mortality
I liked this, until I didn’t.
I'm a queer Christian pastor, and I'll be using regular, old, boring ashes like always.
There are two sure things in life: death and sin.
It's hard for me to grasp that mortality is my fate, too.
On Ash Wednesday, as we remember our sins and ask to be forgiven, let's also remember what we love and ask to love it more.
To say "earth to earth" is a good thing, we have to believe it's really going to happen.
Incurable condition
Not every ailment can be fixed—or should be. Atul Gawande thinks we need to talk about this.
The church of my childhood paid no attention to Lent. The season's words sounded too mystical to us, too strange and too Catholic.
Our teacher cautions us that the corpse pose is the most difficult of all yoga postures to master, but after an hour’s exertion in warrior pose, downward-facing dog and cobra, the prospect of relaxing horizontally on one’s yoga mat brings both relief and the impertinent question, “How hard can it be?” Fascinated, I report to my husband, “Every day at the conclusion of yoga class we practice dying.” “That’s interesting,” he says, trying to share my enthusiasm. “It’s kind of like Lent,” I venture. "Lent is when we’re supposed to practice dying, right?”
I am more at home with the ashes of Lent than with the perfect lilies of Easter.