LENTil Soup

As if you didn't know, we've entered Lent. Another thing you already know is that today is Ash Wednesday, a day where people actually parade into church to be reminded of their sin and death.

Today in chapel (some, not all) flocked to have ashes imposed onto foreheads; we imposed, we established or forced the awareness of our own deaths, our own frailties upon us in such a way that our death and frailty stare back at us when we look into the mirror.

Journey language often gets used, to the chagrin of many. It's an appropriate metaphor, I'm sure, but the journey we take is a journey towards our neighbor and towards our own death. I am dust and to dust I will return.

Bonhoeffer reminds us in Life Together:

The fact that Jesus Christ died is more important than the fact that I will die. And the fact that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead is the sole ground of my hope that I, too, will be raised on the day of judgment. ...I find salvation not in my life story, but only in the story of Jesus Christ. (Publisher: Augsburg Fortress, page 62)

I think Ash Wednesday is a good day to bury hubris. Like the third commandment is a ceasing against our striving to be God, Ash Wednesday is a ceasing against our immortality project. From Luther grad Nadia Bolz-Weber:

We go to church on Ash Wednesday to be told that we are dust and to dust we shall return; the collagen-injected lips turn to dust, even the pilates-lengthened muscles, the 12 essential vitamins and minerals and the bottled water. We are told that we can live forever with the right combinations of exercise, diet and elective surgery. But we know—in those inevitable moments of disquieting silence—that the oasis is not all it's cracked up to be, and so we enter the desert where we can no longer turn from the inevitable dust, where the seemingly impossible happens: destructive self-centeredness is transformed into cruciform living. read more.

May your journey or whatever you'd like to call it be blessed.
Peace.