Full: Lent 2025

Here we are again. Another Lent. Another wilderness wandering. Another start to reflecting on the world via my very sporadic writings. It seems Lent has been the time I feel most compelled to write. Perhaps because of the introspective nature of the season. Maybe it’s just the experience of taking the United Methodist Photo-A-Day challenge and turning it into a post. All I know is here we are again and here I go again.

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Day 1: Full

A requirement of the seminary I attended (Saint Paul School of Theology), the immersions available ranged from spending time in South Korea and Guatemala, to visiting the Gullah people of the lower Atlantic states. As the name suggests, immersions were meant to help us experience a people and culture other than our own. We were to be “immersed” in the practices and rhythms of those we came to journey alongside. Still relatively new in my marriage, raising a child (I don’t think our second had been born yet), and working in a local church, I chose the option best suited to our economic constraints – a monastery (Mt. St. Scholastica) an hour or so from our home.

We ate and prayed and sang as we observed the “liturgy of the hours” alongside our gracious hosts. We also played a bit which I have found to be one of the many lasting teachings I learned from the Benedictine Sisters; spirituality is not meant to be compartmentalized, but is instead meant to infuse every aspect of one’s life. Inviting us to experience the presence of God through creativity during one of our less structured times, we found ourselves led through a brief ceramics class. Lacking time and probably talent, we were instructed in the fine art of making pinch pots. You can see one of my creations above.

Here’s the thing. Though I enjoyed making the pot, experimenting with different glazes and colors, I did not expect that crude vessel would travel with me through seminary and into ministry where I have used it most every year to hold the ashes I impose during our yearly Ash Wednesday observance. I did not expect it to hold so much but it has been, and is, full. Full of ashes (after worship I return the leftover ashes to a sealed container, but I do not wipe it clean, instead allowing the ashes to mix and mingle from year to year) and memories and hopes and prayers.

I have taken a new appointment since last I held the misshapen pot in my hand and shared the words “from dust you came and to dust you shall return.” As I stood awaiting the folks who would make it out in the dark and the cold to start their Lenten journey bearing this ancient sign of our mortality, I wondered who might come. As I did so, I also remembered the people who performed this sign-act before them. I thought again of my own ash-smudged forehead and that of my family. I recalled the music and the prayers and the tears and the weight of these moments. I took it all in and held that silly little bowl full of death and the promise of new life and I prayed that we might again observe a holy Lent.

Life is better together,
Shawn