An Invitation to a Holy Lent
A reprise of my homily from Ash Wednesday.
Dear Ones,
In her poem called “The Summer Day,” Mary Oliver begins by asking… even demanding… our attention to the sacred. She says:
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
The awe Oliver expresses here are words of praise. And she continues, leading us into a more devotional prayer – noticing the beauty of this individual bein. She says:
This grasshopper, I mean —
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down —
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
Oliver brings us with her to this moment where she falls in love with this little being. And then beckons us deeper, into the truth of what it means to be beloved of God, saying:
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Oliver’s question is an Ash Wednesday question: Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
This past Wednesday, I did what I always do on Ash Wednesday. I placed my thumb into the slurry of chrism oil and ashes made from the burned palms of last year’s Palm Sunday. And I “imposed” ashes on the foreheads of all those who came to me as I said the words, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Or, as Oliver says, “Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?”
I reminded people of their death. And in these words, as you are reading them now, I am reminding you of your death. And I call this act of imposing ashes, this moment of reminding you of your death… a blessing.
Yet, not too many people I know of would say that being reminded of one’s death, or of death itself, is a blessing. But it is.
Not because we hope for heaven, a more peaceful existence than what we currently experience. But this is a blessing because most of the time we take life for granted and live in denial of the very certain, very real fact that everything/everyone does die at last. This is knowledge that we all have. But truly accepting this, is another thing. Because it’s there, in the deep acceptance, that we are invited into to truth. We are beckoned into the mystery that gives life meaning. And we come closer to God. A reminder of death is always a reminder of life. One always points toward the other.
I don’t believe that the season of Lent is a time for us to think of all the mistakes we have made, chewing on them until our mind becomes shrouded in fog and our heart slows its beat. That is a death, for sure. But that death is not one that leads to resurrection. And we are a resurrection people. I do not believe that God wants our groveling and our painful confessions… unless they lead to new life.
God just wants us closer. God just wants us to be reconciled to Them. So, I believe that Lent is a season of renewal. A time and space in which we remind ourselves of the truth: That we are dust. That we will return to dust. Because in this truth lies our nourishment, even our refreshment. In this truth lies our possibility. In this truth lies our very life.
Our death is intimately tied to our life. In this, perhaps we can see that we are as fleeting as the grasshopper Oliver so tenderly holds in her attention on a summer day. And, if a grasshopper can be so loved, so are we loved. So are we beautiful. So are we beloved and whole. So are we precious and wild.
And so, what is there to do but love? If our lives belong to God, if all of life belongs to God, then what else is there to do, but pray in this way that Oliver describes: To pay attention; to fall down into the grass; to be idle, and be blessed; to stroll through the fields of our lives; to live our one precious and wild life and find the way we are called to be opened up by God so that we don’t miss the beauty of the grasshopper. Or, more importantly, so we don’t miss the exquisite beauty of ourselves.
To be opened up to our potential – becoming more and more reconciled to ourselves and, in so doing, more and more reconciled to God. So that we may come to know that prayer and love are the same thing: An expression of curiosity and awe and devotion and gratitude.
Today you are invited to a Holy Lent: a time of self-examination, is what our prayer book says; a time of repentance. Because we are called, not to death, but to life, to live this one wild and precious life and be fully immersed in its beauty.
So if it is repentance, then let us repent of the practices and ways of being that deaden us. And if it is self-examination, then let us examine what it means to live and breathe and hope and pray and love.
For what else is there to do? What else is there to do, my beloveds?
In God’s love and mine,
Rev. Michelle |
Who takes care of the parking lot and sidewalks?