the beginnings of seasons
When the ashes are imposed, the priest pronounces the refrain:
"Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return."
It has always been one of the most profoundly relaxing moments of my year.
I shook today to find that others have understood it differently. I heard some students discussing the practice on the bus, and one admitting to being thoroughly frightened by it. She pondered her mortality and quaked. Her companion was humbled, and wasn't sure how he felt about that. He started off resenting it like hell, and then talked himself down into admitting his own smallness vis a vis the cosmos. I was hoping he'd take the next step, and remember that immediately afterwards, he, taken from the dust, was invited to partake of the Living God and mature from glory to glory unto the ages into a more perfect likeness of Him in whose image he was created. Ashes are imposed in the context of the Eucharist. But maybe that isn't a thought for the bus.
But it has been different for me. I've heard not an admonition, not a curse, but a promise. It is profoundly quieting. In some way, the profoundest consolation that can be offered.
It is possible that one would never have this thought without having spent some time at the edge, at the point where you accept possibilities that biology rejects. You move away from that, you mend, but I think you look at death forever differently. Buddhists understand.
To my ear, it's about being still, and knowing that God is God (Ps 46:10).
It has nothing to do with a lack of faith in or hope for the resurrection. Rebirth, transfiguration, purification, are if anything a linked longing. Death and life are not contradictory desires. It just depends on what you mean by each.
Dust and ashes and the desert are not something I fear.
____________________________
e e cummings
dust
this is passing of all shining things
"Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return."
It has always been one of the most profoundly relaxing moments of my year.
I shook today to find that others have understood it differently. I heard some students discussing the practice on the bus, and one admitting to being thoroughly frightened by it. She pondered her mortality and quaked. Her companion was humbled, and wasn't sure how he felt about that. He started off resenting it like hell, and then talked himself down into admitting his own smallness vis a vis the cosmos. I was hoping he'd take the next step, and remember that immediately afterwards, he, taken from the dust, was invited to partake of the Living God and mature from glory to glory unto the ages into a more perfect likeness of Him in whose image he was created. Ashes are imposed in the context of the Eucharist. But maybe that isn't a thought for the bus.
But it has been different for me. I've heard not an admonition, not a curse, but a promise. It is profoundly quieting. In some way, the profoundest consolation that can be offered.
It is possible that one would never have this thought without having spent some time at the edge, at the point where you accept possibilities that biology rejects. You move away from that, you mend, but I think you look at death forever differently. Buddhists understand.
To my ear, it's about being still, and knowing that God is God (Ps 46:10).
It has nothing to do with a lack of faith in or hope for the resurrection. Rebirth, transfiguration, purification, are if anything a linked longing. Death and life are not contradictory desires. It just depends on what you mean by each.
Dust and ashes and the desert are not something I fear.
____________________________
e e cummings
dust
this is passing of all shining things