Ash Heads

I remember the Ash Wednesday service at St. Mary Magdalen. Every year, an entire grade school class would return from Mass as Ash-Heads—foreheads smudged, a little holier (and messier) than before. We had just been told we were going to die, and for the rest of the day, we carried those haunting words with us:

“From dust you came, to dust you shall return.”

Nothing like a little existential crisis before recess.

Some might question whether this ritual is trauma-informed practice for littles. Me too. But honestly? Maybe because of this practice, I know—at a cellular, even bonular level—that death always precedes new life. Ashes come before glory. And in these personal and global ashes, that truth gives me hope right now.

Lent isn’t about seasonal deprivation or spiritual self-improvement. It’s about stepping into the wild of the soul, where transformation happens. Savoring the fragility and preciousness of life. Letting our personal and communal mortality return us to the unmarred, unsmudged image of the One who made us.

I have intentions for these 40 days,  but this year, I felt less like making a to-do list and more like rewriting an old poem—one I first wrote for our spiritual direction students. I needed it to meet me where I actually am: asking, seeking, listening to all that is here, in the wild of it all. Dying to what is. Hoping to resurrect in all the right ways.

Forty days of seeking—
I stand in this space and ask:
“What question am I able to bear?”
I do not yet know.
But this is what I long to be true—

I want to be present:
to God, to my neighbor, to myself.

So here in the wild,
I welcome all that is as my teacher.
I make room for the strange,
the imperfect,
even the dangerous—
in me, in others.

Grief, gratitude, anger, joy—
come, walk these forty days with me.

Welcome, childlike wonder and why’s—
let me hear the innocent questions.

Speak, adolescent, shocking, earthy humor and resistance!
Jolt me awake, unravel my small, domesticated self-sabotage.

Let grown-up wisdom sit with it all—
never ceasing to learn
from suffering, misunderstanding, misery,
even the evil that stalks.

God of wilderness and wonder,
I give thanks for this moment,
for these thin spaces between dust and glory.
For these companions on the journey—
within and without—
friends who help me hear
what has taken a lifetime to learn.

These people. This life. This place.

Three-in-One God, pattern of community,
help me be here now,
open to the gifts of this season.

Amen.

Question for reflection:
How will you enter the questions in the wild that welcome ashes and new life?
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