance that we are dust and to dust we shall return. This is not done from the point of view that we are nothing but sinful beings, but, rather, that we are created as in integral part of the cosmos, a dependent and interrelated part--depending on the plants, animals, soil, sun, and rain for our existence. Lent is now a time to remember how vulnerable and tender we are and how delicate is the balance. It is a time to be gentle to ourselves, to others, and to the universe.

I find myself similarly drawn to other traditional holy-days. Freed from literalism, as they must be, holidays are full of suggestiveness. They are worthy of our contemplation, but also, perhaps, of our participation. Like the older myths upon which many of them are based, holiday observances speak to us of profound truths of human nature: truths which are as valid today as they were for our ancient ancestors.

Of course, I am not unaware of the difficulty some of us have getting past the traditional interpretations or associations. But Unitarian Universalism at its best claims to have an open mind about these things. Christianity is a religion of profound truths,--though not the Whole Truth, as is often claimed. What, of traditional Christianity, might we re-appropriate? After all, we are reminded that our roots, too, are deep in the soil of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

As the interpretations of Bruce Clary [from the morning's reading] and Corelyn Senn suggest, Ash Wednesday and the ensuing period of Lent are two observances of Christianity which contain seeds of truth about life and living. But these seeds need watering; so here is what Ash Wednesday and Lent mean to me.

Any holiday which draws our attention to our shared mortality will have a touch of melancholy about it. Ash Wednesday is not a lighthearted holiday. Early Christians recognized this, too. They knew that the forty days of Lent were a time of austerity, of spareness; and so on the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, they celebrated "Shrove Tuesday."

Because many foods, including meats, eggs, butter, and milk were prohibited during Lent (and still are by some Roman Catholic Religious Orders), all fats were supposed to be consumed by Shrove Tuesday. Since pancakes contain fats and are fat-fried, they became the traditional food for the day. Shrove Tuesday soon became a day of all-around merriment: the non-devout know it as "Fat Tuesday," or, more familiarly, it is known as "Mardi Gras."

Whereas Shrove Tuesday became a celebration of the joy of life, Ash Wednesday served a more somber role as a reminder of death. As the cross of ashes is placed on the forehead of the penitent one, the priest intones the familiar words from Genesis, "for dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return."

I happen to think that an occasional reminder of our mortality is a good thing. We are all going to die someday. Our time is limited. We only have so much time in which to live our lives, in which to speak our love, in which to act on the goodness which we have known.

Contemporary culture, with its worship of youth, tries to give the impression that we are immortal. The denial of death is one of our greatest contemporary problems. For if you don't believe you are going to die, it becomes easy to put off saying and doing the things you ought to say and do. And one day it will be too late.

As Corelyn Senn reminded us, the acknowledgement of death doesn't need to be done from the point of view of sinfulness, but can be done from the point of view that we are part of the whole; that we are related to and dependent upon it; and that we share in the responsibility for it. The reminder, she said, is not that we are sinful, but that we are "vulnerable and tender."

Out of this reminder of our mortality, there flows a desire for cleansing and renewal. And this, too, is part of the meaning of Ash Wednesday. My friend Bruce Clary put it well: Ash Wednesday and Lent are "a time to restore and refinish the soul."

In traditional terms, this is a time of penitence and self-examination. Penitence is defined as "the undergoing of some discipline or exercise, voluntary of imposed by spiritual authority, in outward expression of repentance and expiation of offense; it is contrition or sorrow for sin committed, with desire and intention of amendment.."

This discipline, Bruce reminds us, "like restoring and refinishing furniture, can be done with whistling and humming. It means scraping away at the surface of dull routine, old habits, stale opinions, and beliefs--getting down to the natural core--then rubbing, polishing, and rubbing and polishing again. It's good work" he says, "and the result can be a thing of beauty. The work of the soul's restoration should not be drudgery but whistling and humming."

My Unitarian Universalist hackles rise at any imputation of Sin writ large, but that's not what we're talking about here. The word "sin" literally means "missing the mark." Most of us, I think, know the areas in our lives that need some work, places where we have missed the mark in small and large ways.

What we are talking about here is the very stuff of Unitarian Universalism, the always searching effort to widen our horizons, to "seek the truth with love," to lead better lives, to grow "onward and upward forever." It's easy to be glib about it, but if we want to be true to it, we have a great deal of work cut out for us. It's up to us: and while humanly speaking we can't do it all by ourselves, it's good to be reminded that we have a major part to play in creating the better lives and the better world we so desperately desire.

But how easily this responsibility of "penitence" gets trivialized in the idea of "giving something up for Lent." A real fast of forty days would, I suspect, be not the least bit trivial. Giving up "sweets" for the duration sounds more suspicious.

The penitence we need is deeper and more profound. It arises, as the other morning's reading suggested, from looking around us at the world and recognizing the tragic alienation that exists there. "Life is in relationships, human and divine, in purposes," wrote Henry Sloane Coffin. We don't need to be terribly astute observers of the contemporary scene to realize how fragmented are our relationships with one another and with the natural world. We stumble on from one crisis to another. The world itself seems to be on a trail from "ashes to ashes."

It is not easy to take a long hard took at the world in which we live, a world "far more terrible than we dreamed we were in," or to recognize our own responsibility and culpability for it.

"Genuine healthy-mindedness," wrote Coffin, requires "a sense of our very great imperfections." As Unitarian Universalist theologian James Luther Adams once suggested, one of our liberal failings has been a too optimistic view of the world and of human nature. A holiday such as Ash Wednesday can act as a corrective to that overly positive outlook.

I am not suggesting that we reconsider our stand against Original Sin. What I am suggesting is a need for realism, and for the kind of tough self-assessment and taking of responsibility that the current world situation cries out for, and which we religious liberals sometimes avoid.

So I like the idea of Lent. Interestingly, the word (Lent) comes from the Anglo-Saxon word "lenct" which means "long" or the lengthening of days. While early Christians set aside this period of lengthening days as a time for meditation, confession, and fasting in remembrance of Jesus, it obviously predates any particular religious observance. These late days of winter, as we look forward with expectancy to the arrival of spring, naturally lend themselves to a more contemplative frame of mind. They are a time naturally conducive to turning inward and to exploring our inner depths. These days are a time of silence and stillness before new growth.

We need this, for we need our seasons of rest, of stillness, and of reflection before action.

This, then, it seems to me, is what the season of Ash Wednesday and Lent is about: it is about strengthening relationships, be it with those we already know or those we know not yet; it is about love and kindness, and it is about the speaking of that love, and the doing of it, too. It is about recognizing our essential oneness with everyone and everything there is, and about our taking responsibility for our lives and for the world in which we live. And it is about the fact that life ends.

We Unitarian Universalists don't go in much for confession, but that doesn't mean that we don't need it occasionally. So I want to close with some words from a litany of penitence:

Forgive us, O God, for we have not loved you
     with our whole heart and mind and strength:
     we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves;
     we have not forgiven others, as we have been forgiven.
We have been deaf to the call to serve.
We confess all our past unfaithfulness:
     the pride, hypocrisy, and impatience of our lives;
     our failure to commend the faith that is within us;
     our dishonesty in daily life and work,
          and our intemperate love of worldly goods and comforts.
Accept our repentance for the wrongs we have done to our fellow humans:
     for our blind indifference to human need and suffering,
          and our indifference to injustice and cruelty;
     for all false judgements, and uncharitable thoughts
          toward our neighbors, and for our prejudice
          and contempt toward those who differ from us;
     for our waste and pollution of your creation,
          and our lack of concern for those who come after us.
Accept our repentance, and restore us, O God.
Favorably hear us, for your mercy is great.
Amen.