My Ash(less) Wednesday

A poem for those entering Lent already a little weary...

French Peasant Girls Praying by George Clausen

I came to the keeping of Lent only lately. I’ve only been at it a few years now, most of them as a browbeaten student or an exhausted (or pregnant) young mother. But Lent has intrigued me from the first days of my liturgical journey. I’m hungry anyway for some clear way to catch hold of the divine, and the work of Lent, the sheer physicality of it, seemed to offer me a chance to perform my faith in such a way that a greater dose of wonder or grace or… probably a sense of my belovedness might arrive. And yet. Most of my Ash Wednesdays so far have been spent in the throes of final exams, pregnancy, or new baby intensity. I’ve only managed to make it to church once or twice on an Ash Wednesday in the last few years. On one such occasion, I jotted my thoughts down as a sort of prayer throughout the day, and this poem (more spoken word, really) emerged, a meditation on why we ‘do’ Lent in the first place:

My Ash(less) Wednesday
by Sarah Clarkson

I always yearned for piety
For outward acts and signs
To take my hands
Make of my faith a kind of holy pattern,
Woven dance of word and form
Enfleshing faith,
Performing love.
I wanted taste and touch
To speak, express,
To manifest; my hunger
For the grip of God, like flesh
Upon my days.

My first Ash Wednesday
Ah, I revelled in the grey weight of its hours,
The oily smear of ash across my head,
The crusty black, allowing me the chance
To really taste my sin,
My need for grace.
And yet that symbol on my face
Was in a way a mark of aspiration,
Not of self-forgotten
But of self keyed up to reach
For heaven.
Repentance was my means
Of reaching farther
Than the fetters of the normal
Ordinarily allowed.
‘Remember you are dust’ the priest intoned;
His words, I felt, flung like a dare,
That I, with hunger, made my own.

This year, I almost cannot dare
To raise my ashless face in prayer.
The solemn Wednesday hours marched past,
And though I yearned, at instants,
For solemnity, for rest,
I mostly skimmed the minutes, breathless,
Scampering to meet
The burgeoning dictates of
My babes and friends, the small demands
Of fragile bodies, troubled hearts,
Of daily work created by
A grumpy, broken world
That vents its spite in minute-sized disasters
On my ordinary hours,
Conspires to keep me far from quiet,
Or the slanted, gracious light
Of Lenten church.
No ashes touched my face today.
No deep repentance touched my mind.
Within the evening shadows where I sit,
There is no cross upon my head,
Except the taut, dark lines of weariness.

‘Remember, you are dust’ the old words
Echo through my thought.
How well I know it,
Sitting here I scrape the barrels
Of my inmost heart to find
Some piety or prayer to give In expiation of my day
But dust is all I find;
It’s all I have to offer.
Dust from all my doing,
Dregs left after giving,
Dusty hands all caked with normal life.
I gather it and raise my hands.
An offering. Apology.
The house is still, the shadows
Grow. The night expands around me.
Then, a still, small voice;
‘Remember, you are dust’.
The darkness draws back, startled,
So am I, I lift my face
My weary, ashless face,
To meet those words;
I find them this time, not as dare,
But as the sweet notes of a pardon.
I sit in their forgiveness
In the grace of being named
And in my frailty, known.

Silence deepens. So does peace.
And then, a presence
In the newly lighted chapel of my heart.
A hand extends within the quiet.
There, I see it, marked and scarred,
The same that formed us all
From dust, that made a masterpiece
Of mud; for whom our human dust
Has always been the very
Stuff created to be filled by grace
And formed afresh by love.
He reaches out a priestly hand
I wait, in awe, and hear the words again.
‘Remember, you are dust’,
This time, my Lover’s invitation.