The Ash Wednesday service I attended was my third. I went alone this year and slipped into the back pew a few minutes late.

This Anglican church is beautiful. I love being in this sanctuary. The floors are red brick with gritty mortar. There are paneless, clear glass windows letting in lots of natural light that bounces off white walls to high vaulted ceilings with exposed beams. It is not ostentatious like an ornate cathedral can be, nor practical like the auditoriums of modern day megachurches (not that either is bad). Instead, both its beauty and purpose are derived from and defined by its tranquil, understated sense of it being a place of unapologetic importance. It's a simple, earthy dwelling place for God and us that is deliberate but without pretense.

The acoustics are amazing, and I love its transepts that flank the nave, molding its congregants cruciform. The terms transept and nave sound too fanciful for this primitive-feeling place, but to speak of its parts without dignified language feels equally wrong. This sanctuary strikes the balance of holy and human so well.

There was no music, except for the a cappella congregational chant of Psalm 51 that sounded ancient and sorrowful, making me think I heard King David's voice sing-chanting with us. ... Yes, Lord. May his confession be mine, also, as I contemplate my sin and its resulting death. Make me always this desperate for your forgiveness.

There was time to think and reflect and be alone with my thoughts and my God in the soft, rhythmic spaces between each steady, intentional event in the order of worship. I always get the sense that God comes close in the slowness and our simply "being present" instead of all the doing we moderns are used to. There was no awkwardness in the moments of silence. Love's presence is the only thing that can create a comfortable lack of awkwardness.

This worship is opposite of the loud, contemporary, demonstrative kind I am accustomed to. When I go to this room and atmosphere, I realize I'm starving to slow down and breathe deeply, unencumbered, in God's presence. I feel his dignity and holiness about me, and I can't drink in enough of it. Everything else falls away.

Worshiping this way reminds me how big he is and how small I am. I'm not saying small is unimportant. But if my modern worship likens me to an exuberant child, then this liturgical worship makes me an infant. I am no less human, no less alive, no less daughter to my father, no less in love relationship.

The difference is the absence of desire to perform for him or the need to seek his approval (Hey, Dad, watch this! Dad, watch. Dad. Dad! ... Watch this!!). An infant need only be held by strong arms. Being together in this room, holding one another, God and me, and me and God, is all that's needed.

I don't know if I would like to worship this way every Sunday, but from time to time, I crave the stripping of 21st century trappings like flesh-toned microphones hung over the ear of dynamic preachers, stages with professional lighting, and shiny over-sized screens. The robes, a real altar, lit candles ensconced in ironwork, the kneeling, and the reciting in unison the thoughtfully prepared words are reminders that God is ginormous, mysterious, and dangerous. It behooves us to be respectful, careful, and tread lightly.

He is God.

And, yes, he's also my father who laughs and loves. He striped the zebra, paints the sky red and purple every evening and morning, and made our bodies to pass their gases so we don't explode. Everything about us is both disgusting and magnificent at the same time. It's all equally flesh and spirit. All the earth sings his holy praise! But I digress...or is breaking into spontaneous praise progress?

Hmmmm.

Anyway, back to my point. Certainly he laughs. He loves to smile and delight in all his creation and skip and dance with us, the apples of his eye, all. He wants this communion so badly he will send his Son at great sacrifice to bring us home to him.

That's my daddy.

I love that I have a personal relationship with him. He draws me near, and I am not afraid. I run unabashed right up into his enthroned lap like the entitled daughter I am.

But he's also the Maker of the universe. I need to meet with him in solemn dignity sometimes to remember he is that too, because that aspect of him can be just as needful and comforting. While there is familiarity between us, he's not one to be trifled with. It does my heart good to remember anew his power and authority.

He could fling me away from him with a flick of his ear without a thought (Dad-Dad-Dad-Dad— flick.). But he never does. Never. This emboldens me most of the time to run wild and free in his temple, excused for my lack of decorum for being the Maker's heir. I'm grateful I can live in that uninhibited self-expression with him, dance naked before him like David did, and it not be disrespectful. To be wild and free and royal is a beautiful thing, indeed.

But I'm also grateful for this Anglican church to which I am drawn every Ash Wednesday, where he woos me with silent moments pregnant with intimate love. Somehow intimacy is found in both approaches to God and are true worship.

This glorious space, however, is the place where I am invited to hold the truths of both his holiness and mine in the balance of my humanity. I participate every year in this Ash Wednesday service because it reminds me of the exquisite tension yet intertwining cacophony of all these timeless truths:

He is God.
I am not.
But I am his.
And he loves me,
even though he knows me.
                                   

 


Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash            

The ashes smeared onto my forehead were to represent dust, but I couldn't help wondering what exact "thing" burned to provide the ashes for us to wear dust for a day.

I rehearsed all the biblical fire that came to mind as I returned to my pew to kneel, head ashed:

• The angel touching Isaiah with the burning coal before the vision of Jesus' throne.
• Moses' fascination with a bush that burned but wasn't consumed, inviting him closer.
• Sodom. And Gomorrah.
• The bright, shining descriptions of Jesus as he will be when he returns to finish what he started.
• The heaping of burning coals on their heads which is the very kindness of feeding of your enemy simply because he's hungry.
• A pillar of fire by night. (God led them in circles for 40 years?!)
• Burnt offerings.
• The various lamp stands scattered throughout from Genesis to Revelation.
• Four in the fiery furnace.
• The tongues of fire resting above 120 believers on the Day Jesus told them to wait for, the ones who didn't give up the waiting.
• Hell and Holy Spirit both.

What can all this fire in scripture mean? Is there a trail of ashes (and no ashes) that tells a unified story of the flame somehow?

I felt humbled yesterday behind my ash-stained forehead thinking of my frailty in comparison to fire in all its varieties. The ashes are the ruin, what's left after fire's deadly fury. They speak of finality and complete consumption. I am defenseless. Fire wins every time. Like I said — humbled.

Feeling exposed, I leaned into the One who made both the earth and the heavens, the sun-fire and the moon, the fire that destroys and the fire that purifies, the fires he inflicts and the fires from which he delivers, fires so dangerous they are my potential undoing in every form and context.

I utterly need him because, without him, I am and will only ever be burnt dust.

And then one more biblical fire came to mind:  the flame of our giftings we are to fan. I realize suddenly that all the fire that was and is and is to come breathes. Every fire is full of life, and God is the one who breathes life. Every fire serves his purpose then, even if it appears to destroy and reduce to ash. And even if we never understand why so many things have to burn, may we be reminded that we are frail, and He is a consuming fire.

I have not written much here in the last year and a half. And writing is not like riding a bike. Art skills languish when left un-exercised, and I feel very out of shape as a writer.

But chasing my unfinished faith and writing are things that used to bring me life and joy. I'm currently in need of both. And I've been challenged by several close and wise friends to begin writing again. And I think I found a way.

I read "Lent ish" by Megan Westra yesterday.

The faith tradition I came from does not observe the Church calendar, and I have only ever approached Lent in very small ways.

Megan's life has been hard lately, and she wants to approach Lent this year with authenticity and from the context of her circumstances.

Lent is traditionally a solemn time (40 days from Ash Wednesday through Good Friday) of reminding ourselves of death and the frailty of life. It is not a setting aside of our salvation and rejoicing in it. Rather, it's a time of remembering how desperate we once were apart from the saving work of Christ. Lent is a time to remember we were once dead in our sin and that we still are but dust.

Let's full stop there for a season and feel the weight of it again by reacquainting ourselves with our desperate hopelessness and neediness.

Many people approach Lent with sacrifice or with fasting from something — meat, chocolate, social media, for instance.

I want to approach these days leading to a celebration of the resurrection with an eye to sin's destructive forces on my life and thus my utter need of deliverance. I want to lean into the tension of living in an age when Christ has already come, but not yet in a way that sets all things aright.

This is the age of sin's rule over the earth. We endure the effects of a fallen creation, our sin nature's presence, and the consequences of resulting sin. But we do it with the hope of his second coming to finish redemption's good work.

I want to not only live, but thrive, in this age of sin's continued presence. I want to participate in this solemn season when we focus on death so we can fully appreciate and celebrate the precious, costly gift of eternal life. I want to sacrifice. I want to fast (relinquish) something that will honor God as worship. I want to embrace death for a season.

So I am choosing to write through Lent.

I am sacrificing the safety that comes from withdrawing in painful circumstances.
I am fasting hopelessness, despair, and fear.
I am offering (giving up for Lent) the audacity to find hope and a future in Christ that is healed and whole and lacking in nothing as a living sacrifice
I will work out my salvation with fear and trembling, and with pain and desire.

Choosing hope is a a courageous act of defiance. It is an act of worship I will offer in faith, because right now I don't have even one day's worth of hope or grace or joy in me to offer. I have no words whatsoever worth sharing right now as I commit to public words for 40 days.

These 40 days of writing sacrificially will be faith — the assurance of things hoped for, evidence of things not seen.

I am certain that writing publicly words I don't currently possess for 40 consecutive days after a long season of no writing at all will result in some pretty poor writing. (You've been warned.) But it will be good exercise for my soul. So I will publish daily, no matter how worthy or unworthy of readership. I want to show up here every day, persistent and relentless in pursuit of God from the dark unrest.

And maybe you'll find your faith here, too, through the lens of your own doubt and uncertainty through my words being wrangled to the altar of sacrifice.

The words will come from both life's storm(s) and the defiance against it(them).

Peter did this when he walked on water. He boldly looked to Jesus who called him onto the water while he lacked the discipline to not look at the dangerous waves beneath him. What he was doing made no earthly sense, but he did it anyway. He walked, he sank, and Jesus, who walked in the storm with him, lifted.

I hope he will do the same for me if I put one word in front of the other.

I am choosing to tenaciously practice hope in this season of darkness before resurrection.

Join me?

Since I married a Cuban-American and we had three children together, my life story became somewhat Cuban. I married into an existing story, and then my three children carried that story into my future. So Cuba is forever a part of my identity. I don't speak the language, but it is the background noise of the last 33 years of my life. The food, the culture, the music, the people, they all infiltrated who I am slowly over time and changed me.

So when I listened to the podcast Scattered, it was like hearing a part of our family story unknown until now. Chris Garcia is an American-born child of Cuban refugee parents. Theirs is a story of;

-- the blending of two nations,
-- a proud, heartbreaking patriotism,
-- the letting go of the past in favor of the promise of a future,
-- American prosperity in the face of unseen and unheard from family languishing in the homeland.

It's all so familiar to me because it's part of my own life story by marriage and by birth (of my children).

It's a refugee story.

It's a love story.

It's a beauty from ashes story.

It's complicated.

It's a story of family, survival, and devotion.

You don't need to have a personal connection to Cuba or the plight of Cuban refugees to be moved by this compelling story of Chris Garcia's learning about his late father's past.

His story will break your heart but cause your spirit to rise up. It will make you proud and grateful to be an American. It will make you desperately want to not squander your opportunity and freedom and affluence. This story will make you a more compassionate human being. It will remind you that there are people you come into contact with every day who have suffered unspeakable atrocity, tragedy, and sorrow. This story will encourage you to be kinder, gentler, and more patient. 

Listen to Scattered: One dead dad, a box of ashes, and a mysterious past, and be a better human for having invested three hours in this particular someone else's story. Then remember, everyone has a story.

Find out more here.

Scattered's Instagram.