“May this Lenten journey find us willing to be marked with ash - may we mourn the extinction of species, the desertification of land, the loss of forests and native plants, the ever-expanding dumps filled with the cast-off remnants of our consumption. We have a lot of repenting to do, and may our ash be mixed with oil, so that it will stick. But may we also find the ability to hope. We are a people marked by a promise, and that promise includes all of creation. New life is springing up. We are in good hands. The God who created us - out of ash - has promised not to let us go.” (from crcna - Do Justice)
I remember as a school boy walking past St. Basil’s church on what must have been an Ash Wednesday morning and crossing paths with parishioners coming from that morning’s mass, an ashen cross on their foreheads. I had many rather mistaken ideas about Catholics at that time and it was not until many years later that my own Reformed tradition recaptured some of the many things lost during the Reformation and merged them back into the Christian liturgical calendar. Ash Wednesday and Lent offer rich possibilities for a deeper journey into justice-seeking.
“May this Lenten journey find us willing to be marked with ash - may we mourn the extinction of species, the desertification of land, the loss of forests and native plants, the ever-expanding dumps filled with the cast-off remnants of our consumption. We have a lot of repenting to do, and may our ash be mixed with oil, so that it will stick. But may we also find the ability to hope. We are a people marked by a promise, and that promise includes all of creation. New life is springing up. We are in good hands. The God who created us - out of ash - has promised not to let us go.” (from crcna - Do Justice)
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August 2022
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