Ash Wednesday
My mother, who died in 2015, has been turned to ash. The remains of her cremation sit in a box on a shelf in my room. The ashes aren’t her, nor do they symbolize some essence of her nature. Still, I’m in no hurry to spread them across the scattering ground at the cemetery where she bought a place to rest. One day I will do so, when I no longer need her quiet reminder that I am destined to end up as ash myself. Whether we are talking about the dust out of which the Hebrew God formed us or the carbon created in the belly of the stars, we are born of dust and ash, and to dust and ash we return.
Ash Wednesday is another reminder of this. On that day, Christians stand in penitential silence as religious leaders paint a cross on their foreheads with a paste of ashes made from palm leaves. The week before, these leaves symbolized Jesus’s triumphant return to the holy city of Jerusalem. Now they symbolize death.
Reminders of our mortality encourage us to savor the life we have right now. They inspire us to strive to become our best selves.
In this spirit, Ash Wednesday starts the forty-day season of Lent. During Lent, we examine our true natures, repent of our mistakes, control our cravings, fast, and use prayer and ritual to heal that which has separated us from God and from our community. By doing so, we may become as new, be reborn. [1]

The Hallelujah
Thus Ash Wednesday ushers us, not just into Lent, but also toward the resurrection. Beneath the abstinence and denial that mark this season, lies anticipation. The palm leaves may have burned to cinders, and we may have many sins on our hearts that need expiation, but along with the season of Lenten austerity it precedes, Ash Wednesday leads to Easter, the happiest day of the Christian calendar.
For the devout believer, triumph, death, and eternal life aren’t contradictions. They are the same thing. When our bodies become dust, our souls rise to heaven, that eternal place of joy. Death’s sting is gone. That is the hallelujah.
Even so, the hallelujah isn’t free. Yes, as a Universalist, I believe that whatever salvation is, it will touch every one of us. To rise to heaven, whether literally or metaphorically, we don’t need to be good or make a pilgrimage or pay a toll or deny ourselves pleasure throughout our lifetime. Grace is not something we earn. We receive it for no reason at all. Like salvation, grace comes to us out of love.
Remembering the We Are Ash
Yet we aren’t always ready to accept grace. To do so, to take in the hallelujah, we must learn to receive.
This learning takes effort. It’s not easy to accept that we are beloved no matter what. To do so, we must honor our frailty, recognize our mistakes, humble ourselves, forgive others, and take in the forgiveness that is as ubiquitous as love. To live in spiritual freedom, to experience the peaceful stillness that knows joy as an intimate partner in this earthly life, we have to do the hard work of transforming our inner selves and opening our hearts to the holy. That’s why the hallelujah is not free. If we wish to receive it, we must repent, not because repentance earns us a place in heaven, but because it earns us an open heart.
So on Ash Wednesday, we repent and pray. We confess our sins not so that shame can coerce us into being good, but so we can cleanse our hearts of resentment and bitterness. We remember our mortality so we can be grateful for life. Then, we can strive to become more holy.
The Gift of Ash Wednesday
This is not a bad thing. Whatever allows us to “choose life,” as the writers of Deuteronomy enjoin us; whatever allows us to live according to the values of faith, integrity, and honesty, is a good thing.
Ash Wednesday offers us the opportunity to resurrect the sacred part of ourselves that is connected to the cosmos, to our neighbors, to our God. We do this not because we remember and rejoice in the cross, that symbol of the resurrection, but because we remember that we are mortal creatures formed out of ash.
In faith and fondness,
Barbara
Credits
- See Van Sloun, Michael, “Why Do We Receive Ashes on Ash Wednesday?,” The Catholic Spirit, February 4, 2016, http://thecatholicspirit.com/holy-days/lent/why-do-we-receive-ashes-on-ash-wednesday-2/, accessed 2/19/20 and Bartlett, David L, Barbara Brown Taylor, and Kimberly Bracken Long, eds., Feasting on the Word Lenten Companion : A Thematic Resource for Preaching and Worship, Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2014, 124.
Photo by Rubén Bagüés on Unsplash
Copyright © 2020 Barbara E. Stevens All Rights Reserved
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