ash wednesday

it's cold and dreary today. it's ash wednesday, so it's a fitting day for reflection.

we've almost been in the Catholic Church for a year. If I am honest, its been kind of lonely this year. It is strange to feel home and yet an outcast- which is a funny thing to feel. I have been thinking a lot about the implications of straying from your own tradition- I feel the ache that some must feel when they leave their home country, to never go back. Home and tradition are a part of our very fabric. You cannot undo the threads, or it all unravels.

This Sunday in Mass, we sang a hymn that I grew up in singing in the  Methodist Church. It made me smile, but that ache was there, too. Will these threads ever match the old ones, or will my story be this crazy mis matched blanket?

Becoming Catholic has made me more mindful of other's traditions. I used to box people in, assign them to categories, and if I am honest, judge their spirituality as good, better, best, etc...

But the older I get, the less I really know, and even more- the less I am drawn to those who think they have gotten it right.

On this Ash Wednesday, I hold hands with all who have looked in the mirror and say, "I was made from dust, and to dust I shall return".

It is God who judges our hearts. It is Jesus who died to make it right. Billions of people every week show up Church, in all of it various traditions to ultimately acknowledge that Christ walked that lonely road to the Cross, and all of our waking moments and hope for wholeness again lean on that one fact.

Maybe you kneel and bow.  Maybe you raise your hands to the air.  Maybe you eat and drink Jesus every week, and maybe you think all that is hocus pocus.

I hold hands with you.

And perhaps there is irony in being Catholic and doing so, and maybe I am not a very good Catholic.

But I am a prideful woman, whose heart is wretched. But when I bend my achey knee, and cross my body, and say amen when the bread goes in my mouth- There is something in this stubborn soul that relents, gives up, and acknowledges a deep need of love and forgiveness.