Ashes to Ashes

[This is something I wrote on Ash Wednesday in 2001, when I was living in Japan. Since it is Ash Wednesday today, I thought it might be appropriate to post.]



As I passed by it on the bus this morning, the playground looked much the same as any other playground, except for this unique feature -- two tall slides, intertwined one with the other, double-helix fashion. And then I remembered: this is part of me. All of it. The double-helixes. The dirt. The air. The sun glinting off metal.

It is Ash Wednesday.

There is no special service for me to attend this year. No priest to dip his thumb in the burnt, crumbled greyness from last year's Palm Sunday palm fronds, and make with it, on my forehead, the sign of the cross. There will be no candles lit at an altar, nor sober choral songs offered above the hush of a congregation, reflective and reverent. But it is a time for remembrance, nonetheless.

The green tea fields stand in orderly rows on the hillsides, hemmed in by fruit-laden orange trees and stands of fresh green bamboo. The soil underneath these things, underneath my feet, holds some kind of truth about myself. I am it -- with the breath of God making me also more than it. A mystery to seek of the Creator.

I listened again today to Emmylou Harris' song "Bang the Drum Slowly" from the aptly titled record "Red Dirt Girl." Here are some of those words:

Bang the drum slowly
Play the pipe lowly
To dust be returning
From dust we begin
Bang the drum slowly
I'll speak of things holy
Above and below me,
world without end.


A blessed Lenten season to you.