My oldest daughter was asked to be the banner bearer for our church’s Ash Wednesday service. At our church, this job rotates through the children in fourth through sixth grades because the banners are taller and heavier than a lot of the kids younger than that. When I told my daughter that our pastor had texted to ask if she wanted to do it, her first words were, ‘Can I still get the ashes?’
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. We’ve all heard the phrase and, even though it’s not in the Bible, we associate it with Lent and Ash Wednesday. The phrase ‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,’ is from a prayer in the Book of Common Prayer—a prayer intended to be said at a funeral as dirt is tossed onto the coffin. “…we commit his body to the ground; earth to earth; ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The Lord bless him and keep him, the Lord make his face to shine upon him and be gracious unto him and give him peace. Amen.”
I’m not sure why we don’t say the ‘earth to earth’ part as often when we use the ‘ashes to ashes, dust to dust,’ part of the prayer. Maybe it’s too long if you say all three parts? Maybe it’s not as catchy? Or maybe the imagery of going into the earth is too clear a reminder of what the rest of it is getting at—the fact that we are all going to die. It’s not cheery, but it’s true. If Lent is a time of penitence and reflection and sacrifice—Ash Wednesday is the reminder why. It’s the, ‘Don’t forget—you only get one of these.’ Lives, I mean.
As Rachel Held Evans pointed out in her book Searching for Sunday, “We smear the ashes on our foreheads and together acknowledge the single reality upon which every Catholic and Protestant, believer and atheist, scientist and mystic can agree: ‘Remember that you are dust and to dust you will return.’ It’s the only thing we know for sure: we will die.” I’m not sure what it says about all of us humans that the only thing we can agree on is that we’re all gonna die—but that seems like a topic for another article, and probably another author.
When my daughter asked if she would still be able to receive the ashes—she wasn’t worried about missing out on this yearly reminder of her mortality. Maybe there are 11-year-olds who ponder their sin and, as their pastor makes the sign of the cross on their foreheads, think about the meaning of real repentance and the depths of God’s grace—I just don’t think any 11-year-olds who I have raised think like that. I have trouble thinking like that. I know that we all will die but I don’t sit around thinking about it. I mean—I can fully accept that fact without wallowing in it. Understanding that we all will die doesn’t require any action on my part, right?
There are a lot of things in my life, and in all of our lives, that require action. Lunches to be packed, meetings to be made, slime to be gotten out of the carpet, kids to be picked up from dance, laptops with cracked screens from children throwing them on the floor to be fixed (that Best Buy warranty may turn out to have been totally worth it), groceries to get—all the normal stuff we have to do to have a life that works for us and our people during any, regular, ole, boring, and busy week. Then the city floods.
I didn’t flood. My family didn’t flood, but a whole lot of folks flooded or moved out because they expected to flood. The flood technically didn’t require any action on my part. I called friends whose homes were at risk, I texted offers to help move furniture, and checked in to see if there was anything I could do. Nobody took me up on my offers—I’m off the hook. Except—I only get one life and we are all going to die one day, so it turns out that flood waters that don’t reach me still require action on my part.
I may not want to wallow in the fact that we are all going to die, but I’m pretty sure that living an Ash Wednesday life means that floods that don’t wet even my pinky toe still require action from me.
I’ll be honest. Most of the time, when I walk forward to receive communion or, on Ash Wednesday, have the sign of the cross imposed on my forehead—95% of my brain is taken up with trying to remember what I’m supposed to say back, wondering if my clothes are doing anything weird that might make me flash part of the congregation, and making sure I don’t trip. The 5% left is storing the experience for consideration later and I may or may not get to it that week.
During communion recently, I was tearing off my piece of bread from the loaf a deacon held for me as he said, ‘Elizabeth, this is the body of Christ broken for you,’ and an unexpected fault line in the loaf caused it to tear the wrong way—meaning, I pulled off a massive chunk of bread. I couldn’t tear that piece in half and just leave one part on the plate, nobody would pick it up and eat it—not in the middle of flu season, anyway. I had to shove the whole piece in my mouth, as the front pew watched, and chew before the laughter got me and I choked. I have no idea if I said anything back to the deacon serving me or not—probably not out of fear of aspirating the body of Christ.
My point is this: sometimes you have to be contemplative later. Sometimes it’s all you can do to make sure that the static from the pew cushion hasn’t made your skirt stick to your tights in an unfortunate way and you can consider our shared mortality later. (A little Static Guard sprayed on the pew cushions periodically really would be the Christian thing to do—just a suggestion.)
But we only get to live our lives once. We only get one chance to live the kind of life that can’t not be moved to action by flood waters even when we are dry as a bone. Not everybody can sign up to rip wet carpet out of houses. Not everybody is suited for walking into neighborhoods where they don’t know a soul and offering their help. Not everybody can write a big check to pay to house a few families while they wrangle with insurance companies and carry molded dry wall to the curb.
Not everybody can brave the snakes and the sludge or scale the steep inclines to clean up the garbage blanketing the banks of the creeks around town. Not everybody can lead a uniform drive for the children of around a 100 JPS families who were displaced. Not everybody can buy or prepare or deliver lunch for clean-up volunteers, or show up with coffee, or stock the freezers of people just getting back in their homes. But just about everybody can do something.
I wasn’t born yet when the Easter Flood of ’79 happened; but you can’t live in Jackson (much less grow up here) without hearing stories of the Easter Flood—neighbors helping neighbors move furniture, strangers helping new friends clean up, churches holding school classes, schools holding fundraising drives. If you were following the talk about this month’s flood then you heard how the Easter Flood is still the standard used to measure how bad any incoming flood might or might not be—no matter that it was 40 years ago.
Even those of us who weren’t born yet or didn’t live here back then have heard enough about the Flood of ’79 to use it as a gauge for both possible damage and how much the community stepped up to help one another.
We are all so grateful that this flood wasn’t any worse than it was—but that shouldn’t lessen our response. Last week was still the worst week of a whole lot of our neighbors’ lives. (And I’m using ‘neighbor’ like Jesus used it; I don’t just mean the folks next door.) If we only get one life and we don’t get to live it forever—then shouldn’t we shoot for an Easter Flood of ’79 response to a Just After Valentine’s 2020 Flood?
Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.
When my pastor says that to me tonight—I may not take it in right away. But at some point, hopefully before the ashes have worn off, it will sink in what those words mean for me and what they ask of me: In the grand scheme of things, a human life isn’t that long, none of us get to know how long it will actually be, so let’s don’t waste any of it trying to get off the hook—when we could be Easter Flood People, instead.
Elizabeth Quinn makes her home in Northeast Jackson with her husband Percy and four children.
