Podcast 1: The Joy of Ashes

For Ash Wednesday, February 17, 2021

Ashes: Death, mortality, frugality of time

The Cross: Life, hopeful, eternity.

Together. Both the ashes and the cross are from God... both ashes and the cross say something about our humanity.

Includes reading of poem, My Mother's Belly, by Sonja Renee Taylor

Transcript

The Joy of Ashes

I wasn’t always connected to the church—especially in college and young adult hood. It seemed that the church was more concerned about who was in and who was out… The church seemed arrogant, exclusive and often hurtful. 

But even in that time of separation, there was still something, that drew me to the church on Ash Wednesday. One Ash Wednesday in college, I said to my roommate, “We should go to church tonight.” Why she asked. It’s Ash Wednesday. What on earth is that? She asked. And I explained it-as best as I could- as the start of Lent. What’s Lent? She asked. Well, it’s the time before Easter… when you give stuff up and pray a lot. She answered with, “Sounds miserable.” Maybe, but it’s important.

And I got her to go with me. 

We sang and prayed. We all walked to the front and moved our big bangs aside, it was the 90s of course, and the pastor looked right into my eyes and said, “remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return.” And with her thumb, she smeared ashes on my forehead in the sign of the cross. 

Tears welled in my eyes. 

You see, it was just a few months before this that my grandpa had died. As the pastor stood at the casket, he made a cross of dust and said… what we still say today: Ashes to ashes; dust to dust. And here I was… seeing, feeling, these ashes in the sign of the cross on my forehead.

Ashes: Death, mortality, frugality of time

The Cross: Life, hopeful, eternity.

Together. Both the ashes and the cross are from God... both ashes and the cross say something about our humanity.

For it was ashes… it was dust from which God made the first humans! God made you. Your body. Your hair. Your hands. Your belly.

Sonja Renee Taylor wrote the book, The Body is Not an Apology, and she opens with this poem, My mother’s belly… she writes, 

Her belly looked like a walnut… 

the undulating of my mother’s belly was no

a shame she hid from her children

she knew we came from this. Her belly was a gift

we kept passing between us.

It was both hers, of her body

And ours for having made it new,

Different. Her belly was an altar of flesh

Built in remembrance of us, by us.

What remains of my mother’s belly

Resides in a container of ashes I keep in a closet.

Every once and again, I open the box,

Sift through the fine crystals with my palms

that were once eight. Feel the grooves and ridges

that do not summit now but rill through fingers

Granules so much more salt

than sweet today. And yet, still I marvel

At her once body. Even in this form say,

“I came from this.”

The joy of ashes.

The joy of a body that lived. The body that died. The body that we came from.

Though our earthly bodies come from dust… God makes beautiful things out of dust… and these ashes… ashes in the shape of the cross… remind us of the joyful promise. Eternity with God.