ASHES

Here is an old piece that I recycle every few years, that I need today:

Right now, all great wisdom traditions are beginning to celebrate the movement away from the dark and the cold toward new life, warmth, renewal. It is an especially big week for us Jesusy people, as we begin the season of preparation, consecration, as we move toward new life and renewal: Spring. Resurrection.

For some people--not my tiny princess self--Ash Wednesday is a day of fasting, in solidarity with the world's poor, and to symbolize our hunger for God, for Goodness, and God's hunger for us, just about the most mind boggling concept of all, His or Her of Their hunger for ME, mealy-mouth, self-obsessed, tense, doubtful, cranky me. We rend the cloth of our hyper-busy lives, the mindless distractions that keeps from noticing and living the basic message of Love, of living in wonder rather than doubt and trance. It is a day to remember the finality of death, that to dust we shall return, all of us, even the little ones and young people we most adore; as a theologian once wrote, death is God's No to all human presumption.

We are forced to answer the question of why are we even here? Why, in all that spermy eggy chaos, were we specifically--you, me--given the golden ticket of life, of Life. How do we live as women and men on this cold, dangerous earth, in these bizarre fever dream times, and stay open to goodness and beauty. How do we till the field? Here is where we start: we stop.

Easter is the most profound holiday in the Christian tradition. Christmas was an afterthought. Barbara Johnson said, which is that we are Easter people living in a Good Friday world. And I think that every year the world seems more of a Good Friday world. It’s excruciating, whether it's Syria of the White House or whether it’s your own best friends who are sick. So this is a time when we get to remember what truly helps in the darkness—love in all of its guises—in kindness to ourselves, in community, helping others, sharing what we have instead of hoarding. All the stuff that we obsess about, that we think makes us of such value, doesn’t help in the cold and wet. All the time we spend burnishing our surfaces to look great and impress people, cannot nourish us. So we stop.

In my old book Traveling Mercies, I wrote about trying to explain Ash Wednesday to my six-year-old son, Sam, when just wanted to watch television:

He happened to have Alvin and the Chipmunks on. And they were singing 'Achy Breaky Heart,' and I felt like I might have a complete breakdown. I felt very crazy and reactive. But grace tiptoed in, and I remembered that the meaning of the day is about as plain as it gets — we come from ashes and return to ashes, but when we stop our chaotic activity for awhile, and experience this, there is something that remains, deep and true, quiet and sweet.

Ashes can definitely be scary to confront, the dark night of the soul stuff that John the Divine writes about: we may fall into an abyss that we have been trying to outrun since we were little children. The American way is to trick out the abyss so it's a little bit nicer. Maybe go to Ikea and get a more festive throw rug, right? But if you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten, which may leave you empty and afraid. Spring is the offer of new life.

When I was 38, my best friend, Pammy, was dying, and we went shopping about two weeks before she died, and she was in a wig and a wheelchair. I was buying a dress for this boyfriend I was trying to impress, and I bought a tighter, shorter dress than I was used to. And I said to her, 'Do you think this makes my hips look big?' and she said to me, so calmly, 'Annie, you don't have that kind of time.'

Today is always a good day for a little random awakening, here and there. Decide not to hit the snooze button. Breathe, take it all in, both the miracles of life and the suffering all around us—look around, gape, give thanks, help the poor, be there gently in all of this for your dear, rattled, baby self. That’s my plan. As my grandson use to demand sternly when he was little, hands on hip, “Deal?"