Ash Wednesday 2021-Does anyone get it?

This was the year I learned that Ash Wednesday is the Church's Santa Claus. I remember sitting under a tree in a park in early summer with friends as we all puzzled over the closures of our various churches. 

To be fair, the Baptist church didn't close down. In fact it amazes me--the sprinkling of churches I know that don't commemorate Lent, have no idea what Ash Wednesday is, and still kept meeting, unmasked. Clearly they get it.

But with a few defiant exceptions, the Catholics, the Lutherans, the Anglicans all shut down and huddled in their homes, determined not to die. 

"...for dust you are and to dust you will return.” (Gen. 3:19 NIV)

Ha! Apparently, in the 21st century we don't actually mean that. 

I've always thought I would die. I'm always certain my loved ones will die. Many have been concerned about this, identified it as abnormal and unhealthy, and thought maybe I should take something. And to be fair, it has at times been unhealthy, and I have at times taken something. 

Perhaps the reason that it was Ash Wednesday that began my whole journey into liturgical worship in the first place is because it was the first time that I heard acknowledged out loud what beat in my heart all the time: "You're going to die."

But every year as I go forward and have ashes smeared on my forehead and hear: "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return" I get a little less anxious about it, and a little more accepting, and believe a little more that resurrection, not death, is the end of all things. 

The past year has been hard, frustrating, painful. I've come to realize not many people believe the holy water is holy. Turns out it is scary and we mustn't touch it. Years of hearing that no one has gotten ill from the receiving the common cup ("not evening during The Plague!") was tossed out the window in a couple of minutes of the covid-19 scare. We should call the elders and anoint the sick with oil became, "We should mask up, social distance and no way get close enough to anoint anyone." 

I am grateful to find I actually believe in all these things. I'm not really afraid. But finding the church believes these things like it believes in the Easter bunny has been painful. The hardest thing to believe in right now is the Church.