3 Weeks Since Ash Wednesday

Three weeks ago tonight I stood with friends in church, smearing ashes on their heads, reminding them they were dust and would one day return to dust. It was powerful and heavy and somehow it was three entire weeks ago. Simultaneously it feels like it was 3 years ago and yesterday - that seems to be happening more and more often as I grow older. Time seems to collapse - my hair turning more silver than brunette and the little crow's feet that have appeared around my eyes seem the only giveaway that years have passed in what seems only minutes. I'm glad time's not linear when it comes to living - I find its 3-D nature does more justice to the textured layers of experiences that become swells of memories with the power to lift us up and lay us flat.

And today I read in one of the writing blogs I subscribed to the words:

"even in the dark, we are alive"

Perhaps that's why beginning the season of Lent remembering our mortality is the best way to start this season of pensive reflection. We're preparing for the literal ground shaking events that culminate in resurrection. Spending time in the reality that we're finite and will return to dust is dark. Yet even in the darkness of that truth, we are alive. Spending a semester in a hospital chaplain setting made me see how different being alive is from living. On this side of the grave, I intend to be about the work and joy and 3D layers of living because I am from dust and to dust, I will return. I want to travel a full 360-degree journey between my dusty beginning and end. I want to squeeze every ounce out of this life as a catapult into the next. Twenty-one days into this 40-day journey and I'm realizing that stripping down to basics as a means of communion with creation is really a wakeup call for all the senses. There's more to see and hear and taste and touch and smell in this world which I was dreamed into than I'll ever be able to absorb - so I better get to it. I want to slide into my eternal dust with flair - knowing I've felt deeply, loved authentically, lived intentionally, and noticed every little detail set before me. If we are fully alive in the darkness, imagine what the light will bring.