44 days ago, before this dark and cloudy Good Friday morning, Maile and I entered the collision of concrete and hotels and business complexes that straddle rivers and is otherwise known as downtown Charleston, West Virginia. It was Ash Wednesday, and we were on our way to Kentucky to spend a long weekend with some friends of ours who are writers.
That night we decided to seek out an Ash Wednesday service at a local Episcopal church. I wrote the following in my journal the next day describing that unique Ash Wednesday experience:
The sun was sinking down beneath the buildings and highways as Maile and I drove from the well-lit restaurant district of Charleston, West Virginia, and east a few blocks to the less-well-lit part of town. We had just enjoyed homemade ice cream on a quaint street, outside on an unseasonably warm February evening. People walking their dogs. Bar patrons spilling out onto the sidewalks, laughing, still in their work suits.
But as we drove into the less-well-lit part of town, it became different. The city transformed to shadows and emptiness. Vacant lots. Abandoned shopping carts. Trash gathering against the curb.
We were searching for Ashes.
Arriving at Saint John’s Episcopal Church, we circled the block uncertain of where to park. Cutting through an alley, we passed a small homeless settlement of three or four tents, their occupants watching closely as we passed, their shelters right up against the back of the church. We parked on the street and went inside.
Ten minutes early, we sat and waited as the organ music explored the vast vaulted ceilings, tested the darkened stained glass, slipped in among the pews with their prayer benches and decades-old scratches. The crowd swelled from five to thirty-seven. Including the choir.
To our left was a man who rocked back and forth most of the service, the old bench creaking. He cleared his throat every few seconds, only stopping to recite the liturgy along with the priest, which he knew remarkably well. To our right a tall, gangly man whose knees pressed the bench in front of him, eyes vacant, stood when everyone else kneeled and kneeled when we stood.
It was quite a gathering of misfits—the old and weary, the marginalized, the weak, the different, the homeless. Those not welcomed in other churches. I thought that if Jesus came down to Earth this Ash Wednesday, this is the church he would have chosen to visit.
Then, the imposition of ashes. Kneeling at the front, I cringed under the grit of the ash on the priest’s thumb, pressing into my forehead. “From dust you have come. To dust you shall return.”
I thought of my friend Leslie, whose cancer seems to have returned.
“From dust you have come . . .”
I thought of the little girl in my own city who was raped and killed by her mother’s boyfriend.
“From dust . . .”
I thought of the happy people in the restaurants in the well-lit part of town and the homeless people in their tiny tent community behind the church and the people driving cars on those endless highways. The trafficked and the addicted and the despairing.
“From dust . . .”
That was 42 days ago, and somehow the world has become even darker during this period of Lent. My cousin Jup died unexpectedly. My dear friend Leslie, who I wrote about in that journal entry, has now been taken to hospice. Much sadness in such a short time.
We wander the world in a daze, once again remembering, oh, yes, we are all mortal. All of this has come from dust, and to dust it will all return.
The Gospel of Matthew describes the first Good Friday. The moments leading up to Jesus’ death unfolded like this:
From noon until three in the afternoon darkness came over all the land. About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”).
It can feel like that, can’t it, during the Good Fridays of life? When all grows dark and it seems like the end of all things is upon us?
Even Jesus cried out these words in the darkness.
God, why have you forsaken us?
Whenever I think of death, whenever it feels like the inevitable end is coming and God has forsaken us all, I think of one of my favorite scenes from the movie version of Lord of the Rings. Gandalf and Pippin are sitting inside the besieged city, and the enemy, pounding at the gates, is about to overwhelm them, bringing death and destruction and the end of everything beautiful on Earth. Forever.
Pippin looks up at Gandalf with tears in his eyes, desperation on his face, and whispers, “I didn’t think it would end this way.”
Gandalf looks at him with surprise. “End? no, the journey doesn’t end here. Death is just another path. One that we all must take. The gray rain curtain of this world rolls back and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it.”
“What? Gandalf? See what?”
“White shores. And beyond, a far green country, under a swift sunrise.”
Pippin’s face softens, and you can see it in his eyes: hope.
“Oh,” he replies, “that isn’t so bad.”
During times like this, I have to hope that Easter is coming, and I don’t mean the Easter on Sunday, with the bunnies and the food and the Peeps and the colored eggs. Though that is a very good Easter, indeed, and one I always look forward to.
No, the Easter I hope for is the one where the gray curtain of this world rolls back, the Easter when all turns to silver glass, when I will see Jup and Leslie again, when the dust of ashes is picked up by an ocean breeze and swept away, and we walk long and far on that beach, the smell of salt in the air, the feel of hope and giddy excitement nearly overwhelming us as we turn inland, heading further up and further in to find what is waiting for us in that far green country.
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I was hungry for Ash Wednesday this year, and for Maundy Thursday. My heart is so grateful that there’s this space and time in the church calendar to specifically as a place to sit with grief and darkness.
I do love your calling out Pippin’s response to Gandalf. It’s so brief and realistic and fitting.
Lovely and powerful read on this Good Friday.