"I WANT THAT COLOR ON ME"

Not something you hear often when you have grey smudges across your forehead but it was quite amusing at the time. Our 3 year old looked at every else with ashes on their foreheads and felt left out, so she wanted some too. With a frown on her face she scolded, "Hey, I want that color on me, too."

It is a sign of how much I have changed in my outlook as a Christian that Ash Wednesday and Lent mean so much to me. Subtly over the last seven years as an Anglican Christian, the rhythms of the church year have become second nature to me. There is a strange kind of joyous melancholy that I felt tonight as Peter imposed the ashes in the sign of a cross on my forehead. "From dust you came, to dust you will return."

The ashes are made by burning the palm fronds that we use in the Palm Sunday service the year before. This practice to me is a physical reminder of human fickleness and inconstancy toward God. One season rejoicing in the Saviors triumphant victory over the powers of evil one day, in another seeing so clearly how that joy gives way to the grayness of death and evil.

In general, penitence gets a bad rap in our society today. We like Fat Tuesday a lot better than Ash Wednesday. It's just not healthy to beat one's self up too much people think. Well, let's just say I disagree. It is only in finally facing up to the ugliness that comes so easily out of my soul that I have found any measure of emotional health and wholeness. I mess up, I break promises, I treat people poorly and, most alarming, I don't even begin to give God his due. I can try to cover it up before others, but I can't hide it from myself or from God.

Freedom comes from being able to see things as they really are, not living in some kind of delusion. Ash Wednesday is all about being honest with yourself and with God. If the truth were told, I should wear the cross of ashes everyday, not just once a year.

So, I want that color on me, too. Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me a sinner, it says. This is just the truth I need to remind myself of all the time, but it is especially pressed into my heart through the practices and disciplines practiced during Lent.