Ash Wednesday

Lent arrives with a sigh and the dust of snow. Is it time again, this eternal return? So soon? The smoothing out of wrinkled parchment, the reordering of our lives. Or is it the notice that order is not what it once was? What have I given up that I keep returning to Lent? What

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Here ends the year. Here begins the year. Today, our years are pressed into our forehead. Each life marked as an oily smudge. It is Ash Wednesday and for those of us who take the time, we collectively catch our breaths and remember

http://youtu.be/tZhKV32Vf7U Joy Division, Unknown Pleasures, "Wilderness" Lent is our migration into exile, into our Wilderness. For the next forty days, we make it our home. We are nomads, dislocated from our familiar lands, with only our tattered pasts as markers, seeking out uncertain futures toward Easter. Forced on, our power of travel seems transcendent. We cross

This sermon was offered at St. Lydia's in Brooklyn, New York on the first Sunday of Lent, February 17, 2013. Worry. Luke 12.13-34 I was an anxious child. I worried about being left alone. I worried about doing the right thing, whatever that was. I worried that other kids would pick on me. I worried. And as I

Last night, our small band of Lydians gathered in Brooklyn's Atlantic-Barclay's subway terminal, same busy corridor as last year, with a fiddle, shruti, and drum, we offered ashes to all who want them. Again, strangers came out of the river of traveling people to ask for ashes. And they thanked us for offering a simple ritual