ashes.ashes.we.all.fall.

Ash Wednesday is today. i love going to the service and getting the little cross on my forehead. this is maybe not the real meaning of it that they'll be explaining to us in church this evening, but in my own little world i think it's like a gentle touch-whisper of a reminder that i am a creation of the Creator, a child of the Father, a sister of the Savior, a mind being molded to love Jesus and love like the Christ, a temporary temple of a body that will so soon creak and rattle and decay and turn to dust, and also a glorious soul that will receive a new body free from the temptations and fears and fights and tears of this life. and that we are living in the meantime, the in-between. and that the reality of the One who dwells within us should be evident on our faces and in our speech and through the work of our hands. and that the Word, the living story of the embodiment of Love, is written on our hearts. and that someday we will see the I AM face to face, even if we can only see God's back for now [read Exodus 33]. mientras que esperamos...

i'm always curious what other people are doing to observe Lent.


for my Personal Foundations for Ministry class, we have to make a plan for practicing a spiritual discipline over the next 8 weeks or so. how convenient. i'm excited about it because i was getting inklings and advice about a couple of things i should instigate more intentionally in my life even before i thought about this project. no, friends, it's not fasting. :-P and i don't plan on saying much more than that about it, but would definitely appreciate prayer as i try to stick to this commitment and let the Spirit work through it!

i found this set of poems by T.S. Eliot, entitled Ash Wednesday, written shortly after his commitment to Christ within the Anglican Church. they are somewhat inscrutable in parts, maybe i just don't get a lot of the allusions he's making, but he writes so lyrically, and even where i don't understand it lends an air of mystery that is strangely comforting to me. like language can't contain everything there is or even everything we know, which is such a small portion of everything there is and why everything is anyway.

for someone who loves putting words together and pulling meaning out of them, who worries when words are left unsaid or badly said [which i do ALL THE TIME] or misinterpreted or ignored, it is good to hear, from poem V (five):

"If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word."

[it sounds like a tongue-twister at first, but makes more sense after reading through a few times]

'beauty for ashes', i need to go make a playlist of all the songs that are titled that. [like the one by Shane and Shane, and this one by Jinny Kim...]

chau for now.