A Meditation on the Beginning of Lent

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The Rev. Dr. Bob Honeychurch, Interim Rector

I was speaking with a friend today about the recent storms we had in Santa Barbara this past weekend.  Between downpours, he bundled up his two young children, and took them outside to romp in the standing water and the mud.  One child immediately took to this new adventure, splashing in the water and sliding around until she was thoroughly soaked and covered in dirt from head to toe.  The other child, however, was somewhat more skeptical about this experience, and even with a good deal of coaxing, could only tentatively engage in this exercise which was generally not a part of his normal routine.

The encounter of these two children with this weekend’s mud seemed like a particularly salient illustration of the different ways we might enter into this holy season of Lent.  Some of us are ready to plunge headlong into the season, prepared to get down and dirty (as it were) in the spiritual exercises and personal discipline so often associated with Lent.  Others, however, are not quite sure what to do with this invitation to engage in this holy work, especially when it is not the type of activity which occupies our time during the rest of the year.

It’s appropriate, I think, that the season of Lent should begin with a day called “Ash Wednesday” – where basic earthly dirt plays such a significant role in the liturgy.  We are marked with the ashes of the day on our foreheads, partly to remind us of our mortality, and partly to remind us that playing in the dirt of life is specifically what God invites us to do during this season.  For it is in that dirt, and from that dirt – with the reminder that we and the dirt are one, as we hear in the words, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return” – that new life emerges.

The word “Lent” comes from the old German word meaning “springtime”, as we prepare the soil of our hearts for the new life we await at Easter.  So during these days ahead, I invite you to experience the season in all its fullness… by getting dirty (either figuratively or literally) in the business of deepening your faith, of strengthening the bond between yourself and God’s creation, of re-connecting with others in whom the face of God shows forth.

Being a Christian – when we are at our best – is dirty business.  So find some dirt.  And be some dirt.  Experience the new growth that can happen when the ashes of our existence and the waters of our baptism combine to form the stuff of life from which the seeds of life can spring to life.