grounded

Every year I think about this day. It’s gonna be a tradition now to visit my friends, Carl and Macho, giving ashes under the 46th street subway. But it’s also a statement. I’m aware that as I go up to the train, take the 7 into the city and transfer to another train on the platform, that people notice there’s a “smudge” on my forehead. Sometimes (though not this morning) I run into another person in the subway car who also carries the ashes. We give each other an acknowledging look and go about our day in typical New York fashion. But ashes are a really interesting mark.

It’s not celebratory.

It’s not victorious.

It’s definitely not boastful (though I can imagine how we can twist even this!)

The ashes remind me that, despite all that’s happening in the world around me, I’m grounded in a tradition that goes way back. Where the boast is not in our theological smarts, or political maneuvering, or talented PR with the world… it comes back to being low. grounded. secure. but not in a way that celebrates our ingenuity or talents. in way that says there’s a god who cares for us. Sometimes that’s hard to hold. But today I take comfort in knowing that the church’s practice of ashes and grounded-ness has endured through epidemics, wars, emperors, kingdoms, corruption and greed, etc.

Ashes resist the desire for power because it proclaims that we are dust, and to dust we will return. I hope I’m not speaking too soon (please, please, please) when I say that I’ve never seen a power-hungry politician champion ashes to consolidate power.