Ash Wednesday

Today, we must burn the palm fronds. The fronds we waved last Palm Sunday, that nasty, brutish day. Our Lent begins in winter. It is cold. Bitterly cold here in the American Northeast. Today, we prepare the ashes for tomorrow. We prepare ourselves for our season. We will feel a fleeting warmth as we watch the

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

Today we remember that we are dust - just like last year and the year before and for as far back as we can remember caring about this day, Ash Wednesday. But we must be told we are dust. We tell each other we are dust. It's not enough to tell ourselves that we are