On Ashes and Ashiness

Ashes are a stark symbol. They are gritty and dirty; they speak of devastation, loss, pain and death; our homes and society have no place for them. In a world that glorifies flash cars, comfortable housing, shiny gym machines, ambition, luxury, and excess, ashes just don’t seem to fit.

Behind our façades of success and all our seemingly noble endeavours, every one of us knows the taste of ashes; and we know the feeling of it under our feet. Broken hearts, crushed dreams, grief, tragedy, anguish, and despair – these are part of the stuff of life, and we all wash up in a pile of ash from time to time. Not only this, but our eyes are smarted with the smoke billowing from the ash-heaps of our neighbour’s lives. Somehow, the ashes of today’s feast honour the dark and gritty paths we all must walk. The grit cuts through the glamour and hype; the darkness show the cracks in our façades, allowing us to be humble, and real, and human.

Ash Wednesday is harsh. The old philosophers spoke of the lacrimae rerum – the tears in the very nature of things. The holy ashes honour these tears. They draw us, heart and soul, into life’s deep weeping. They teach us to work and to wait, there amid the tears and the ashes.

The black ashes also honour those who are facing external fires, who live and die in the long shadows cast by our grand civilisations: The families who live day by day scavenging on rubbish dumps, religious and faithful tortured throughout the world, our own Stolen Generation, prisoners, exploited workers, those humiliated or even harmed for expressing counter-social identities and orientations, people trapped in cycles of violence even within their homes, the elderly and isolated living in loneliness, displaced peoples fleeing war.

Near and far, people living in the ashes. If we dare to receive the mark of the ashes, we must do so also in solidarity with them, and we must commit ourselves to getting our hands dirty, not just our foreheads.

The ashes tell a story, a story that begs for redemption. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust: this is our human story; it is a story with a sequel revealed at the end of 40 days. These Ashes, then, are permission to be and acknowledge what we feel deep inside; they are a mutual understanding, a nod of acknowledgment, an unvoiced word of admittance. We all suffer; we are all broken.

So, prepare to enter your humanity – the ashy grit of your reality. Remember

that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.