The Death We Carry

The Death We Carry February 10, 2016

I’ve been planning this for weeks. An intentional out-of-office beginning to Lent; traveling to different parts of town with ashes and blessings to share. Mostly I want to meet my people out in the world–in their real every day places where they live and work and share their gifts. Drawing a few strangers with my “ashes to go” sign would be an added bonus.

Then last night, I got word of the sudden death of one of my church members. In my line of work, you expect to get these calls, on occasion. But this one hit me hard. Doug and his family are church members, but also our good friends. They moved to town about a year ago, and some mutual friends from back home connected us. Their extended family are members of another church I once served, and Doug and his wife both graduated from my alma mater. He leaves 3 children behind and he was so impossibly young… The shock and sadness of this loss, and grief for his family, has put me in a dark place. unnamed-3

So I went to bed last night thinking I could not possibly do traveling ashes today. No way was I in a mood to be out trying to meet strangers, much less acting like I knew something about life and death and God. Besides, the idea of bopping around town, showing up at coffee shops and campuses and bookstores and being all “who wants a blessing?? I am here to bring Jesus to you!” felt too perky. Unspeakably tone deaf to the real and present heartbreak that I know so many carry.

Public places are not appropriate for this work (said the small voice in my head). Sack cloth and ashes should stay in the sanctuary. Behind closed doors. Stay home with your sadness. Wear it like a sweater and keep it to yourself. Do not impose this reality on whole and happy people. 

 That was the song that sang me to sleep last night. But I woke up this morning thinking… whose voice was that? Who tried to tell me that sadness has to stay at church, or hovering in shadows and solitude? I’m not sure… but it sure sounds like the voice that followed Jesus into the wilderness and told him that he didn’t belong there. That he was too great and powerful to experience hunger or sadness or loneliness or pain. Or death. Or any of that other raw and sacred humanness that sometimes rips our hearts from us, but ultimately draws us back to the heart of God.

I told that voice to get the hell behind me. And I went out any way.

So I’m moving from place to place today with ashes; though in a much different frame than I’d originally planned. I’m walking around with ashes and blessings and little cards with a poem printed on them. And a raw heartache that I could not leave at home. Because this is what we do. We carry our death (and our dead) with us. We carry it everywhere. We wear it on our faces and on our foreheads. And we spend a great deal of our time–most of our lives, really– trying to pretend it’s not there. Acting as though it doesn’t mark us. Until these days, when something forces us to remember–that we come from dust. And to dust, we will return.

So whether we come whole or broken-hearted, today we will bear the mark. And trust that somehow–even today–it is good news. A raw but sacred reality that we do not have to keep hidden in darkness, shrouded in our own fearful mortality… But that we break open and impose upon the world. 

And that voice that tells you to live small and scared and keep all that uncomfortable humanness to yourself? Tell it to get behind you. You’ve heard it before. And you know that, when you hear it, you must be at the edge of some sacred wilderness, some blessed truth… some mark of holy belonging that is about to break open and claim you for good.

So let us be marked
not for sorrow.
And let us be marked
not for shame.
Let us be marked
not for false humility
or for thinking
we are less
than we are
but for claiming
what God can do
within the dust,
within the dirt,
within the stuff
of which the world
is made
and the stars that blaze
in our bones
and the galaxies that spiral
inside the smudge
we bear.  

–Jan Richardson, from The Painted Prayer Book


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