Ash Wednesday is a busy day in the life of a part-time pastor, and by that I mean I worked a full day.
My morning at work started with talking to a woman whom I met when we invited a local dog shelter to share in our Blessing of the Animals. Actually, I met with her and her husband who have a new baby and wanted to talk about baptism for the little one. Our shared love of shelter dogs opened the door for a deeper connection.
Then I went up the hill to the Lutheran church in Hamden to help Josh administer “ashes to go,” which he has done for a few years now. I helped last year as well. Over two hours, about sixty cars came through holding a wonderful variety of humanity. Without exception, I was greeted with a look of expectation as I approached the car. I asked their name and told them mine and then I called them by name and said, “You are beloved of God. Yes, you came from dust and will return to dust, but even more you came from love and will return to love,” and then I smudged a cross on their forehead.
More than one person teared up as I talked. What might have been nothing more than the liturgical equivalent of a drive through lane became a succession of sacred moments.
Before I got to work I read another chapter in Crisis Contemplation by Barbara Holmes and she quoted Katherine Fritz:
It’s a fallacy of our modern lives to assume that the concept of a “neighborhood” only encompasses a select group of people: our actual neighbors, our coworkers, our family, our partners. In truth, our neighborhoods are vastly more sprawling and interconnected than we frequently acknowledge.
Howard then noted that Fritz
recognizes that neighbors are defined by relationships, brief or recurring, that emerge and recede during daily life. Some neighbors abide and then move on, others share deeply resonant relations, yet others connect to us in brief but recurring episodes. When all the pieces of the life puzzle are moving, static definitions will not do.
My neighbors drove up, rolled down their windows and let me reach in and touch my finger to their foreheads and make a somewhat abstract sign of the Cross and tell them they were loved, loved, loved. And then they drove off into the rest of their lives and I went on about mine.
Incidental contact is not insignificant unless we choose for it to be.
Happy Lent!
Peace,
Milton
♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️