Hope in the Ashes

Ash Wednesday this year, 2023, was the first time I wore the ashes cross on my forehead. It was deeply meaningful.

I did not grow up in a religious tradition that included the ashes-on-the-forehead practice. In the buckle of the Bible belt, it was considered too ‘Catholic.’ But many of those traditionally legalistic beliefs have changed, recognized for what they were — a type of judgment and spiritual abuse.

Now that I attend a more liturgical and inclusive community of Jesus followers, I am open to accepting new ways of growing my faith. So I attended the Ash Wednesday service with my son and found it to be spiritually uplifting while at the same time a poignant reminder of what the day means.

Our service was filled with beautiful music and a sense of emotional loss. We were, after all, entering the season when that incredible God/Man died a brutal death so that we could be accepted into God’s loving arms.

Then toward the end of the evening, each of us walked forward to receive the ashes. The gentle touch of my pastor’s thumb pressing into my forehead. The warmth of her flesh against mine. Her soft voice, “From dust you came. To dust you will return.” My imagination of what the cross must look like on my skin. The tears that caught in my throat.

Then later, looking at the reflection of the cross of ashes in my bathroom mirror. Accepting the truth about the final state of my body. Having just completed all the paperwork for where and how my own ashes will be buried, this cross was a visual of my final act.

A reminder that death precedes eternal life. But ashes can also evoke a positive response. Used as mulch to produce new life. Beauty from dust. The ending and the beginning. Alpha and Omega.

Still, the writer in me wanted to know more. What was the origin of this practice? What is this visual and sensory act intended to mean for Jesus followers?

With a bit of research, I learned the following:

  • The practice of a cross of ashes on the forehead began in the 8th century with the Gregorians, a community of Anglican friars.
  • It did not become a widespread part of American religious tradition until the 1970s.
  • The ashes symbolize penitence, being sorry for how we have ignored God and mistreated others — the basics of sin.
  • They are also a reminder of the brevity of our lives, of our mortality. We are not self-sufficient enough to forgive our own misdeeds. Jesus alone owns the power to transform us.
  • The ashes are made from the previous year’s Palm Sunday branches. Oil is often added to make the ashes stay on the forehead longer.
  • For many people, the ashes are an outward sign of their faith walk. An organic method of exhibiting our beliefs. A bit more meaningful than random cross jewelry or cross tattoos.
  • People often begin religious conversations when they see someone with the ash cross on foreheads.
  • The practice has become a symbol of the beginning of Lent. A time to remember what Jesus did for us. How much he gave up for us. What the cross truly symbolizes.

We should never look at a cross without remembering how it represents a brutality of torture unacceptable in our world of civil rights. The ashes bring us into the Lenten season as a more gentle reminder of what Christ’s sacrifice means.

And for me, that cross of ashes on my forehead represented a type of spiritual growth. Of accepting one of the more traditional practices within a modern world. Of opening my soul even more to consider the liturgies of other denominations.

Of expanding my intention to make this year’s Lenten season a time to remember Jesus.

©2023 RJ Thesman – All Rights Reserved

Consider the women who loved Jesus and followed him to the cross. The Women of Passion Week

Hope Finds 3 Stories

My mother wanted to be a writer, but the circumstances of life did not allow that dream to come true. She would have been a great wordsmith.

foggy road - treesNow that she lives in the confusing fog of Alzheimer’s, her creative juices no longer peek behind the boundaries of reality. She creates amazing stories that alternately amuse and frighten us.

During this past Easter weekend, I walked with Mom down the hallways of assisted living. Each door we passed led to the final home of a resident. It would have been a morbid trip except for the decorations outside each door – colorful symbols of something special to that resident.

One door displayed a basket full of wooden apples, painted so realistically I could almost taste the juice. However, Mom’s appetite focused more on the story she imagined.

“Those apples remind me of one day when I knocked on that guy’s door.”

Did she really do that? Probably not, but her story depended on the plausibility that she did indeed knock on that door.

“So this guy opened the door and offered me an apple, but I didn’t take one because I knew he was probably pedaling liquor in his room and maybe put some in one of the apples. I didn’t want to take that chance. It’s against the law to have liquor in your room.”

A pretty good story, filled with conflict and imagination. I tried not to laugh as we walked back to her room where Mom had another story waiting.

She told me someone had stolen her scarf. I knew this wasn’t true, because her scarf was hanging out of her coat pocket. I had helped her find it that morning before we left for church.

I could have pointed to the scarf and reminded her it was hanging in full view, but she was already half a sentence into her story.

“So this guy stole my scarf, and I ran after him and chased him outside. Then I took ice picks out of my pockets and started toward him. I stabbed him all over with my picks until he hollered. I almost stabbed his eye out but then he gave me the scarf.”

Some of the macabre stories Mom tells probably evolve from years of reading mysteries and watching “The Twilight Zone.”

The final story of the weekend was one Mom knows well and even within the shadows of confusion, she was able to share in it last Sunday.

It’s the true story of a man who was willing to give his life so that we could live abundantly – the God-man who came to earth, loved us unconditionally, then died on a wooden cross.

That man – that Jesus – did not stay dead. He came back to life where over 500 people saw him alive and became credible witnesses of the greatest miracle ever performed.

Mom knows that story well and shared in the joy of Easter Sunday. Holding her Bible, even though she can no longer find passages, she nodded her head as the pastor spoke and helped us sing, “Low in the Grave He Lay…Up from the Grave He Arose.”

Her faith and her eternal future are based on the veracity of the Easter story. Someday she will experience new life in heaven, forever free of Alzheimer’s and its horrific side effects.

We’re hanging on to that story of hope and look forward to its final resolution – the eternal resurrection for all of us.

©2016 RJ Thesman – Author of the Reverend G books http://amzn.to/1rXlCyh