Ashes to Ashes

It's Ash Wednesday.
For a long time Protestants sort of slumped into Lent without marking this day much at all.  The rituals of Shrove Tuesday or Mardi Gras, and the imposition of ashes on the forehead on the first Wednesday of Lent seemed a bit too Roman Catholic.  Maybe they still do to some, maybe they actually are, but maybe after 500 years, and all the fussing and fighting, we need to admit that perhaps the papists weren't wrong about everything.
First thing in the morning on Ash Wednesday, I take last year's dried palms that I have stashed in a cabinet in my office, and I stuff them into a porcelain pot and take them out to the back patio of the church and I torch them (see above).  I sift and prepare a little pot of ashes ready to smudge a cross on the foreheads of the small band of folks who will come to our Ash Wednesday service.  And it is a small band, because for a lot of people, this just isn't a part of what they do.
Today, my pastor type friends are posting explanations, poems and art, reflections about the ashes, and I enjoy that because to me it seems we are recovering something from the past.  Reformers and iconoclasts are prone to the error of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
We had good theological and biblical reasons for this.  Jesus said, "Beware of practicing your piety before others," and, "When you fast put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may not be seen by others, but by your Father who is in secret." (Matthew 6) Jesus understandably had a bone to pick with the religious hypocrites, as the reformers did with the corruption and "popish nonsense" of the church in Rome.
The problem is that people need rituals and disciplines to put their faith into actual practice. Protestant churches have suffered for their decision to swim up that particular stream instead of going with the flow.  Our rituals, un-hitched from the deep traditions of history, become nothing but peculiarities and personal preference.
In a culture that denies death so strenuously and idolizes vigor and youth so egregiously, remembering that you are dust and to dust you shall return, is a prophetic and counter-cultural practice. Ash Wednesday reminds me of the importance of living, not just the inevitability of dying.  Many have observed that our mortality is an integral piece of what we call beauty.  Flowers and sunsets are fleeting things, gone in minutes or days, but they are some of our best paradigms of beauty.  Because we have a finite number of days to walk upon the earth, we are under the imperative to live and love with the time we are given.  I don't know about you, but if I knew I had endless tomorrows to walk in the woods or play with my kids, I probably would just roll over and go back to sleep.  If I could be sure that I would have thousands of years to make my voice heard, I would probably have little inclination to write these blogs, sing songs or preach sermons.
My hope and faith tell me that I will have eternity in union with God, but the ashes tell me that my time to live upon the mortal coil is precious and not to be wasted.
Dust is what is left when life has given up it's heat and light.
Remember that you are dust, and burn bright.