“Why do two colors, put one next to the other, sing? Can one really explain this? no. Just as one can never learn how to paint.”
? Pablo Picasso

We are a people hungry for color. The gray of these March days has started to burrow in and become another layer of skin we’d like to shed. It has been several days since the sun has been visible and the only disturbance of the monochromatic sky comes from a stray snowflake fluttering in the breeze. Color. Any color will do. Just take us out of our browns, blacks and grays and let us see a glimpse of some brilliant and bright hue. Please!

It is that time of a Minnesota winter when the dreariness has lingered too long. Snow piles are brown and ugly. You hear people make unbelievable statements like: “I just wish it would snow to clean this place up!” Here we are wishing for more snow to try to move us out of this grayness.

I wasn’t exactly thinking about the dreariness yesterday as I was driving into the office. But I found myself on the river road near the University of Minnesota. Generally people had their “it’s a gloomy day again” face on as they moved along to their destination. Most, myself included, also had that dazed look of a daylight saving time hangover. It is a rough week trying to rewire our circadian rhythms, isn’t it?

But moving along among all the uniformed blacks and browns, emerged a tall, lanky young man with an enormous smile on his face. He was making his way across the Franklin Avenue bridge with a gait that said “What a beautiful day!” I noticed him first for his energy. But then I took in the whole picture. Long, thin legs were housed in bright red and blue plaid loose pants, maybe even pajamas. They were worn with a green army jacket. Atop his tossed hair flying in the frigid breeze was a bright cap that looked as if it had dinosaur horns, again a bright red and blue. Riding on his back he carried a lovely multicolored backpack, striped and designs using all the colors of the rainbow. He moved along, a song of joy in the requiem that surrounded him.

Seeing him lifted my spirits. He gave me the inspiration to forsake my usual black or browns and to choose more colorful clothes this morning. Instead of mirroring the landscape, why not go against it? Why not try to anticipate the spring that is certainly on its way? It was bright blue and green for me today.

As I was thinking about all this color, I also have one ear on the news of those who are watching for black or white smoke. The process of choosing a new pope is fascinating especially to those of us who only know this tradition from observation. All the layers and centuries of ritual and meaning making unfolding before us in a world to which the clothing and behaviors seem so foreign. And yet here we all are watching for a stream of smoke that will mark a change that could affect the lives of many. Fascinating.

Black. White. Red. Blue. Gray. Brown.There is no promise of a break in the weather any time soon so the gray will linger a while longer. Perhaps our job is to provide a hint or two at what is to come. It may not be too early to pull out a bit of color and shock the dreary system into waking up. While we are waiting for black or white smoke, it might not be a bad idea to throw in a little color.

You know you want to.

This morning I sat in a comfortable rose colored, Queen Ann chair staring out as the day arrived. I am blessed to be at one of my favorite retreat centers for a three day retreat. One of the blessings of this experience is that I am clueless as to what is going to happen. I am not in leadership in any way and am simply here to receive and be present to whatever has been planned. Just writing those words brings about an ‘ahhhh’ in my chest. It is a rare and wonderful gift in the midst of Lent to be able to experience this kind of space and time. I am grateful.

Sitting as I did, looking out at the frozen lake now void of the colorful ice houses that dotted it earlier in the year, I watched as the light turned the snowy landscape from darkness to light. As it did, the color blue was opened up in all its various hues…..from navy to steel gray and on into pale blue and then white. It was like watching a color wheel turn. This play of color and light framed perfectly the black silhouette of bare branches that adorn the lakeside, waiting for the spring that is yet to be.

At one particular turn of that color wheel, when the sky was that faint tone of Scandinavian blue, my eyes were drawn to the lace of the branches. What became clear in this light were the many buds that perched on all the skeletal extensions. New life! My heart warmed at the prospect in this still frozen landscape.

Those who know trees will tell you that the buds are there all the time even in the dead of winter. But we don’t see them or we forget to look. Within the flow of life in the tree, new life is always coursing, waiting to break forth at the perfect and appointed time. It is their nature. And ours.

My morning devotion from a book by Joan Chittister, ended with the prayer prompt:”Give me, Great God, a sense of the Breath of the Spirit within me as I……..”. It is my prayer work to fill in the blank. Just like the trees who appear stark and naked, dead even, that Breath of the Spirit still moves within me. And you. As we walk around in our dailiness, most people cannot see the buds of new life that we wear. But they are there. Waiting for the perfect moment to be nurtured, fed, watered, honored. Waiting to bring forth something that has not been before.

May this day find me, find you, taking the time and space to have a sense of the Breath of the Spirit within so we can prepare the soil of our lives for what is new, what is waiting to burst forth. May this day find each of us looking with new eyes for all that is budding. In this winter landscape. In those we meet. In those places that seem hard and impossible. In those we love and those who are like a splinter in our finger. In the landscape that opens before us this day.

Give us, Great God, as sense of the Breath of the Spirit within us today as we………….
You fill in the blank.

Just last week I was thinking about the fact that I had not seen any interesting bumper stickers lately. Spending as much time in my car as I do, I am always privy to someone showing their pride in their children’s school as it is displayed on the rear of their vehicle. I am also able to gauge people’s political leanings by their stickers and often peer in to see if I think the face matches the message. I am rarely disappointed. But I had not seen anything new and compelling for quite come time.

And then this morning as I was creeping along in the March snow that seemed as if it was something new to these Minnesota drivers, my eyes fell on the bumper in front of me. “Keep Church Weird” the taped message said. I laughed out loud! I tried to get in front of the person or at least beside so I could catch a glimpse of the person who was carrying this intention into the world. The snow slick streets did not allow this to happen so I could not infer anything into the message by putting a face with it. I simply had to take the words for what they were.

I have pretty much spent my life in the church. In fact I have referred to myself as a “church nerd.” By this I mean that I have almost always found the ‘stuff’ of church……the words, music, trappings, endeavors…interesting. I have not felt the same about the politics of church but that is a subject for another time. Church has been for me a kind of home. Most of the time I know how it works, how it doesn’t, how it is hoped it will work, how it probably never will work. There is a kind of comfort for me in that.

And yet I admit church is kind of weird. There are particularly ‘churchy’ words that you don’t say anyplace else. They can be a kind of code for those on the inside. This can be weird for those who have not traveled similar roads. The clothes….the robes, the vestments, the collars….also weird and from another time. In worship, I now wear them less and less in favor of ‘street’ clothes but each time I put on a robe and stole, I am aware that it connects me with some ancient practice, some community of people that has come from another time. Watching the cardinals gather to choose as new pope, I am aware of the impact these visuals can have on people.

But there is much about the weirdness of church that is such a good thing. It can be, if we are authentic to the one we claim to follow, the place where status, wealth, gender, education and all the other things that divide us mean little. Church can also be the place where those on the margins find a home, a hot meal, a hand to hold. This can seem weird to the rest of the world. Church can be a place where the most well trained musician can stand beside the one who searches for the tune and yet the two make beautiful music together. Church can be the place where the person who cannot find a home any place else, finds their name in print, on a name tag, spoken in prayer. All this often seems weird to those merely peering in through the stained glass windows.

Keep church weird? I think so. Where else could a person struggle with their deepest questions, their unwieldy demons and still be a part of the community? Where else could a bowl of soup or a piece of bread and sip of wine become something that lifts the spirit and fuels the soul? Where else could a person be blessed with water and welcomed into the clan? Where else would friends, enemies, liberals, conservatives, young ones, old ones, people of all shapes and sizes all come together to try to make sense of the More they feel moving in their lives?

Churches may change. They may grow and decline. The ways of worship may shift between what is new and what is ancient. But what makes church ‘weird’ may be the very thing that saves us and helps us continue to be relevant.

What do you think?

“Let it come as it will, and don’t
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.”
~Jane Kenyon

It seems I am surrounded by many people who are going through things…..illness, loss, grief, confusion, decisions big and small, change, transition. The list goes on and on. And while life is always made up of these threads that weave in and out causing feathery wings and bruise-like colors, there seems to be a greater proliferation of it all right now. It doesn’t help that our national life is fractured as well. Social and financial fear mongering keeps our nerve-endings raw from response. The hope for numbness looms large in our collective psyche and yet rarely comes.

All of this is compounded by the fact that the sky has been cloudy the last 22 days in Minnesota. This is the time of year when you really have to buy into the ‘quality of life’ message about our land of 10,000 lakes because the visual would send us all screaming for some border, north or south, east or west. There seems to be a cloud hanging over each waking moment of the day. Those of us who observe the season of Lent, a church rhythm meant to bring about introspection and penitence, have the perfect backdrop for this winter drama.

Yesterday as I was stopping into a hospital to check in on one of our dear ones, I had my head appropriately tucked into my neck, my ears surfing on my shoulders as I sought to keep out the biting wind. My eyes, like all the other walkers, were focused downward on the dirty, salty sidewalk. Just outside a bus shelter I caught sight of a pacifier dropped onto the ground, just laying there abandoned. My heart gave a little tug in my chest. “Someone is needing comfort someplace.”, I thought.

The sight of this little piece of molded plastic sent me back some years to the times I would search frantically in the night, sleep-deprived and stumbling to find the object that would comfort a crying child and send us both back to sleep. I laughed to myself as I remember the little stashes of these miracle-workers we had hidden in nooks and crannies of beds, car seats, drawers, diaper bags. The ability to provide comfort with such a tiny tool was of paramount importance.

Placing a pacifier in a crying infant’s mouth and allowing them to soothe themselves to sleep is an easy enough act. Other comforts don’t come quite so easy. Those I know who are struggling with health issues are searching for a comfort that often arrives in the right medication or the hopeful word of a physician. Many I know are still searching for employment or work that more appropriately fits their gifts. What can bring comfort to these bright, intelligent people? All I can offer is to walk with them, to pray for them, to listen.

So many people I know are walking the road with relatives, parents mostly, who are aging and losing the freedom they once knew. The feeling of being both child and parent holds them in a suspended animation for which they are not trained. How to comfort their lack of security and confidence, their desire to respect these ones who have given them life? If only there was a comfort blanket that could fall gently on the hands that hold, the hearts that break.

What brings you comfort? As I thought about the things that become my pacifier, I thought of the communities I am blessed to sit in. Those people who make me laugh, tell the truth and cut myself some slack, knowing I will deliver a platter of the same to them when needed. And then there is that morning sighting of the brilliant red of a cardinal defying the cold and drab view out my window. And of course, a good story, a blazing fire, the big, black dog looking expectantly into my eyes, a hand to hold,a steaming cup of coffee.

When all those fail there is always one deep breath. Then another. And another until the breath becomes prayer. This breathing rhythm is, perhaps, the original Comforter coming to rest within reminding us that, no matter what, we are really never alone.

“Tonight the moon came up, it was nearly full
Way down here on Earth, I could feel its pull
The weight of gravity, or just the lure of light
Made me want to leave my only home tonight…….”
~Mary Chapin Carpenter

Did you see the moon last night? My lovely calendar with equally lovely words had told me to expect a ‘Snow Moon’. I had read that teaser in the early morning but had forgotten about it. Fixing dinner in my kitchen, I was focusing on chopping and dicing when I sensed a pull on my attention. I turned around to see the most amazing yellow orb making its way up the dome of the sky out my window. The deep blue night sky and the jet black silhouettes of black walnut branches framed the golden disk with perfection. I was stopped in my movements by a beauty and awe that took my breath away. I threw on my coat and headed outdoors so I could breathe in the air that held such a sight.

I spent the evening tracking the movement of this Snow Moon. As it rose higher and higher in the sky, it lost some of its golden hue trading it in for the purest white. Driving in my car toward the horizon that held it, I marveled that I have the privilege to be alive under such a moon. In my head this little snippet of the Mary Chapin Carpenter song floated providing a winter soundtrack. I had indeed felt the pull of this amazing moon and I also had to leave my home to get as pure a view of it as possible. It felt like a sacred act to me.

Perhaps sacred sights like this one come to us when we need them. Certainly there were countless other people who did not have the experience of the pull of this moon. But its sighting was a reminder to me of the vast Universe of which I am a tiny speck. So many times I behave as if I am at its center! The lure of the light of this moon assured me that its glow was so much bigger than anything I could imagine and that same glow was for all the little specks just like me. If we have the eyes to see. If we pay attention to the pull.

I was intrigued by the name Snow Moon. Doing some research I learned that it is the name given to the full moon of February in North America because the light of this full moon will probably fall on lots of places with snow. Amen to that. Whatever it is called, it was a beautiful sight.

Sometimes we have experiences, ordinary, every day experiences that nudge (or pull) us to remember how fabulous it is to be human. Fabulous and fragile. Last night as I felt the pull of the moon, something tugged in my chest. It was the deep tug of knowing that this gift of seeing the moon will not always be mine. Or yours. That knowing connected me with all those I have known who no longer glimpse the moon in the way I was able to do at that moment. Gift. Pure gift.

This morning I went searching for the lyrics to the Mary Chapin Carpenter song. Its title? ‘Between Here and Gone’. It is a melancholy song about where we find home,not leaving things undone that are important and the fact that, indeed, we all live someplace between here and gone.

“It is a pleasure to be with you for this day we are on earth together.”
~Libby Larsen

Yesterday I made a trek across Loring Park in Minneapolis to Westminster Presbyterian Church for their Town Hall Forum. The speaker was homegrown composer Libby Larsen. She began her talk with the words above. While I have admired much of her music over the years, with this one statement she won my heart. Indeed, wouldn’t it be a kinder, gentler world if we walked into each day, to the breakfast table, into our classroom or office and greet those we meet with these words? “It is a pleasure to be with you for this day we are on earth together.” Ahhhhh……..

As Larsen spoke on the subject of ‘a composer on composing’, we were able to glimpse the life of someone whose primary way of moving in the world is through hearing. As a primarily visual person, I am always interested in the other ways people access information, process it and then communicate with the world. As a composer Larsen spoke of hearing the rhythm in traffic, remarked on a sound she was hearing overhead at that moment, probably a vent of some kind, the rhythms she hears in the various languages people speak. All these contribute to the music she writes, her way of being ‘a person who hears their way into the world’, in her words.

It all made me want to be a better hear-er. I think I am a pretty good listener but perhaps not a very good hear-er. I can tune out other conversations around me, work with music playing or even the television and not pay a bit of attention to the sounds around me. What is it like to be aware of all the sounds that make up our daily life?

Larsen says “We haven’t heard a world like we are hearing now.” I suppose that is true. I just have never thought about it….or listened for it. More than the sounds of today I am most often jarred out of my tuned out state by sounds that connect me with a distant memory. The sound of a train’s horn moving along the St.Paul bluffs connects me with the warm, summer nights of my childhood when the train would move through our town signaling its journey from one place to another. The impact of ball to bat, the cracking that sends me back in time to the freedom of summer leisure. A song heard on the radio that conjures a tug in my chest of melancholy and adolescent angst. An old hymn that reminds me of the warmth of leaning into my mother’s soft, fleshy arm during church.

What is the world we are hearing now? I suppose there are more sounds of machines and equipment and the clicking and clacking of all the many devices we ‘need’ to make our 21st century work. There is also the tapping of fingers on keyboards, the beeps of cellphones and alerts to do this or that. The sound of more planes taking off and landing, cars of varying revs and vrooms. And all of it happening at once in a way that it has not always done, creating a sense of chaos for some and comfort for others.

Perhaps the sound that is in this world we are inhabiting right now that is in shortest supply is silence. Not silence as the absence of sound but the actual sound of silence. And silence is a sound, isn’t it? Again Larsen remarked: “Silence in our culture is the rarest of all words.”
When this brilliant woman made this statement, I thought of all the people throughout time who have pursued the sound of silence, this rarest of all words. I thought of the places I have visited, holy, ancient places, where silence was pursued by the great and the humble. I thought of the places in this postmodern world I am blessed to inhabit where the rare word of silence is also found.

For a moment I felt the gift of that silence wash over me like a prayer.Though I will endeavor to be a better hear-er for its gifts to stretch my visual world,the pursuit of the rare word of silence seems equally as important.

“The ancient rabbis teach that on the seventh day, God created menuha- tranquility, serenity, peace, and repose – rest, in the deepest possible sense of fertile, healing stillness. Until the Sabbath, creation was unfinished. Only after the birth of menuha, only with tranquility and rest, was the circle of creation made full and complete.”
~ Wayne Muller, Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives

A funny thing happens when you read a book several times. You bring to a second, third or fourth reading all the life experiences that have happened in between. They inform the words and your eyes and your heart are drawn to completely different words with multiple readings. Since I am a great book underliner, I know this is true. This quote from Wayne Muller’s book, one I have read at least four times if not more, is a perfect example. I have underlined sentences and whole paragraphs in this book. Some of my highlights still make sense to me but others create brow-furrowing reactions. Why was I drawn to those words? Why did I take the time to underline that whole paragraph?

My faith community has engaged in reading this book for Lent. It is a great book, one that always challenges me and causes me to think about the small and large movements of my days. I am anticipating conversations and insights others may have as they read it for the first time or once again.

The paragraph I printed at the beginning of this post is one I had glossed over in my other readings. But for some reason, this time, it jumped right out at me and shook its fist in my face. “Until the Sabbath, creation was unfinished.” It opened yet one more door on this central story which shapes a worldview and even an understanding of the Holy. Until there was a sense of tranquility, repose and rest, the rhythm of Creation was not complete.

Perhaps this paragraph decided to dance with me because, I confess, I am not a very good rest-er. I have been noticing this lately and have begun trying to be better at it. The problem with ‘trying’ to rest is that the trying can become another task, another effort that really is not resting but working at resting. Does this make sense to you?

But when I think about the process of creation and the ways in which it plays itself out in my life, I can begin to see how without the final movement of serenity, peace and rest, the creative process is a cycle without wholeness. I imagine an artist painting or sculpting, how the inspiration, energy and adrenaline moves toward the culmination of portrait or statue. Can the work be complete without the final step of stepping back resting in the beauty of what has been created?

Thinking about my friends who are musicians, I think of the ways in which notes, rests, words, tunes, rhythms move together to create song. This composition all comes together in some form for someone to hear or sing or play. And can it really be complete without those final moments when the exertion has ceased and the sound is suspended in the air, held on the breath of those visible and invisible? This moment of peace and serenity becomes that place of ‘healing stillness’ that gives finality to what has been born and hope for what is yet to be.
Everyday we embark on acts of creativity both grand and mundane. In doing so we embody the gifts and intention of the Great Artist. From the meals we make to the lessons we teach, from the conversations we nurture to the decisions that must be made, each is a creative act whether we name them so or not. These acts of creativity of the every day are the flesh and blood of life; yours, mine, ours, the world’s. The creative movement that gives life and breath to taking us out of one day and into the next, through our work, our play, our joys, sorrows, dreams and disappointments is the stuff of Creation. We would do well to remember this……and to honor the fullness of the coming full circle.

And then, rest.

“Light within all light
Soul behind all souls
at the breaking of the dawn
at the coming of the day
we wait and watch.”
~John Philip Newell

There is always a certain time of winter in Minnesota when our ability to get around is not hindered so much by snow as ice. Though snow, brown and dirty, may still be piled high and patches of ice shine like glass in the brilliant sun, it is the potholes in the road that cause us to drive cautiously, veering left and right, slowing to a creep to drive into and then out of a hole that had not been there even a day before. The combination of salt, sand and chemicals to reduce tires sliding on snowy streets creates these sometimes enormous holes that can jar our teeth and mess with our car’s alignment. This can be at the least annoying and at worst dangerous.

However, there is always one pothole whose appearance I anticipate. It happens year after year in one particular place along a busy street in my neighborhood. The asphalt that has created a smooth drive chips away and reveals a glimpse at another time in our city’s history. The black, tarry substance peals back and reveals not only the cobblestones that lay beneath but also the rails that carried the street car. When this happens, as it did this past week, I am always pleased to be reminded of what my neighborhood might have been like in a slower, perhaps even more elegant time. As streetcars carried people from work and shopping in downtown St. Paul up the Smith Avenue hill, I imagine them getting off at the local pharmacy on the corner. This building which now houses the coffee shop where I often sit drinking a steaming cup of coffee and reading or writing, was once the local place to have a prescription filled or to have a soda while thumbing though a magazine. The pothole that conjures this all up for me rests like a beacon outside the pharmacy-cum-coffee shop.

Each time this pothole makes its yearly appearance, I am reminded of all the layers of our lives. Historically we know that cities are built upon cities, other lives upon other lives. It is the work of archeologists to dig and unravel what lays beneath soil and sand to reveal a piece of pottery or jewelry, a clue to the lives that once lived in a place. We also know that our own lives have the layers of where we were born and lived our early days piled high with the experiences of education and work, relationships and family, disappointments and successes. All these are layered upon one another, over and over until sometimes it is easy to forget what is just below the surface.

As people of faith, we also carry the layers of the stories that shaped not only us but those who have nurtured, protected and defined our traditions. For good or ill we carry these layers within our own story. I am always reminded of this as one church season turns to another.

Those of us in the Christian household began the observance of Lent this past week. On Sunday we read again the story of Jesus’ journey into the wilderness. Here he confronts the temptations of body and spirit, of wrestling with power and control, of turning his back on his Creator. It is Jesus’ story. But it is also ours and if we allow its wisdom to inform our own story we are confronted by our own wilderness journeys. We can peal back the layers of what these wilderness times have brought us and, perhaps, find wisdom for moving through these forty days in new ways, with new understanding of the call on our own lives.

Lent can be a time for reflection. Reflection on the layers of who we are and how the Holy moves in our lives. Reflection on what has shaped us, what is important to keep and what is as equally important to let go. Reflection on our story and how it fits into a larger story. The layers are rich and deep, sometimes holding the gifts of the past. Always pointing toward the hopes of the future.

Last night as we began our Ash Wednesday service, we also began a time of living into the theme: My Breath, My Body, My Prayer. Woven throughout the words we spoke and the music we sang was the invitation to pay attention to this trio of words…..breath, body, prayer. Over the next 46 days we will read more, reflect on and talk about this theme. The hope is that in shining the light on these three simple words we will find ways to also experience the breath, body and prayer of the one we follow on this journey. Jesus.

At the same time we are exploring this theme we are also encouraging people to read and be in conversation about the book Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives by Wayne Muller. As I have reflected on this intersection of theme and book, it seems that each inform the other. Or at least that is our hope. Time will tell if our instincts are correct.

Breath….this invigorating action, this life force that keeps us moving. Body…..the house of spirit and hopes and dreams. Prayer…..that communication between human fleshiness and the One who created us and continues to invite us into a co-creative relationship more often than we like to admit. I often forget the dance these three do together. Do you? I must constantly remind my head and heart to be present in my earthly home-body. To breath, deeply, regularly, fully, passionately, quietly. And then to pray……connecting through words, silence, and simply being with the Sacred that threads through it all.

This forgetting is the ‘gift’ of living in busyness. I know it. You probably know it, too. And yet we keep on as if we didn’t know better. My understanding is that this remembering, this knowing is the true gift of practicing Sabbath. It was offered to us at Creation,in the wilderness with our Hebrew ancestors and through the life of Jesus. And so, I am thankful to be weaving a tapestry of these three words with the wisdom of Muller’s book. ” If busyness can become a kind of violence, we do not have to stretch our perception very far to see that Sabbath time – effortless, nourishing rest – can invite a healing of this violence.” Who couldn’t use more of that?

As I begin this Lent, I am breathing, I am caring for my body and honoring its gifts to me. And I am committing myself to prayer…..a communion with the Holy in all the ways I can imagine or that may be presented to me. I am not doing any of this by making lists of ways to do it or in pushing myself to accomplish this task of remembering. Instead I am trying…..as best I can…..to rest and fall gently into it all.

“God does not want us to be exhausted. God wants us to be happy.”, Muller writes. And I think this means even in Lent.

“The true joy of life is not in the grand gesture but in the consecration of the moment.”
~Kent Nerburn

Today the Christian household begins the observance of Lent. These forty days and seven Sundays help us, once again, to remember the consecration of moments. Our days are meant to connect our life story with the life story of Jesus. We will read the scriptures and allow ourselves to experience them with all the changes that have happened to us since this same time last year. Birthdays have been celebrated. Loved ones have departed. Jobs and careers have shifted or ended. The world has known unimaginable tragedies and experiences of overwhelming joy. All of our own life experiences have brought us to the beginning of the Lenten journey not quite the person we were this time last year. At some level we have integrated, denied, celebrated or fled our last year and all of that can bring us to this Lent with new eyes, a new heart.

Many of us will head to our places of worship and be marked with the sign of ashes today. Sitting yesterday with some friends, we discussed how this ritual has not always been a part of our own Lenten journey. For many of us this was something our Roman Catholic friends experienced but was not a common practice in our own Protestant churches. Over the years, however, this has changed. I think we are the better for it. This marking of ashes which symbolizes the fragility of our lives…..from dust you have come and to dust you will return…..is the consecration of the moment that begins our Lent. It is a way of saying, “Something holy is going to happen. If you pay attention. If you choose to notice. If you give yourself over to it.”

These seasons and rhythms of the church year are a way of reminding us to do just this. To pay attention to the moments and not just the grand gestures. Easter will be the grand gesture and certainly an important one. It is the day most churches pull out all the stops to tell the story of who they are. But the truth is we live our lives in the moments. And it is the moments that beg to, long to, deserve to be consecrated.

Consecrate: to set aside or declare as sacred. It is not a word we use very often in every day speech. We can tend to imagine that consecrating is something people, usually ministers or priests, do and others cannot. And yet, at least for me, what I believe is that when those ordained in their faith tradition consecrate…… bread, wine, water, people…..what is really happening is the recognition and honoring of the sacred nature that already exists in these thought-to-be common elements. It is a deep recognition of the presence of God in all.

Today we will take ashes, black and sooty, a substance that resembles soil and consecrate it. We will say words and make music and hold this black substance at the center of the worship we make. Finger will touch ash and then the forehead of each person who comes to be reminded of the fragile, precious life they are living. The invitation is to pay attention to how Jesus’ life….going into the wilderness, temptations, healing, laughter, storytelling, time spent with friends, encounters with enemies, betrayal, commitment to God, suffering, death…….informs our own living of these same experiences. Most of these are not grand gesture times but moments in which, if we are aware, hold seeds of the sacred. They are moments to be consecrated.

And so the journey begins.