Gettin' Dirty

The list of things not learned in seminary can get quite long for most people. I never would have guessed that the thing I mentioned was burning the palm leaves for Ash Wednesday.

Let's recap: yes, I really do save the palm fronds from Palm Sunday in the spring, letting them dry all winter for use the following Ash Wednesday. It's a real and powerful reminder of "You are dust, and to dust you shall return."

The first time I had to burn the leaves, I never considered asking for directions. After all, I love playing with fire--literally, not figuratively--and well, since it's been going on for a few hundred years, it can't be that hard. Yeah, right.

Those dried up, nearly year old leaves burn quickly and they burn high, with nothing in between. Seriously, they go from smoldering to waist high flames (even though I'm burning them on the ground) in about three seconds. They also smoke a lot. And oh yeah, when you burn them, they smell suspiciously like pot.

Last year, I burned them in my garage, which created a temporary disaster for all the reasons mentioned above. This year, I was smart enough to go outside; other than the fact I was wearing ill-suited for burning things work clothes, it went pretty well. Then I went inside to the magic that is Google and found out the "correct" way to do it. Braziers are for sissies, in my opinion--and oh yeah, my church doesn't have any of those.

All of this makes for the reason that more than one colleague's recommendation was, "Oh, buy the ashes." One colleague even gave me the address of a store that was sure to have them on hand.

From the first time I heard it, I didn't like the suggestion. Deep down, I also was pretty sure it wasn't just the fact that I wouldn't get to play with fire.

Through the evening and the first days of Lent, I considered more and more why I didn't want to purchase ready-made ashes. I thought about it as I watched people during the Ash Wednesday service, covered with ash and clay and water and oil to varying degrees. I thought about it gathering up all the resulting dirty tablecloths to wash. I thought about it as I was preparing for the following Lenten services, finding videos and choosing passages to read.

Finally, I realized why I didn't like the suggestion of buying ashes: it was neat. As in clean. No muss, no fuss, ready to go.

Which is the very last thing Lent is and certainly the very last thing the church is.

Life is messy and dirty and complicated. It just is. We might not always like that it's so messy and dirty and complicated. In fact, we usually don't. We want things neat and tidy. We want people to behave appropriately and clean up after themselves, from the toddler up to the lady who the kids think knew Moses. We don't talk about things that are messy, since that might not be appropriate for church. We like to sweep the messiness under the rug and forget about it.

Yet, Lent is about living in the messiness, knowing that we'll live in the messiness again next year. The Gospel itself is pretty messy, talking about a God who would dare to live in the messiness of human life, die a messy death, rather than staying aloof in heaven which would make us all pretty comfortable.

So I think I'll keep burning the leaves to ashes, with all the messiness that it brings. It's a pretty good reminder to not keep things too neat and tidy, too comfortable. In the messiness, I think we might just find God.