We are dying. If we are alive, we are wending our way toward death. It has never happened any other way.
Great pretenders that we are, we don't think it will happen. We can't imagine living without those we love. Our medical system teaches us to preserve life at all cost--like in the preservation we can somehow cheat the death that will surely come.
Our pretense costs us wasted days when we could have been "together." It costs us reconciliation when we convince ourselves there is always one more day, so today we will hold tightly to the grudge we have held so long that the indention of the pain is deep in the carpet of our lives. Our pretense costs us the opportunity to say "good-bye," "I love you," "thank-you."
Great pretenders that we are, we think we control our life, our death, and our destiny.
Walk into a church today and hear the words, "You are dust, and to dust you shall return." (Genesis 3:19) God's words to us come at the end of our first denial of our mortality. God reminds us that we are not forever people.
The imposition of ashes is a small ritual. It only happens once a year...on a Wednesday...in the evening. Is it really so significant?
A friend was recently diagnosed with ALS. Her prayer was that God would help her know who she was as she lived with the disease. She was looking for significance and meaning in light of a clear reminder of her mortality. I thought it was a beautiful prayer and a gift to those of us who had forgotten we, too, are dying.
From dust we all come...and to dust we shall return. Is death a gift from God to remind us to live lives worthy of our true humanity...practicing generosity, forgiveness, trust, curiosity? Is our mortality an invitation to live and die knowing that we are loved by God and that nothing can separate us from that love?
The gift of ashes...
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