Ash Wednesday, on the other hand is one of the biggies. Although it's barely marketable - "Happy Lent" cards, anyone? - even Sunday-morning-only types will show up to work with smudged foreheads on the first day of the Great Fast before Easter. It's always seemed to me to be a grim day, like Good Friday. Sunshine never feels quite right on Ash Wednesday, (and in these latitudes, the winter skies usually cooperate.) The prayer is unique and unmistakable, "From dust were you made, and to dust you shall return." This is weighty, gloomy stuff. "Here's some soot smeared on your face to remind you that you're going to die. Have a nice Lent."
How do you reconcile these two holy days: one that reminds us of the joy of smooching and another that reminds us that... well.... life is pretty much a little pile of dirt waiting to be blown back to the big pile from which it came?
As a matter of fact, I think they fit together pretty gracefully. In the Gospel lesson for Ash Wednesday, we are reminded of something that the Celebrity Christian Industry could do a much better job of remembering:
Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.
Matthew 6:1
It seems like a weird instruction to give people just before you slap a black dollop of muck on the middle of their forehead. I once had a priest tell me, "If you are proud you received ashes this morning, you should wash them off. If you're embarrassed, leave them on." I like the perversity of that. (If you ask me, there have always been way too many clean faces walking around churches.) And the end of the lesson is even harder to swallow than a walnut creme disguised as a chocolate covered cherry:
Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Matthew 6: 19-21
Which reminds me of my current study and contemplative voyage into the mind of Siddhartha Gautama, the man they called Buddha (which means, "enlightened one.") He believed that desire was the cause of all suffering. He taught that our thirst for things we do not have, our desire that reality should be something other than what it is; this attachment to what we want is what causes us to suffer and separates us from reality. It alienates us from the universe from which we were made, and to which we will one day return like ashes in the wind.
I'm gonna be honest, now. That paragraph sums up pretty much everything I understand (or misunderstand) about Buddhism. I like learning about it. But I'm humbled by it. I don't want to pretend I have anything to teach anybody on the subject. I'm just saying, if you're curious, it might be worth your time. If nothing else, I'm learning why most people don't take Buddha any more seriously than they take Jesus: both teachers said some really hard things about suffering, and desire... and love.
And that brings me back to Valentines day. Because if you can look past the Whitman Samplers and the roses from Krogers and the shoe box full of cards from classmates and candle light dinners - which are all great things, in my opinion - if you peek even beyond that almost forgotten Turkish priest, old Valentine himself, who somehow wound up being the patron saint of lovers, beekeepers, and people with epilepsy, for god's sake - what you will find behind all that is a day to remember the best thing in the universe. Today, whether we are young and in love for the first time, old with only memories, or fumbling around in the weeds someplace in between, we take a moment to honor Love. With a capital L. Love that creates. Love that heals. Love that binds and forgives and transcends. Gratuitous, selfless Love that moths cannot destroy and thieves cannot steal.
Love. Heavenly treasure. The Sanskrit word that Buddha used is Mettā. In New Testament Greek, it's καλοσύνη or "kalosyni." The Hebrew scriptures called it חֶסֶד or "chesed." (And yes, I'm showing off, and yes, I'm faking those transliterations as best as Professor Google will let me.) In each case, the word is translated to mean "loving-kindness," and when Jesus uses it, it is the defining quality of the Kingdom of Heaven. The Kingdom that he said was among us and within us. The nirvana that Buddha taught awaited anyone who could free themselves from desire and suffering. The kingdom of loving-kindness.
But hey, you do you. Celebrate what you wish on Valentines day. Celebrate having a sweetheart's arms around you or celebrate being free from the clutches of some asshole. Celebrate your independence. Celebrate your friends. Celebrate your hope for the future or your bitterness about the past. Post a meme. Give a flower. Share a bon-bon. Hug the dog. Make the call. Say the prayer. Or just sit quietly and be grateful for a world where some little "enlightened one's" heart is tripping just a bit because somehow they caught a glimpse, however fleeting, of the holy loving-kindness that illuminates the gardens of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Do that for a second, will you? Do it today. See the love that's among you and within you. Rattle your rosary. Sit on your cushion. Crank up your chakras. Use your third eye, if you're into that. Just don't put it off. I mean, "ashes to ashes," right?
I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the
observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance;
by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and
meditating on God's holy Word. And, to make a right beginning
of repentance, and as a mark of our mortal nature, let us now
kneel before the Lord, our maker and redeemer.
Almighty God, you have created us out of the dust of the
earth: Grant that these ashes may be to us a sign of our
mortality and penitence, that we may remember that it is
only by your gracious gift that we are given everlasting life;
through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
Liturgy for Ash Wednesday, Book of Common Prayer, p. 264
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