Remember You Are Dust

Dear Friends in Valhalla Parish, 

This week as my eldest child turned eight years old, I found myself thinking back not only to the day of Jacob's birth, but also to six days later: Ash Wednesday 2013. 

We pulled up to the big stone church at the corner of Gore and East Cordova in Vancouver's Downtown East Side. Ericka and I weren't members of that parish, but we knew it well, and were looking for a place to mark the beginning of lent. It was a short service, less than an hour, all spoken, words familiar, comforting, unsettling. We were among strangers, and yet we were one with them. 

The people of God, across time and space are one. And when we participate in the liturgy and celebrate in the sacraments, we find ourselves united with a greater cloud of witnesses than may be present in our particular parish (or particular online worship) than may be present in that moment in time. This is one of the great and beautiful mysteries of our faith. 

On that particular Ash Wednesday, after the readings and the invitation to observe a holy lent; after the miserere, and the litany of pentience, we were marked with ashes.

All three of us. 

This is a moment in time I won't soon forget. First the priest marked Ericka, then me, and then Jacob, six days old and nestled in his mother's arms.

Six days old. "Remember you are dust."

That moment is a well deep with emotion as I pause and turn it over in my mind. It is a moment in which the solemn ritual of Ash Wednesday, one in which I'd participated countless times came to mean something new. Death and New Life beside one another. Death and new life side by side, intertwined. And in it all, a blessing. 

As I remember, after placing the ashes on his forehead, the priest also offered a blessing to Jacob in the form of a prayer. And while I don't remember the words, this too is emblazoned on my memory. The ashes that mark our mortality also come with a blessing. A blessing and an invitation deeper into the Christian life. 

And so this year, as we mark Ash Wednesday and Lent in new ways, we do so remembering each of these things. The solemnity of reflection on our mortality, the blessing of the God who goes with us, and the invitation to seek after Jesus, and to be apprenticed in his way of justice and joy, compassion and peace. 

On Ash Wednesday 2021, I invite you to join me and members of the Valhalla Parish community to mark this moment in our lives, in the life of the community, in the life of the worldwide communion of saints. To participate, all you need to do is visit www.valhallaparish.ca/live.

The service will be there for you to participate as you are able, whenever you are able. And in the days leading up to the service, I will drop by with a small bag of ashes so that, at the appropriate time, you too can be marked with the sign of the cross as a reminder that you are dust—God breathed, God beloved dust—as a part of God's invitation to mark and participate in a Holy Lent. 

Every Blessing, 

Andrew