and to dust i shall return...

"Ashes", by Simran Gleason*

It's Ash Wednesday. At the end of the day, my forehead will be adorned with a smudgy, sooty black cross -- the product of the incineration of last year's Palm Sunday palms.

As a child, I was raised Baptist. I barely even knew what Good Friday was for. So, definitely, something as 'connectedly foreign' as Ash Wednesday meant nothing to me. Anyone with smudges on their foreheads were suspect. Strangely, I thought this pushed them out of the true inner circle of the knowledge of our Lord.

We're past the 'incarnation' time of year. The Word has become flesh. But there is certainly something in the incarnational statement 'God with us' that comes to bear on Ash Wednesday ashes...along with a plethora of other earthy things in our liturgies...from marking/covering one's self with the sign of the cross, to bowing at the name of Jesus...acknowledging the holy Gospel with a trinity of crosses on forehead, lips, heart, to letting our prayers go up in incense.

And this is why I'm an a 'Catholic Christian' -- an Anglican one, to be precise. Incarnation is real. I can feel it in my blood and bones. God came to us in a very messy way - by choice. I dive into that mess to meet the One who dove in here first. Every swath of fabric he wore is represented in our vestments. Every breath he takes is Holy Spirit in our lungs, also. Ditto for His blood in our veins.

As we prepare to immerse ourselves in the Paschal mystery, some 40+ days from now, I'm reminding the self I live into, to not see it and other liturgical and theological dressings as an act detached from me -- but rather something that is more a consuming presence within...breathing with me...ever intertwining with my DNA.

So, I'm relishing the thought of wearing dirt...as a reminder that I came from dust and to dust I shall return. I find in that some humbling, but also very good news. It's not all about me, but rather the whole scheme of God with us. I wear it, taste it, breathe it - not merely spiritually, but incarnationally into my very being.

Pardon me while I utter Alleluia.

*From the Artist: "'Ashes' is a series of undeveloped mythologies beginning with a cycle of dissolution and response. Descent into ashes: a chrysalis state where annealing occurs below the surface of awareness. The swirl of emotion, transformation and re-emergence into the body. Stories of entering into that filigreed network of fiber and bone, muscle and membrane. Isolation and relation: situated awareness."