random thoughts on ash wednesday 2026...

I did not grow up observing Ash Wednesday. As a middle-class, white Protestant child of New England in the 50s and 60s, it was just my Roman Catholic friends who wore the ashen sign of the Cross on this strange day. If memory serves, my uber-Congregational church in both Connecticut and Massachusetts barely mentioned Lent, let alone practiced a sacramental spirituality grounded in liturgy and the seasonal cycles of life. It was well after seminary and ordination that my tradition published the 1986 United Church of Christ Book of Worship, which included an order of worship for... ASH WEDNESDAY! 

By then, however, I'd been smitten by both Gertrud Mueller-Nelson's liturgical masterpiece, To Dance with God, and the folk-music innovations being crafted by the Community of Celebration in Aliquippa, PA, who linked the poetry of the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer with a tender-hearted, charismatic creativity. I made a host of pilgrimages to that sacred co-ed monastery just outside of Pittsburgh and beat cheeks to the high church, smells-and-bells observances of Lent celebrated at the Anglican Cathedral in Cleveland, OH, too. By the late 1980s, I'd drawn on the insights Kathleen Norris shared in Dakota and The Cloister Walk, along with my encounters with Eastern Orthodox chant and iconography, and had become a born-again sacramentalist serving low-church congregations. Beauty, ritual, well-written liturgy, poetry, silence, and a deep reverence for new/old ways of praying with all our senses became foundational for me. I chaffed at the studied sloppiness of most Protestant worship. I came to despise the wordy pseudo-intellectualism of so many so-called social justice sermons. And found myself fleeing from the clutter and trinkets that too often adorned so many chancels in their sad attempt at religious art.

Forty years later, I still honor the texts that friends and colleagues created for The UCC Book of Worship. And I am still trusting it to guide our small circle of friends as we gather for Ash Wednesday this year. The Community of Celebration used to sing, "We have another world in view," and now, more than ever, as a pastor and a believer, I find myself clinging to that upside-down, counter-cultural alternative vision of life that Jesus proclaims. Our current culture of anxiety, chaos, cruelty, and greed idolizes our obsessions, sanctifies our addictions, denigrates every pursuit except short-term material conquests, and shames and/or defames those who pursue solidarity and compassion. Thank God for Ash Wednesday! It reminds me that we all lack something. It shows me how to relinquish what is broken by trusting a love that not only leads me through the wilderness but also incrementally and quietly fills me with a gratitude that evokes space for everyone who wants to join the party.  

A Franciscan teacher recently wrote that Ash Wednesday invites us to practice giving up, giving in, and giving to. Giving up is about fasting - letting go in a conscious act of relinquishment - a practice that illuminates what is truly essential while helping us let go of our ego, our habits, and our oh so inflated and self-important opinions. Fasting is a physical and spiritual discipline that helps me listen more, speak less, and hold on to only that which is a foundation. It is an embodied prayer that nourishes both vulnerability and patience. And patience, I am learning, is essential for my faith and any act of ministry. Giving to, as the Franciscans tell us, is sharing resources and love, while giving in is what we might all prayer. I know that as I strive to be grounded in these unsettling times, the tender initiation to give up, to, and in redirects my anxieties towards trust and shows me why patience is salvific.

sometimes it's a bitch to practice what I preach...

"There are times when I hate having to practice what I preach!" That's what I said to my loved one over breakfast as I shared the news that David Brooks is leaving the New York Times. I have come to celebrate the sacred wisdom embodied in seasons, trusting that nature has always been the first Word of the Lord. I strive as well to honor the long obedience embedded in Ecclesiastes 3: to everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven. And as a clergy person well-acquainted and practiced in presiding at funerals and memorial services, I understand that nothing - and no one - lasts forever. Still, I felt sad to hear about David's transition. As a septuagenarian, I've had to let go of long-standing comforts, resources, habits, foods, ways of traveling, children becoming adults with children of their own, and all the aches and pains that come with being an old, bourgeois white guy with too much education. Such is one of the paradoxes of the journey, yes? It is not only a lengthy series of good-byes and not-so-voluntary relinquishments but, as the late Pete Seeger used to say about learning a new song, "Just about the time you've mastered it, it's over!"

It's not like Brooks will disappear, mind you: he'll still join Jonathan Capehart on the Friday evening PBS Newshour. He'll also serve as a staff writer at The Atlantic and share insights in a part-time teaching gig at Yale. It's simply another sign that life goes on beyond my control. One more nudge to practice what I preach and accept my powerlessness and mortality. Deep in my heart, I yearn to be more like Francis of Assisi than John Calvin, more like Carrie Newcomer than Bob Dylan, more like Mary Oliver than Mr. Magoo. I cherish the charisms of her poem: The World I Live In. 

I have refused to live

     locked in the orderly house 

        of reasons and proofs. 

The world I live in and believe in 

is wider than that. And anyway, 

    what’s wrong with Maybe? 

You wouldn’t believe what once or 

twice I have seen. I’ll just 

    tell you this: 

only if there are angels in your head 

    will you ever, possibly, see one.

Most mornings start off that way - content with the maybes and in love with the angels in my head - until some jackass cuts me off in the parking lot of the grocery store and ALL my serenity goes out the window. Or no matter HOW loud I turn up my new hearing aids, it's still impossible for me to understand what some call-center techie is trying to tell me about my so-called smartphone. Or before the damned gas pump will allow me to fill my tank, I have to answer 3 or 4 dumb ass and irrelevant computerized questions when the windchill feels like -35 below zero. First world problems, to be sure. And often I can choose not to react and maybe even laugh at myself afterwards. But these encounters with my inner tyrant are clear reminders that I am not as serene within myself as I would like. There are times that I truly hate the wisdom of the Serenity Prayer! How did Beck put it?

Also beyond my control, I sometimes meet one of the salty saints of the church I currently serve - men and women who have been to hell and back more than a dozen times - and THEY renew my quest with their love of life. They have such hard-won wisdom and compassion to share. They go out of their way to make me feel welcomed and at home until I hear myself singing: Amazing grace! My mentor in ministry (and one of my first older buddies) Ray Swartzback, used to tell me: if you're paying attention, this journey is a total roller coaster. So, don't fight it, man. Make the best of it. To which I now whisper under my breath: You're right, Swartzy, you're right. Still, sometimes it's a bitch to have to practice what you preach...