Buechner: Ash Wednesday

Buechner: Ash Wednesday

“In many cultures, there is an ancient custom of giving a tenth of each year’s income to some holy use. For Christians, to observe the forty days of Lent is to do the same thing with roughly a tenth of each year’s days.”—Frederick Buechner in Whistling in the Dark: An ABC Theologized (Harper & Row, 1988), p. 82.

Duke University Chapel

We begin our Lenten journey on this Ash Wednesday. It is a day to remember our mortality: “Dust you are, and to dust you shall return.” I think of my favorite aunt, who had Alzheimer’s for more than ten years, who died on Ash Wednesday.  

I remember watching the members of our parish receive the imposition of ashes. Some have cancer or other illnesses, and I know they worry whether they will be present in this body at this church next Ash Wednesday. Some are filled with tears as they stand or kneel at the altar. I wonder who will meet death face to face before next Easter. Could it be even myself or a member of my family? I never imagined we would not be in our churches for two Ash Wednesdays.

I travel back in time to the Cathedral School on Ash Wednesday, when we heard elementary students comment as we placed ashes on their foreheads: “Will it stay on? How do I look? You look funny.”

I remember a beautiful young mother holding her three-month-old baby girl and coming to the altar. Our priest traces the sign of the cross on the mother’s forehead. I do not want her to put the cross on this baby’s head. I watch as she asks the mother, and then applies the black ashes to the tiny forehead. The little girl does not cry out, but I want to stand up and protest: “No, don’t do that!” My life profession has been to care for tiny babies. I do not want to think of this precious one dying. I will not permit it. I still have no answers as to how to handle the death of a child. 

Ash Wednesday is a reminder of our immortality. I still have difficulty with it. A huge part of me lives as though I and others will live forever. As I grow older, I realize this is not true, as I begin to treasure each day as a gift. Easter tells me there is more than this life—resurrection—a resurrection, a new life. Barbara Crafton calls this life in the resurrection The AlsoLife.

I think again of my aunt. In fact, I still sometimes feel her presence. That same Ash Wednesday she died, someone calls to tell me that a dear friend is having her first baby today and has asked for prayers. I pray that the presence of God in the spirit of my aunt will be by the bed of my friend to guide and protect her and her unborn child. 

It is always thus. One person dies, another is born. We all carry the blackened sign of the cross on our forehead. My mind returns to the Cathedral School as I remember a sermon by Beth Maze on Ash Wednesday: “Creation Is Made from Dust.” 

It is good that we have these forty days to ponder all this.

Joanna https://www.joannaseibert.com/

 

 

 

Waiting for God

Waiting for God

 “O Lord, my heart is not lifted up,

My eyes are not raised too high;

I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me.

But, I have calmed and quieted my soul,

Like a weaned child with its mother;

My soul is like the weaned child that is with me.” Psalm 131

I come to early church with all the concerns of the day, the present week, and the past week. I am not playing the harp because I have difficulty putting in new strings for two recently broken ones. It is the first meeting for discernment for the Daughters of the King at St. Mark’s. We have a wellness forum during the adult formation hour that I have been working on. Some pages are missing in the Eucharistic Prayer for the next service in the Altar Book.

I decide to go sit at the back of the church and try to quieten the busyness about these concerns and more. The church is absolutely quiet. The long green season hangings are more calming and simplistic with a hint of the ornamental. The candles are lighted and flickering. The summer flowers are in honor of the mother of a friend.

 I am in a beautiful place built to bring us closer to God, but my head is still a mess. How can I see or taste a glimpse of the holy before the service starts? Must I wait for some moment during the liturgy, at the scripture, in the prayers, the sermon, the music, the Eucharist? I pray for guidance, actually for help. The message comes. Start intercessory prayers. You did not say your private prayers this morning before church. Too busy. I start praying for those I have committed to pray for each day. If I know them, I imagine them with Jesus. Almost immediately, I feel that peace that passes understanding, a calm.

Time after time, this is my experience. I begin to know a peace whenever I can get out of myself and my world and my concerns, and send love to my neighbor by visiting, calling, writing, serving, or a multitude of other ways, but especially in intercessory prayer. I rarely know how these prayers affect those I pray for, but with each prayer, my mind and my body also take me to find Jesus as I try to connect others to that healing love.

Joanna joannaseibert.com    https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Less Anxious Presence

Non-anxious presence/or less anxious presence

“The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach - waiting for a gift from the sea.”—Anne Morrow Lindbergh in Gift from the Sea (Pantheon 1955, 1991).

Anne Morrow Lindbergh describes our ideal position in our relationships and ministries. We are waiting “choiceless” like the beach for the gift from the sea to know the next direction, the next words, especially in any decision or conflict.

Family Systems dynamics teach us that in tension in relationships with others, if we can remain a non-anxious presence, we may keep tensions from growing and eventually solve any dilemma. I know few who can remain non-anxious, for it is not a human trait. Staying less anxious, however, is a real possibility. If we can be the least anxious presence in any situation, we can keep the arteries in our body from tightening up, which takes minutes, weeks off our lifespan. Our inner and outer presence will stay calmer. We become a vessel for the spirit to become part of the relationship, decision, situation, meeting, encounter, or ministry.

Answer: How do we become like the beach waiting for the gift from the sea Lindbergh describes? It certainly involves spiritual disciplines. Prayer and meditation before, during, and after each decision, ministry, and relationship are a huge beginning. We learn from our own spiritual disciplines and from hearing the experience of spiritual disciplines that others follow: centering prayer, morning prayer, yoga, a rule of life, spiritual direction, corporate worship, and study. There are many more. Our tradition, scripture, and reason tell us that these disciplines are gifts from God to help us care for our souls and those of others.

 But we should never forget Lindbergh’s central message. The world in nature outside our confined world is also the primary setting to learn, know, and feel the rhythm of waiting to receive Lindbergh’s gift from the sea.