Ash Wednesday and What We Do With Limits
Photo by Ahna Ziegler on Unsplash
Photo by Ahna Ziegler on Unsplash
It has been quite some time since I wrote on a blog. Any blog for that matter. Previously I was blogging on a major platform, but since then I have decided to return to my own digital neighborhood. The change has been a good thing.
I don’t actually know when I last posted, to be honest. But it has been a while. In fact, it has been a while since I wrote anything of substance. I’d say I’m in an interesting tangle at the moment when it comes to writing.
I have a longing to create something – to finish things that I’ve started and bring to a satisfying conclusion projects sitting on my desktop. But it all feels a bit stiff right now. Stuck, even.
And that is the way of things.
So, to re-launch a blog on Ash Wednesday seems fitting. Why?
The celebration on of Ash Wednesday is a celebration of fallibility, sure. The tendency we have to blow it, exploit ourselves and others, on and on. I find that theme to be true in that it connects with reality, but also somewhat unhelpful on it’s own.
For example: how many of us are driving down the road, drop a hot cup of coffee in the floor and then say, “Well, at least I know I’m fallible!” I don’t know that such a thing has ever happened.
Ash Wednesday is, in fact, something more than just admitting fallibility. Owning it. Seeing a representation of our true substance smeared on our forehead.
From dust we have come, to dust we will return.
There is a sobering movement within Ash Wednesday that we need, truly. In our parenting, vocation, relationships, and integrity we need the reminder that we need grace and help. I’m not quibbling with that.
What I’m saying is that my starting this blog on a day that is devoted to the humus – the people-dirt-ness – of life isn’t an accident.
I didn’t plan it.
But it makes sense.
The writing life is one where we actively reckon with the dirt-ness of who we are.
However the reckoning for me is not with fallibility, though that is a good and right theme. Instead, my ashes are those of limitation.
We are not infinite in skin. “To dust we will return” isn’t a statement to denigrate humanity, but to remind us that this space ends. This way. This manner of being human. We are not intended to live in the tensions we bear forever.
Coronavirus.
Cancer.
Heartbreak.
Acne.
Heartbreak.
Rejection.
Unemployment.
Depression.
We are not intended to live there forever.
I’m currently working on a project around the topic of restlessness, and what I’m finding is that restlessness isn’t a problem to be solved. It is a general tension into which we dive and nose around. Turn something over, listen to the sounds around us, and get a sense of what kind of heart beats deep inside our restlessness.
This is Ash Wednesday. It isn’t a morbid call to think about our death, though that’s not a horrible thing to do. The ashes also don’t call us to overwhelming amounts of guilt around the crucifixion, though that is also a fitting line of thinking.
Ultimately, Ash Wednesday invites us to enter into our limits.
We cannot parent beyond our level of sleep, at least over time.
From dust…to dust…
When we struggle to live a free, beautiful life in a theological tradition that reminds us that on our best days we’re still irrevocably diseased by sin…
From dust…to dust…
I can’t live on the goodness of previous writing and expect the work to become easier. Quite the opposite.
From dust…to dust…
The health of our marriage cannot outrun the acidity of our humor about our spouse.
From dust…to dust…
The world as we see through our cable news feeds is not sufficient to bring us into healthy relationship with others.
From dust…to dust…
To do creative work in public is to flirt with the tensions of my limitation. In fact, for any of us to do any of the human things we are given to do is an exercise in limitation.
The journey of growing in wisdom via our formation – through practices and people – is a journey of knowing that limitation creates both a stopping point and a longing for more.
What would happen if as we glance in the mirror today, seeing the cobalt stain on our foreheads, we thought about limitations.
Yes, we confess that our dirt-ness brings hurt and dysfunction into the world.
Yes, we also realize that the crucifixion of Jesus was to restore the humanity of humans by defeating our greatest enemy. We need the sobriety of that thought.
But what if we also realized that the pain many of us have suffered – the anguish of wanting more without a path forward, working beyond our capacity, etc. – are the aromatic notes of our limitation?
What if Jesus invites us to spend 40 days realizing our greatest challenge is not ours to solve? That we couldn’t even if we wanted to?
What if Lent is the time when we give up something, yes, and what we give up is that unspoken control we believe we have on our world?
From dust we have come, to dust we will return.
In the limit is the blessing. The work and the wait is the point. Everything else is how we grow.