Ash Wednesday Meditations on Beauty for Aging Children in a Time of Pandemic

Last updated on: February 11, 2021 at 8:10 am by Bruce Epperly

Ash Wednesday Meditations on Beauty for Aging Children in a Time of Pandemic 2021-02-11T08:10:12-05:00 Bruce Epperly

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Ash Wednesday: Meditations on Beauty and Mortality For Aging Children in a Time of Pandemic

Bruce G. Epperly
For two years, I have been interviewed retired pastors for my book on adventures in clergy retirement, “The Jubilee Years: Embracing Clergy Retirement.” Although I am now in the Medicare Generation, I often describe myself as being in midlife, provided I live to be 136! (now closer to 137!) Last fall, prior to the emergence of the pandemic, I planned to attend my 50th high school reunion. Now we are considering a reunion in 2022 when we will all be 70! I’m looking forward to it, but, oh my, we boomers from the class of 1970 have changed quite a bit over the past 50 years! Baby boomers are discovering their mortality. For a while, we lived in the garden, never expecting to grow old, hoping that the “better living through chemistry” that inspired spiritual adventures in the 60’s and 70’s will continue with medications and joint replacements as our fountain of youth now that we are in our 60’s and 70’s. Though we intellectually knew about our mortality, the pandemic has placed mortality front and center as we put on our masks when we leave our hands, find ourselves exiled from our grandchildren, and worry that a cough could lead to a mortal illness! Life becomes even more sobering when we see from our age group dying of COVID! We are, as Joni Mitchell sings, “aging children,” and we need songs of hope to help us navigate the pathways of mortality.
Life is beautiful, but often too short. A Jewish saying counsels that each person should have a note in each pocket. In one pocket, the note should announce “for you the universe was created.” In the other, “you are dust.” These days I am daily aware of the dustiness of life in my own body and in the lives of dear friends. Not only in my waistline but in the reality that although I go up forty steps from the beach to a bluff overlooking the Nantucket Sound most mornings, I can’t sprint the way I used to, and often after a long hike experience “the agony of de-feet!”
Over the past few years, several of my friends have been diagnosed with life-threatening cancers. One of my closest friends, with whom I had journeyed and grown for nearly fifty years, recently died brain cancer. My best friend died six years ago from breast cancer. In my mind, their lives were cut short. I take note of obituaries and measure my days against the lifespans of celebrity pastors and well-known theologians. Funerals and memorial services characterize my work as pastor of South Congregational Church (UCC) in Centerville, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod. Recent funerals requiring limitations in crowd size and safe distancing, and the requirement of being outdoors further punctuate the reality of mortality. As a pastor, relative, and friend, I don’t need anyone to remind me of the fragility and uncertainty of life.
Traditional Ash Wednesday liturgies focus on the brevity of life and remind worshippers that they came from dust and will soon enough will return to the earth, dust once more. For our parents in the faith, Lent was a morose and somber season in which they gave up something in to prepare themselves for eternal life. The salvation promised and hoped for required turning our backs on the joys of embodiment and the beauties of the earth. Faithful Christians trained their eyes on heaven, forsaking time for eternity and embodiment for legalism and asceticism. Yes, life is serious and risky business, and no one gets out alive. But, is salvation just an escape from this world of perpetual perishing or is it seeing everlasting beauty in each passing moment? Can we be “ citizens of heaven” while we are joyfully living here on earth?

Life is fragile, and we hope for spiritual wholeness, and perhaps, everlasting life evolving in companionship with God and our loved ones. For years, I struggled with Ash Wednesday Services precisely because of their otherworldliness and asceticism. My self-denial in Lent was typically half-hearted and short-lived going the way of New Year’s resolutions.
Once I asked a Maryland farmer why he pruned his apple trees. His response was, “to let the light in.” During Lent, we prune and simplify our lives so God’s light can come in. Connected as branches on a divine vine, we prune the cumber so that God’s energy can flow unimpeded into our lives, bringing forth abundant fruit. These days, I am reconsidering the meaning of Ash Wednesday. The brevity and uncertainty of life now invites me to praise, wonder, and beauty, and to seize the moment. Each day I affirm “this is the day God has made and I will rejoice in it!” All that I love and care for is mortal and transitory, but mortality is the inspiration to celebration and love. Plato once described time as the moving image of eternity. We are constantly dying, but we are also constantly living as we reflect God’s vision in the world of the flesh. This day, this moment, is a “thin place” for God is with us, revealed in flesh, blood, and healing touch.
As one Ash Wednesday reading says, “Now is the day of salvation,” and the Holy Here and Now call us to choose life, be bold, and rejoice in this moment for creativity and service.
This Ash Wednesday, my aim is to let go of everything that keeps me from rejoicing in the passing beauty of the earth. Each year, as summer begins, I train my eyes for the first fireflies. Their season is brief, and given humanity’s destruction of the natural world, I fear that each summer will be the last. But, when I see the first firefly in late May, my heart leaps with joy and all summer long, I rejoice in the fragile flashing beauty they display.
Yes, we are dust, but we are earthly dust, springing forth from a multi-billion-year holy adventure. But dust is good, after all; it is the place of fecundity, of moist dark soil, and perhaps we are also “star-dust,” emerging from God’s intergalactic creativity. We are frail, but we are also part of a holy adventure reflecting God’s love over billions of years and in billions of galaxies.
How can we not rejoice in the color purple or pause in wonder at a baby’s birth? How can we be oblivious to the “dearest freshness deep down things?” as Gerard Manley Hopkins notes? Like Jacob, Ash Wednesday causes us to pause, notice, wake up, and discover that “God is in this place” and now we know it! With author Patricia Adams Farmer, Ash Wednesday invites us to take a “beauty break,” open to the awe-filled, precarious world in which we live.
So, this Ash Wednesday, I plan on considering the lilies and the birds the air. I will enjoy the beauty of the windswept beach on my morning walk. I will play with my grandsons and love my wife Kate deeply.
Wednesday, at our congregation’s two Zoom Ash Wednesday Services, we won’t have the imposition of ashes. But we can still reflect on the meaning of ashes for us today, not the ashes of world-denial or bodily-mortification, but the ashes of transformation, of awakening to beauty and love, of seizing the moment.
In some liturgies, the imposition of ashes is accompanied by the words, “repent and believe the gospel.” And, that I plan to say these words even if I don’t place ashes on congregants’ foreheads. I plan to repent and believe – to “repent,” turn around, live more in moment, appreciating God’s grandeur, and believing the good news – the embodied, yet ever-lasting, gospel of beauty, wonder, and grace – the good news of walking with beauty all around me. For this is the day that God has made and I will rejoice and be glad in it.

+++
Bruce Epperly is a Cape Cod pastor, professor, and writer. He is the author of over 60 books including, WALKING WITH FRANCIS OF ASSISI: FROM PRIVILEGE TO ACTIVISM; MYSTICS IN ACTION: 12 SAINTS FOR TODAY; 101 SOUL SEEDS FOR GRANDPARENTS WORKING FOR A BETTER WORLD; LOVE IN A TIME OF CRISIS AND PANDEMIC (volume 3 of his pandemic trilogy); and THE JUBILEE YEARS: EMBRACING CLERGY RETIREMENT.

Previous Post

February 11, 2021

Adventurous Lectionary - First Sunday of Lent - February 21, 2021

Next Post

February 13, 2021 A Holy Lent for Pastors

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Book Reviews The Adventurous Lectionary Uncategorized

Select a Month November 2026 October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 December 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz