Ash Wednesday

As we contemplate mortality and finitude, I wonder if we could treasure washing the dishes.

People are rightly disgusted by buildings with separate entrances for low-income residents. But churches have side-door people, too.

A particular verse of scripture has been haunting me lately. I hear it as an indictment of an aspect of my personal life.

First, it was a lectionary text in Epiphany. Then I found it in the unifying passage of a devotional book I read.

“Bring the homeless poor into your house,” we read in Isaiah 58:7, part of a passage on genuine fasting.

We began our business meeting in the chapel with dimmed lights. I led the board through several calming prayers, noticing our breath and heartbeats.

Most of us do not take criticism well. We get defensive, make excuses, or blame others. Nor do we engage in much self reflection or acknowledgement of our personal failings.

A lot of churches have deleted the prayer of confession from their Sunday morning orders of worship because of complaints that “those prayers are too depressing,” or “those things don’t apply to me.”

It’s not quite Lent, but we can see it from here.

Sustainable Lenten disciplines anticipate an Easter in which they will continue. But surely Easter hope is for something more.

Isaiah gives voice to God. God is amazed at our epistemic closure.

Monastic vows sound familiar to anyone who's been to a wedding. In both marriage and celibacy, we promise to be faithful.

The psalms are poignant. They bear emotion in a way that grabs our souls. They are comprehended by the heart in a way the head can’t.

But I falter when I try to preach them.

Snow can be tiresome, even deadly, but it can also be a sign of holiness and of hope.

Psalm 51 does not let any of us off the hook—not the progressives, the evangelicals, or the feel-good agnostics.