As the mother of children, I have noticed this year that some of the major holidays have brought with them sad reminders of the times in which we live.

At Christmas time, I was remembering the tragedy of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting that killed 26 people and happened about two weeks before Christmas on December 14, 2012 (which was the Friday before we had our Children’s Christmas pageant at our church). It was an excruciating time to be a parent of elementary aged children and to know what to do/say in worship centered around the joy of children during such a tragedy involving children.

On Valentine’s Day I was remembering the tragedy of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, FL that killed 17 and injured another 17. The shooting happened on February 14, 2018 which was Valentine’s Day and also Ash Wednesday. There is an indelible image in my mind from the news that day of a woman crying at the school with the mark of the ashes on her forehead.

I mention these not to open a political debate or to invite commentary on guns (though I think it is an issue we need to work at talking with each other about in order to do some productive problem solving), but to highlight how pain and brokenness has spilled over into all areas of life, leaving not even holidays or holy days untouched.

We often want to ignore the fact that the heaviness of the world is all around us– If we make enough, stay busy enough, buy enough, insure ourselves enough, perhaps we can insulate ourselves from the pain and brokenness of human existence, but it is always there. Sometimes it is hidden in the shadows and other times it is in plain sight.

My husband and I were blessed to be able to attend the Brandi Carlile concert with the Seattle Symphony orchestra this past weekend. Carlile is an amazing artist and the lyrics of her songs are poignant. As she prepared to sing her song Sugartooth, which is a song about a young man she had known in high school who had a drug addiction and took his own life, she talked about viewing everyone as “someone’s baby.”

As we left that amazing concert with those poignant words still rolling around in my head, we passed many homeless including one man passed out, pressed up against a building. He had every inch of clothing pulled up over his body and his head either for warmth, anonymity or both. I couldn’t tell if he was dead or alive…and, as a mother, all I wanted to do was to put a blanket over him. And I kept thinking (and have thought in days since): “he’s someone’s baby.”

Art can name the pain but not always ease it. And so, we come to Ash Wednesday, when we mark our foreheads in the sign of the cross with the burnt ashes from last Palm Sunday—a visible symbol that all glories end as does all life. We hear the words: “remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return,” and we stop all our running and efforts to keep the weight of this existence out…and in that moment, we find that we are not alone.

I hope you will join us for the marking of the Ashes service tomorrow at 7:00 p.m. in our Sanctuary. And I want to provide you with some possible resources as we set out on the Lenten journey.

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent, the 40-day period leading up to Holy Week and Easter (patterned after Jesus’ wandering in the desert). Lent has traditionally been a time for Christians to focus more intentionally on Spiritual practices, particularly those of fasting, praying and acts of service.

I hope these resources might be of help to you on this journey toward Easter:

In this piece entitled Soil+Breath=Life, Author Leah D. Schade offers an Ash Wednesday reflection (along with ideas of Lenten practices) tied to ecology and nature.

The Refugee and Immigration Ministries of Disciples Home Missions is offering an 8 part Lenten Devotional Series.

Contemplative Monk is offering some different ways to consider fasting for the season of Lent.  

The Faith-ing Project offers some ideas for spiritual practices during Lent based on the book Contemplating Lent

Sarah Bessey has compiled 40 Simple Practices for Lent from her book Field Notes.