Good Ash Wednesday, good people,
Within the Christian Wisdom Tradition, this Holy day commemorates the shift from the season of Epiphanytide or Ordinary Time into the season of Lent. Lent's forty days are meant to be engaged in as intentional preparation, much like Yeshua's forty days of preparation in the desert before he stepped into holding his post, a readying for the paschal mystery.
On this Ash Wednesday, we often participate in the ritual of receiving ash on our foreheads accompanied by the words: "repent, and believe in the Gospel" or "remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." These phrases carry two important summons. The first calls us to move beyond the smaller mind into the larger mind, to feel sure truth of the teachings of Yeshua and their ongoing relevance in our lives. The second calls us to be grounded in the reality of our place within the Whole ray of creation. We are part of, as planetary scientist and stardust expert Dr. Ashley King says, a "constant reprocessing of everything," a "galactic chemical evolution" from which we were formed and will die back into. As we enter this season, these phrases anchor us in both the particular and cosmic scales of existence—reminding us of our call to prepare, to live fully, and to hold our post.
The preparation of Lent traditionally involves a regiment of the practices of fasting, praying, repentance (moving into the larger mind), and almsgiving. As we engage these practices for this period of time, it can be beneficial to set and take up a shared aim to place our attention and intention in. In a recent conversation with friend, Justin Coutts, he mentioned the four cardinal virtues of mind and character—Courage, Temperance, Prudence, and Justice—as the wellspring from which all other virtues flow. As we know from the teachings of Cynthia Bourgeault, what we consider virtues in this earth realm are, in the imaginal realm, actually substances, energies, and spiritual nutrients that are needed here in our midst to nourish our malnourished individual being bodies and the greater Body.
Perhaps this Lent, we take up a shared aim to collectively place our attention in cultivating and transmitting these four spiritual nutrients. We might consider how. . .
. . . fasting could create space to feed on these spiritual foods
. . . prayer could become an actual communion with these substances
. . . repentance could mean aligning with the larger mind of these virtues
. . . almsgiving could be an offering of these qualities to everything around us
As we cross the threshold into this season with a shared aim, let us receive some of the words of this Ash Wednesday blessing from Jan Richardson:
"Blessing the Dust: For Ash Wednesday"
So let us be markednot for sorrow.And let us be markednot for shame.Let us be markednot for false humilityor for thinkingwe are lessthan we arebut for claimingwhat God can dowithin the dust,within the dirt,within the stuffof which the worldis made,and the stars that blazein our bones,and the galaxies that spiralinside the smudgewe bear.
From and to Ancient Dust,
Heather
Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses
*All previous readings & reflections can be found here*
Monday, February 17th
Reading: "It is then the silence that is entering time, enduring the "sufferings, fears, and little deaths" that are part of the burden of finitude, and then returning to the Unmanifest bearing the transformed fruits of its temporary incarceration in time. . . Something enters the confines of finitude, struggles within it but is at the same time touched and changed by it, and returns to the whole in some sense fuller, making the whole itself mysteriously "wholer."
"The paradox is ultimately sustainable because these two modes of divine beingness-"infinite transcendence" and infinite fecundity-are not separated from each other but live in symbiotic unity. They are joined forever in a secret embrace, which in turn becomes the driveshaft of everything that exists while remaining itself forever beyond the realm of manifestation." — Cynthia Bourgeault, Thomas Keating: The Making of a Modern Christian Mystic
Tuesday, February 18th
Reading: "God coinheres, interpenetrates everything, the ocean- in-drop and drop-in-ocean constantly exchanging in a dance of endless fecundity. God is not the "author" of creation, removed and overarching; the whole thing is God. There is not a single place in all creation where God is not, because God is creation itself, endlessly outpouring, endlessly receiving itself back." — Cynthia Bourgeault, Thomas Keating: The Making of a Modern Christian Mystic
Thursday, February 20th
Reading: "The hidden path of love does not just lead to God; it emerges from God, its water flowing forth from that cosmogonic wellspring at the heart of the abyss. He came to know the great cosmogonic secret (Jacob Boehme called it the scientia) shrouded in that primordial uncreated light: that love requires both realms-manifest and unmanifest, "the source of all creation" and "infinite transcendence" —in order to fully realize its own fullness. This is the "hidden purpose" (Ephesians 1:9) for which the created order exists and toward which all its currents set." — Cynthia Bourgeault, Thomas Keating: The Making of a Modern Christian Mystic, p.140
Friday, February 21st
Chant: draw me deeper into silence, draw me deeper into you
Sunday, February 23rd — Saturday, March 1st
Sunday, March 2nd
Reading: “Just as [immune] cells in the body heal the diseased cells that are there, so to be a living cell in the Body of Christ is to have the same dispositions of total self-giving or self-surrender, including the willingness to suffer our slice of the human condition for the love of God and the healing of humanity.
“We are accountable to everybody else. What you do, I do. What you are doing, your virtue, I can claim. I can also burden you with my vices. Everything is in common.” — Thomas Keating, God is All in All: The Evolution of the Contemplative Christian Spiritual Journey
Chant: Come to me, all you heavy burdened ones, and I will give you rest — Henry Schoenfield
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