Ash Wednesday

    

"Yes--deep within and deeper yet
The rankling shaft of conscience hide,
Quick let the swelling eye forget
The tears that in the heart abide.
Calm be the voice, the aspect bold,
No shuddering pass o'er lip or brow,
For why should Innocence be told
The pangs that guilty spirits bow?

"The loving eye that watches thine
Close as the air that wraps thee round -
Why in thy sorrow should it pine,
Since never of thy sin it found?
And wherefore should the heathen see
What chains of darkness thee enslave,
And mocking say, 'Lo, this is he
Who owned a God that could not save'?"

Thus oft the mourner's wayward heart
Tempts him to hide his grief and die,
Too feeble for Confession's smart,
Too proud to bear a pitying eye;
How sweet, in that dark hour, to fall
On bosoms waiting to receive
Our sighs, and gently whisper all!
They love us--will not God forgive?

Else let us keep our fast within,
Till Heaven and we are quite alone,
Then let the grief, the shame, the sin,
Before the mercy-seat be thrown.
Between the porch and altar weep,
Unworthy of the holiest place,
Yet hoping near the shrine to keep
One lowly cell in sight of grace.

Nor fear lest sympathy should fail -
Hast thou not seen, in night hours drear,
When racking thoughts the heart assail,
The glimmering stars by turns appear,
And from the eternal house above
With silent news of mercy steal?
So Angels pause on tasks of love,
To look where sorrowing sinners kneel.

Or if no Angel pass that way,
He who in secret sees, perchance
May bid His own heart-warming ray
Toward thee stream with kindlier glance,
As when upon His drooping head
His Father's light was poured from Heaven,
What time, unsheltered and unfed,
Far in the wild His steps were driven.

High thoughts were with Him in that hour,
Untold, unspeakable on earth -
And who can stay the soaring power
Of spirits weaned from worldly mirth,
While far beyond the sound of praise
With upward eye they float serene,
And learn to bear their Saviour's blaze
When Judgment shall undraw the screen?


-- John Keble (1792-1866), Anglican priest, poet, and one of the leaders of the Oxford movement.

The Poem Rising by Its Own Weight

     

The poet is at the disposal of his own night—Jean Cocteau

The singing robes fly onto your body and cling there silkily,
You step out on the rope and move unfalteringly across it,
And seize the fiery knives unscathed and
Keep them spinning above you, a fountain
Of rhythmic rising, falling, rising
Flames,
And proudly let the chains
Be wound about you, ready
To shed them, link by steel link,
padlock by padlock–

but when your graceful
confident shrug and twist drives the metal
into your flesh and the python grip of it tightens
and you see rust on the chains and blood in your pores
and you roll
over and down a steepness into a dark hole
and there is not even the sound of mockery in the distant air
somewhere above you where the sky was,
no sound but your own breath panting:

then it is that the miracle
walks in, on his swift feet,
down the precipice straight into the cave,
opens the locks,
knots of chain fall open,
twists of chain unwind themselves,
links fall asunder,
in seconds there is a heap of scrap-
metal at your ankles, you step free and at once
he turns to go —

but as you catch at him with a cry,
clasping his knees, sobbing your gratitude,
with what radiant joy he turns to you,
and raises you to your feet,
and strokes your disheveled hair,
and holds you,
holds you,
holds you
close and tenderly before he vanishes.

-- Denise Levertov (1923-1997), Anglo-American poet, daughter of an Anglican priest, and convert to Catholicism.

Marked by Ashes

 

     

Ruler of the Night, Guarantor of the day . . .

This day — a gift from you.
This day — like none other you have ever given, or we have ever received.
This Wednesday dazzles us with gift and newness and possibility.
This Wednesday burdens us with the tasks of the day, for we are already halfway home
      halfway back to committees and memos,
      halfway back to calls and appointments,
      halfway on to next Sunday,
      halfway back, half frazzled, half expectant,
      half turned toward you, half rather not.

This Wednesday is a long way from Ash Wednesday,
   but all our Wednesdays are marked by ashes —
      we begin this day with that taste of ash in our mouth:
         of failed hope and broken promises,
         of forgotten children and frightened women,
      we ourselves are ashes to ashes, dust to dust;
   we can taste our mortality as we roll the ash around on our tongues.

We are able to ponder our ashness with
   some confidence, only because our every Wednesday of ashes

   anticipates your Easter victory over that dry, flaky taste of death.

On this Wednesday, we submit our ashen way to you —
   you Easter parade of newness.
   Before the sun sets, take our Wednesday and Easter us,
      Easter us to joy and energy and courage and freedom;
      Easter us that we may be fearless for your truth.
Come here and Easter our Wednesday with
   mercy and justice and peace and generosity.

We pray as we wait for the Risen One who comes soon.


-- Walter Brueggemann (1933- ), American theologian, pastor, author, poet, and former professor at Eden Theological Seminary in Webster Groves.

Rend Your Heart

     

To receive this blessing,

all you have to do
is let your heart break.
Let it crack open.
Let it fall apart
so that you can see
its secret chambers,
the hidden spaces
where you have hesitated
to go.

Your entire life
is here, inscribed whole
upon your heart’s walls:
every path taken
or left behind,
every face you turned toward
or turned away,
every word spoken in love
or in rage,
every line of your life
you would prefer to leave
in shadow,
every story that shimmers
with treasures known
and those you have yet
to find.

It could take you days
to wander these rooms.
Forty, at least.

And so let this be
a season for wandering
for trusting the breaking
for tracing the tear
that will return you

to the One who waits
who watches
who works within
the rending
to make your heart
whole.

- Jan Richardson, Methodist writer, author, artist, and poet

Marked By Love

Ashes to tie us to dust, 

the alleged poverty of too brief time on Earth,
but instead proclaims our kinship
with the flaring symphony of stars overhead,

The fragrant oil graves the ash upon each forehead,
and answers the ash’s challenge
with a proclamation of being chosen and beloved,
entrusted as heirs of God’s promised lovingkindness.

Then the cross,
the shape of love that never gives up,
drawn into the tender and wide open embrace
of the One, who proclaims with generous grace
that Love
always
wins.

Emptiness isn’t poverty,
but the ability to make room for something better,
hallowing and honoring us
by reminding us of our unity
with all of creation borne tenderly by God.


--Leslie Barnes Scoopmire. This was first published at Episcopal Journal and Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on February 23, 2023.

Attention, Astonishment, Witness: Homily for Ash Wednesday

Some might find it ironic about the gospel reading for today—to hear Jesus warn against disfiguring our faces when many of us are getting ready for the imposition of ashes. On the surface, it would seem that we are engaging in exactly the kind of grandstanding that Jesus is warning about. But when we have the ashes placed upon our foreheads, the purpose is to remind US that we are entering a penitential season, and that since we are ashes, it is important to live our lives in the most faithful way possible.

But also, Jesus spoke at a time when big shows of piety were often put to work for gain in social status or influence, because religious performance was something most people took for granted. And while many people nowadays may do the first part of that last sentence—putting on a show of their supposed religious affiliation, those numbers are getting smaller and smaller each year all across the West. For many of us, walking around all day with a sign of a cross on our foreheads makes us stand out in a different way in an ever-secularizing world.

It's not about showing off. It IS about what you most treasure and proclaim in your life.
The late, beloved American poet Mary Oliver, in her poem “Sometimes,” offered seven linked poems together. Right at the fulcrum, at number 4, she offered these instructions for living a life:

Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

I am convinced that those are also the instructions for discipleship:

Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

Attention. Astonishment. Witness.

So let’s start with paying attention right now. 

Just where did those ashes come from that we will soon have pressed into our brows? They came from the palms that we waved on Palm Sunday, ten months ago. They were once young fronds on a palm tree, and then we blessed them and waved them as we re-enacted Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem a week before his trial and crucifixion. Then they sat and dried out for almost a full year. Eventually the dried out remnants were collected, and then they were burned. A match was lit, and light and heat were released from the gases that remained in the palms from the materials they had absorbed from the ground during their life on the tree. They were then ground up, and mixed with the same chrism that we use when we anoint people at their baptisms and at their confirmations. Oil and ashes. Light and heat. And a human touch to press them onto our foreheads—one soul to another.

So what is the astonishing thing about this? We are reminded that we came from the dust and we return to the dust. That sounds dreadful—until you consider that the ash and dust that we are marked with contains atoms which resonate in you, me, everyone and everything, everywhere. The elements that make up that dust were in that palm frond and in that tree and in its roots, but have also been here all along in the billions of years since the Earth’s creation. And those elements were deposited here and fused together to create this beautiful planet, born from the explosions of stars halfway across the galaxy. As Joni Mitchell sang, “We are stardust….” That is indeed astonishing, and it reminds us that here at the start of Lent we are called to recognize the acknowledge the way that this common heritage makes us all one. Especially as the drums of war beat right now across eastern Europe in Ukraine, what could be more astonishing than that bold statement of fact? We are all dust, and we are therefore all one with each other and with all that is.

And then, that mark on our foreheads is part of us telling about it. We are not called to come to church merely to feed ourselves or tend to our own needs. We are called to TELL the world about what we have encountered in Jesus. We are called to let that black smudge on our foreheads be not just an acknowledgement of our finitude, our own mortality, but our own encounter with the love of God as it became human and mortal, just like us, to show us how to live a fully human life—one of love and concern for others, and faithfulness to our God.

And so how does Mary Oliver demonstrate that sense of attention, astonishment, and witness? Now that we have looked at the balancing point, let’s hear the poem in its entirety:

1.

Something came up
out of the dark.
It wasn’t anything I had ever seen before.
It wasn’t an animal
or a flower,
unless it was both.

Something came up out of the water,
a head the size of a cat
but muddy and without ears.

I don’t know what God is.
I don’t know what death is.

But I believe they have between them
some fervent and necessary arrangement.

2.

Sometimes
melancholy leaves me breathless…

3.

Water from the heavens! Electricity from the source!
Both of them mad to create something!

The lighting brighter than any flower.
The thunder without a drowsy bone in its body.

4.

Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

5.

Two or three times in my life I discovered love.
Each time it seemed to solve everything.
Each time it solved a great many things
but not everything.
Yet left me as grateful as if it had indeed, and
thoroughly, solved everything.

6.

God, rest in my heart
and fortify me,
take away my hunger for answers,
let the hours play upon my body
like the hands of my beloved.

Let the cathead appear again-
the smallest of your mysteries,
some wild cousin of my own blood probably-
some cousin of my own wild blood probably,
in the black dinner-bowl of the pond.

7.

Death waits for me, I know it, around
one corner or another.
This doesn’t amuse me.
Neither does it frighten me.

After the rain, I went back into the field of sunflowers.
It was cool, and I was anything but drowsy.
I walked slowly, and listened

to the crazy roots, in the drenched earth, laughing and growing.


This is our chance to repent. I know that word makes many of us wince and edge away. So let’s try to rephrase it. This is our chance to re-center ourselves, not just for forty days but for each moment.

Lent calls us to attention, astonishment, and witness. Lent calls us to see the potential rather than the dreariness and horror of pandemic and now war, to look for the beauty and unity among ourselves and all God’s sparkling mysterious creation placed here for our support and care. Lent calls us to proclaim, to tell, to be truthful and reliable in our witness to God’s love by embodying God’s love. I don’t know about you, but I have never needed that kind of Lent more than right now. A Life-giving Lent. A Lent of slowing down and inviting ourselves to wonder and gratitude. A Lent that calls us to stand for right and honor and compassion no matter what the price tag. Lent calls us not to more suffering and uncertainty, but to holiness, which is ALWAYS within our range of choices.

Lent is not a season to be endured, but a gift of insight into what we really should treasure. It is in the everyday world that we live, and we need to make our faith not just a Sunday faith or a Lenten discipline but a part of a living and breathing. Some call this mindfulness, and it is such a wonderful concept.

Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

Preached at the 7 pm AshWednesday service, online and in person, at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO.

Readings:

• Joel 2:1-2,12-17
• 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
• Matthew 6:1-6,16-21
• Psalm 103:8-14

Ash Wednesday, Unshowered

My hair’s pulled back to disguise the grime,

though maybe it’s well that I’m unclean,
since from dust you came, to dust you will return,
the priest recites, smearing my forehead.
Once, twice, and I’m marked, a lintel in plague years.
I’m invited to kneel and read the fifty-first Psalm,
recalling how David watched Bathsheba bathe.
Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean;
wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.
Merciful one, save me from slight repentance.
I pierced the center of the white orchid, Lord,
and it was mud, blood’s cry, my body’s blighted tender.


-- Anya Krugovoy Silver (1968-2018, from Image Journal

Litany of Penitence, from the Book of Common Prayer

Litany of Penitence 

The Celebrant and People together, all kneeling
 Most holy and merciful Father:
We confess to you and to one another,
and to the whole communion of saints
in heaven and on earth,
that we have sinned by our own fault
in thought, word, and deed;
by what we have done, and by what we have left undone.

The Celebrant continues 
We have not loved you with our whole heart, and mind, and strength. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We have not forgiven others, as we have been forgiven.
Have mercy on us, Lord. 

We have been deaf to your call to serve, as Christ served us. We have not been true to the mind of Christ. We have grieved your Holy Spirit.
Have mercy on us, Lord. 

We confess to you, Lord, all our past unfaithfulness: the pride, hypocrisy, and impatience of our lives,
We confess to you, Lord. 

Our self-indulgent appetites and ways, and our exploitation of other people,
We confess to you, Lord.

Our anger at our own frustration, and our envy of those more fortunate than ourselves,
We confess to you, Lord.

Our intemperate love of worldly goods and comforts, and our dishonesty in daily life and work,
We confess to you, Lord. 

Our negligence in prayer and worship, and our failure to commend the faith that is in us,
We confess to you, Lord.

Accept our repentance, Lord, for the wrongs we have done: for our blindness to human need and suffering, and our indifference to injustice and cruelty,
Accept our repentance, Lord.

For all false judgments, for uncharitable thoughts toward our neighbors, and for our prejudice and contempt toward those who differ from us,
Accept our repentance, Lord.

For our waste and pollution of your creation, and our lack of concern for those who come after us,
Accept our repentance, Lord.

Restore us, good Lord, and let your anger depart from us;
Favorably hear us, for your mercy is great. 

Accomplish in us the work of your salvation,
That we may show forth your glory in the world.

By the cross and passion of your Son our Lord,
Bring us with all your saints to the joy of his resurrection. 

The Bishop, if present, or the Priest, stands and, facing the people, says 
Almighty God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who desires not the death of sinners, but rather that they may turn from their wickedness and live, has given power and commandment to his ministers to declare and pronounce to his people, being penitent, the absolution and remission of their sins. He pardons and absolves all those who truly repent, and with sincere hearts believe his holy Gospel.

Therefore we beseech him to grant us true repentance and his Holy Spirit, that those things may please him which we do on this day, and that the rest of our life hereafter may be pure and holy, so that at the last we may come to his eternal joy; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Peace is then exchanged.

Psalm 51, from the Book of Common Prayer

Psalm 51 
Miserere mei, Deus

 1 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your loving-kindness; *
    in your great compassion blot out my offenses.
 2 Wash me through and through from my wickedness *
    and cleanse me from my sin.
 3 For I know my transgressions, *
    and my sin is ever before me.
 4 Against you only have I sinned *
    and done what is evil in your sight.
 5 And so you are justified when you speak *
    and upright in your judgment
 6 Indeed, I have been wicked from my birth, *
    a sinner from my mother's womb.
 7 For behold, you look for truth deep within me, *
    and will make me understand wisdom secretly.
 8 Purge me from my sin, and I shall be pure; *
    wash me, and I shall be clean indeed.
 9 Make me hear of joy and gladness, *
    that the body you have broken may rejoice.
10 Hide your face from my sins *
    and blot out all my iniquities.
11 Create in me a clean heart, O God, *
    and renew a right spirit within me.
12 Cast me not away from your presence *
    and take not your holy Spirit from me.
13 Give me the joy of your saving help again *
    and sustain me with your bountiful Spirit.
14 I shall teach your ways to the wicked, *
    and sinners shall return to you.
15 Deliver me from death, O God, *
    and my tongue shall sing of your righteousness, O God of my salvation.
16 Open my lips, O Lord, *
    and my mouth shall proclaim your praise.
17 Had you desired it, I would have offered sacrifice; *
    but you take no delight in burnt-offerings.
18 The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit; *
    a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

Ash Wednesday

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man’s gift and that man’s scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessèd face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

II
Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree
In the cool of the day, having fed to sateity
On my legs my heart my liver and that which had been contained
In the hollow round of my skull.
And God said Shall these bones live? shall these
Bones live? And that which had been contained
In the bones (which were already dry) said chirping:
Because of the goodness of this Lady
And because of her loveliness, and because
She honours the Virgin in meditation,
We shine with brightness. And I who am here dissembled
Proffer my deeds to oblivion, and my love
To the posterity of the desert and the fruit of the gourd.
It is this which recovers
My guts the strings of my eyes and the indigestible portions
Which the leopards reject. The Lady is withdrawn
In a white gown, to contemplation, in a white gown.
Let the whiteness of bones atone to forgetfulness.
There is no life in them. As I am forgotten
And would be forgotten, so I would forget
Thus devoted, concentrated in purpose. And God said
Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only
The wind will listen. And the bones sang chirping
With the burden of the grasshopper, saying
Lady of silences
Calm and distressed
Torn and most whole
Rose of memory
Rose of forgetfulness
Exhausted and life-giving
Worried reposeful
The single Rose
Is now the Garden
Where all loves end
Terminate torment
Of love unsatisfied
The greater torment
Of love satisfied
End of the endless
Journey to no end
Conclusion of all that
Is inconclusible
Speech without word and
Word of no speech
Grace to the Mother
For the Garden
Where all love ends.

Under a juniper-tree the bones sang, scattered and shining
We are glad to be scattered, we did little good to each other,
Under a tree in the cool of day, with the blessing of sand,
Forgetting themselves and each other, united
In the quiet of the desert. This is the land which ye
Shall divide by lot. And neither division nor unity
Matters. This is the land. We have our inheritance.

III
At the first turning of the second stair
I turned and saw below
The same shape twisted on the banister
Under the vapour in the fetid air
Struggling with the devil of the stairs who wears
The deceitul face of hope and of despair.

At the second turning of the second stair
I left them twisting, turning below;
There were no more faces and the stair was dark,
Damp, jaggèd, like an old man’s mouth drivelling, beyond repair,
Or the toothed gullet of an agèd shark.

At the first turning of the third stair
Was a slotted window bellied like the figs’s fruit
And beyond the hawthorn blossom and a pasture scene
The broadbacked figure drest in blue and green
Enchanted the maytime with an antique flute.
Blown hair is sweet, brown hair over the mouth blown,
Lilac and brown hair;
Distraction, music of the flute, stops and steps of the mind over the third stair,
Fading, fading; strength beyond hope and despair
Climbing the third stair.

Lord, I am not worthy
Lord, I am not worthy but speak the word only.

IV

Who walked between the violet and the violet
Who walked between
The various ranks of varied green
Going in white and blue, in Mary’s colour,
Talking of trivial things
In ignorance and knowledge of eternal dolour
Who moved among the others as they walked,
Who then made strong the fountains and made fresh the springs

Made cool the dry rock and made firm the sand
In blue of larkspur, blue of Mary’s colour,
Sovegna vos

Here are the years that walk between, bearing
Away the fiddles and the flutes, restoring
One who moves in the time between sleep and waking, wearing

White light folded, sheathing about her, folded.
The new years walk, restoring
Through a bright cloud of tears, the years, restoring
With a new verse the ancient rhyme. Redeem
The time. Redeem
The unread vision in the higher dream
While jewelled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse.

The silent sister veiled in white and blue
Between the yews, behind the garden god,
Whose flute is breathless, bent her head and signed but spoke no word

But the fountain sprang up and the bird sang down
Redeem the time, redeem the dream
The token of the word unheard, unspoken

Till the wind shake a thousand whispers from the yew

And after this our exile

V

If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word.

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Where shall the word be found, where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence
Not on the sea or on the islands, not
On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land,
For those who walk in darkness
Both in the day time and in the night time
The right time and the right place are not here
No place of grace for those who avoid the face
No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the voice

Will the veiled sister pray for
Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose thee, 
Those who are torn on the horn between season and season, time and time, between
Hour and hour, word and word, power and power, those who wait
In darkness? Will the veiled sister pray
For children at the gate
Who will not go away and cannot pray:
Pray for those who chose and oppose

O my people, what have I done unto thee. 

Will the veiled sister between the slender
Yew trees pray for those who offend her
And are terrified and cannot surrender
And affirm before the world and deny between the rocks
In the last desert before the last blue rocks
The desert in the garden the garden in the desert
Of drouth, spitting from the mouth the withered apple-seed.

O my people.

VI

Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn

Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth

This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.

Blessèd sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.

--T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), Anglo-American poet and dramatist and convert to Anglo-Catholicism,  (1927)

Ash Wednesday Call to Worship

God of salvation’s joy,
we gather to celebrate and revere you.
We come, realising that we are broken.
Forgive and re-create us.

God of unfailing love,
we gather to worship and honour you.
We come, and because of your compassion,
forgive and renew us.

God of new beginnings,
we gather to praise and thank you.
We come, and through your grace and mercy,
forgive and restore us,
so that with clean hearts we may truly worship you.
Amen.

--Joan Stott, Australian, based on Psalm 51:1-17, from her blog The Timeless Psalms.

Prayer before the Imposition of Ashes

Our ancestors in the faith
used ashes as a sign of our repentance,
a symbol of the uncertainty and fragility
of human life.
Like them, we have tasted the ashes of hopelessness;
we have walked through the ashes
of our loss and pain;
we have stood knee-deep
in the ashes of our brokenness.

God of our lives,
out of the dust of creation
you have formed us and given us life.
May these ashes not only be a sign
of our repentance and death,
but reminders that by your gift of grace
in Jesus Christ, our Redeemer,
we are granted life forever with you.

Amen.

--Thom Shuman, from Lectionary Liturgies

Prayer on Psalm 51

(based on Psalm 51)

“But you desire honesty from the heart,

so you can teach me to be wise in my inmost being.”

Psalm 51:6 

Not just in my heart
but in the secret space
it holds.

In the heart of my heart.
In the place where I am myself.
In the space that I protect the most
and share the least.

In the hidden chamber
that I sometimes close off
even from myself.

In the realm
where you wait
and watch,
where you see each thing
that lies in shadow,
where you know the names
of all that makes its home
in me.

Here
in my secret heart:
here
teach me to move
with your wisdom,
to open the doors
that will draw me deeper still,
to live in the truth
that you desire;
here
let me open
the windows wide
so that those who pass by
will see you
looking out.

--Jan L. Richardson (1947- ), American Methodist poet, teacher, and artist, and posted on The Painted Prayerbook.