Update: the rather humorous spelling error is fixed. Thanks, Jim!
Today is Ash Wednesday, one of my favorite days in the church calendar. When I turned twenty-four this January, I joked with my students about having a "third-of-life crisis." As my days get older, my death gets closer and birthdays always remind me of that ominous fact.
While it seems morbid to many, contemplating our own mortality can be an incredibly beneficial practice for our spiritual lives. As David prays in Psalm 90:12, "So teach us to number our days that we may present unto thee a heart of wisdom." And Ash Wednesday is one of the only days in the church calendar that the reading comes from Lamentations, a drastically under-read book. My favorite: "It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth."
The season of Lent is one of the most difficult and rewarding seasons. It is a time of fasting and self-denial, of penitence and sorrow. But it is not a time of despair--that option was cut-off by the resurrection of Christ. It is a time of preparation for the celebration of Easter, not a time when we forget that Easter happened. Rather, the Easter events must be at the forefront of our consciousness as we engage in reflection, silence, and stillness, bearing the yoke in our quickly departing youth.
While it is an injustice to Eliot to quote only a part of his poem, I leave you with the first stanza(?) from "Ash Wednesday":
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