Marked as human

"Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” These ancient words have been passed down from Christian to Christian over countless Ash Wednesdays. They have their source in God’s admonition to Adam and Eve on their way out of paradise. When we repeat them we remember that we continue that journey into the vast, fallen world. With our foreheads smeared with ashes, we remember our failings and our mortality.

It is a day of individual reflection. We receive the ashes together but also one at a time, each body individually marked. “I know my transgressions,” we sing with the psalmist, “and my sin is ever before me.” We sit in silence together and recall what we have done and left undone. We remember we are dust and that we will return to dust. And we ponder the mystery of the incarnation that gathers up and blesses the brevity and fragility of our life.

Ash Wednesday is also a day to consider our shared future as members one of another. It is not only our individual lives that are fragile. As the changes in our climate accelerate and the divisions in our societies deepen, Ash Wednesday is a day to remember the fragility of the life of the earth itself and the human communities it sustains.