Lessons from the Ashes

It was to be our first Easter in the church my husband and I decided to call home, our first year in the town we had settled in after graduation. I liked the church and was getting to know the people. Already we helped with the youth group, attended Sunday school, and sang in the choir.

But I was nervous about this thing I’d never done. This thing everyone seemed to find so normal. Ash Wednesday.

My husband grew up celebrating Ash Wednesday. He was surprised that I, a seminary graduate, had never attended an Ash Wednesday service. I don’t think he knew I thought it weird.

I sat beside him in the hard, wooden pew and watched as worshipers moved up the center aisle to have their foreheads marked with ashes. Soon he stood and I followed, wary, but willing. We joined the line and drew towards the front. I watched closely, observing what I would need to do. Step forward. Kneel. Be marked. Stand. Move on.

“Okay,” I thought. “That’s not so hard.”

It was my husband’s turn. He seemed to come through just fine. Then it was my turn. I walked forward. Knelt. Pastor Pete dipped his thumb into a mixture of oil and ashes from last year’s Palm Sunday palms, and gently touched my forehead—once, twice—leaving behind a cross.

“From dust you came and to dust you will return,” he said.

I stood. Released my held breath. I returned to my pew, closed my eyes and prayed. I was not a new person. But I liked what I had done.

I grew up in church, practically lived there, it seemed sometimes. But our non-denominational congregation on a small island in Washington State did not observe Ash Wednesday. We recognized Palm Sunday. We celebrated Easter, sunrise service, cinnamon rolls and hot cross buns. But Ash Wednesday—or even Lent, for that matter—didn’t fit into our demographic of mixed evangelical Protestants. I never heard of Maundy Thursday until adulthood.

So, when I married and we joined a slightly more traditional church many miles and several states away, a lot of things were new to me, despite having spent my entire life in Christian circles.

That I liked Ash Wednesday surprised me. This proved a good lesson in letting go of my suspicions of anything new. I’d been suspicious of saying The Lord’s Prayer every Sunday morning, suspicious of reciting the Apostles’ Creed. We sang the Doxology weekly on the island church. That was the closest we came to liturgy. I neither understood nor appreciated conventional church traditions.

Fast forward a decade or so from my first Ash Wednesday. My husband and I flew to London for a few days alone together, using frequent flyer miles and the child-watching services of my niece. We decided to visit St. Paul’s Cathedral, bastion of High Church tradition, for a special Lenten Evensong service. You might not think I’d be drawn to such a thing, given my upbringing. But I love the voices of choir boys, so I was excited to attend.

We arrived early, sitting right up in the “quire,”  mere feet from the Scripture readers and the awe-inspiring high altar, not to mention the choir. The service entailed a lot of reading together, a lot of singing together, a lot of liturgy. And I loved every second of it.

Tears ran down my cheeks as I took part in that service. To be there, in the center of that breathtaking space, with the Word of God echoing in the centuries-old stones, was to become a part of the story of that church. To speak the exact words spoken so many times before helped me to finally understand the meaning and joy of shared ritual.

My delight in being a Christian grew enormously that day, not just in being a child of God—that had brought me joy for many years—but in being part of the larger Christian church. I finally understood that the value in Lent and Ash Wednesday is found not just in personal application but in communal participation, too.

My voice, raised with that of millions of Christians throughout history, is stronger because of that unity. And that cross, marked on my forehead, reminds me that I am God’s child. One of many children, yes…but no less precious because of that.

Thanks be to God.

Gretchen O’Donnell is an island girl living on the prairies of southwestern Minnesota, with her husband, two youngest children, and two argumentative cats. She pretends that

the lake outside her window is the Pacific Ocean. Gretchen does freelance writing for her local newspaper and has a weekly faith-based newspaper column, “The Disheveled Theologian.” She loves telling stories of her ordinary life to help people see the theological truths in their everyday lives.