Ash Wednesday reflections

13 February 2013

I went to Mass this morning.  I sat beside the picture of Simon of Cyrene helping Jesus with His cross.  

I didn’t understand much of what was said, but I knew what they were talking about.  There was a lot of talking and praying and kneeling before the bowl of ashes came out.  

It seems I was sitting in the old man section of the church.     

There was a child in front of me (even though it was the old man section, children are everywhere) who would not stop staring or turn around and face the front.  An older man came from behind me and put his hand on her shoulder and gently but firmly righted her body to face the front.  He was wearing a brass wedding band.  In this gesture I saw authority and kindness. 

I thought of all the deeds those hands might have done, the things those strong old arms have carried.  I thought of all the life the eyes of those old men me around have seen.  And I wondered. 

Then I got in line with them and walked up to the front of the church.  

There was a line of 50 men walking past me, returning to their seats, as I continued to wait... nearly shaven grey hair, grey stubble beards, wrinkled faces, lean but frail bodies, old tattered suit jackets, piles of hats left on the window sills and walking sticks left on the floor... they kneeled and prayed and always crossed themselves and bowed a little before they sat down.  They walked hunched over a little and did not push past the people to get in line like everyone else did.  As I carried with me all my thoughts and memories about a million things and a hundred different moments, observing every detail of my present experience, I wondered what they might be thinking.

When it was my time to get the ashes on my forehead I was nearly overcome with emotion.  I watched the priest dip his fingers in the bowl, the same fingers and the same bowl for a hundred men and women before me, and I closed my eyes and bent my knees a little as he wiped the ash on my forehead.  I felt it in my heart.

The whole morning I had this song* in my head...

Digging deep, I feel my conscience burn

I need to know who and what I am

This hunger jolts me from complacency

It rocks me and makes me meet myself

‘Cause Jacob walked a limp to remind him

Of the greater gift of the greater One

But when I fell, I fell to my own resources

How can I carry a truth when I can’t crawl to you?

I want to feel something sweeter than this sin

Cover me in the leaves, roll me over again

‘Cause I’ve been everybody else and now I want to be

Something closer to myself

Paint me in a different light, shed me yet another coat of skin

Mark me with ash until I’m clean again

Because I’m so sick and tired of being sick and tired

I know I can love you, I know that I can

I’ve been thinking and praying for days about how I can personally observe this Lenten season.  I have to be careful because, for me, it can easily turn into one of two things (or sometimes both):  It can be a prideful declaration of my piety, a “hey God, look what I’m doing for you! You better do something for me now.  Look how good I am,”  OR it can be a quick way to lose weight and feed my vanity.  If I give up something like sugar and bread I will invariably drop a few pounds and feel a bit prettier and more godly and some weird part of me loves the self-denial. 

But fasting and prayer is a private matter so I’ll move on; I simply want to convey the weight of this morning’s mass and part of my attitude going into it.

There are so many things that we are slaves to.  Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how I wish I could be better at saying no when I want to say no.  I think of that movie where Jim Carey has to say yes to everything and I wish for some magic spell that would help me say no.  It’s even more difficult in this PC culture of “integration.”  After 9 months in Rwanda I’m still having a difficult time with that blurry line of integration versus holding onto my identity and keeping my sanity.  Even before Rwanda, though, I’ve been a slave to pleasing others.  Even in my own culture I have a hard time saying no when someone wants me to do something that I know will make them happy.  

Instead of being personally unhappy and untrue to myself while saying yes to everyone and trying to please everybody, I want to try being something closer to myself....

... to be something closer to myself while I’m in Rwanda and being respectful and culturally sensitive and figuring out how to integrate, and making plans and talking with my family at home as they barely know who I am anymore, and learning and growing so much and getting to know myself and who I am, and developing my thoughts about spirituality and the world and international development and the value of cross cultural experiences, and being all too often stuck in memories of the past and dreams of the future instead of being present where I am right now... 

... something closer to myself.  That shouldn’t be too difficult, should it?

As I returned to my seat after I got the ashes on my head I thought of Ash Wednesday last year.  I had gotten special permission from my teacher to leave our Wednesday night class early so I could go to my church for the service.  I could write a whole essay on why I love that church so much, but I’ll save those thoughts for another time.  I’d called around to all the churches in Missoula to find a service not being held in the morning and not at 7:00 p.m. so I could attend.  Grad students’ schedules are difficult to accommodate sometimes.  Unsuccessful at finding a convenient service, I got permission and left class and walked across campus and through the neighborhood across the street to get to church.  Thankfully, it was only two blocks from campus.  Being February in Montana, it was very dark at 6:45 and it had started to snow.  It wasn’t a pretty, slow, light snowfall, but a wet, icy and windy snowfall.  I was wearing a long dress, a sweater over it, boots, a fleece over all that, and a hat.  I put my head down and walked fast, but I was still soaked and frozen when I got to the church 15 minutes later.  

Cover me in the leaves, roll me over again

It was so important to me to go that night because I was feeling particularly heartbroken and was trying to decide whether or not to go to Rwanda.  I wept the whole time and with the pastor’s (a beautiful, strong, peaceful and eloquent woman, by the way, whom I adore) hand on my forehead I felt the ashes being marked on my heart.  As I returned to my seat in that lovely sanctuary lit only by candles, I felt repentance and grief and community.  I looked around at the familiar faces, having only known them a few months and not even remembering many names, and felt a part of something bigger and more ancient than my own soul.  

And I felt that again today.  

Church services like this one, are meant to be an outward manifestation of an inward reality.  It’s a powerful thing to honor a deeply personal inward spiritual matter of the soul in a room full of other people.  It’s impossible to judge the hearts of other men, but it’s empowering to honor the reality of God in each of us as we move through this season together.  

After we’d received the ash, taken communion (I didn’t take communion: being true to myself - I’m not Catholic), and said several prayers we turned to those around us and embraced them one by one saying to each other, “Wamohoro Kristo.”  The peace of Christ.  

In Rwanda when you greet someone you go in face-to-face and grab each other by the upper arm putting your face over each others left shoulder.  Maybe I’ll just demonstrate when I see you next because I fear I’m failing to describe it well.  Then you shake that persons hand after holding them for half a second.  About 8 of those old men sitting around me, one at a time, after we’d shared the symbol of repentance and grief, knelt together, prayed together, remembered together, each of them, in turn, firmly grasped my arms, looked me in the eyes and said in their native language, Peace of Christ.  We sealed our communal experience with a firm physical embrace with a literal passing of peace.  

When I got back to the health center, there were several Catholic nurses there who, because of work, were unable to attend Mass.  One of them, the old woman who shares evening meals with me, said, “I need some,” as she reached up and rubbed some of my ash off my head and onto hers.  I mimicked her, rubbing a little off of me and onto her.  I wanted to give it and not just have it taken from me.  

I will never know what the eyes and hands of those old men at church have seen and done.  I will never know the life and grief of the nurses at my health center.  I may never be able to get past the frustration of being constantly stared at and feared by children.  Perhaps I will continue to say yes when I want to say no to things I am invited to.  

But, for a fleeting moment this morning, I was able to walk that tightrope of being myself while being fully present and a part of this life.  

This hunger jolts me from complacency

It rocks me and makes me meet myself

*Closer to Myself by Kendall Payne