February 18, 2026 Ash Wednesday: Preparation Together with Penitence

In much of Western Christianity, today is Ash Wednesday, the day a thumb traces a cross in ash and speaks the ancient words: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

There are both public and private understandings that can be brought to Ash Wednesday services. It may be seen as the preparation for beginning an annual Lenten journey or a time of penitence, recognizing mortal and spiritual limitations. Last year, penitence was prominent in my mind.  This year's service, for me, was about preparation for what would be unique for 2026's Lenten season.    

In Eastern Christianity, this journey began two days ago on Clean Monday, the first day of Great Lent, a day of fasting, forgiveness, and even kite flying beneath a widening spring sky.

At first glance, ashes and kites do not seem to belong together. Dust and delight. Repentance and springtime. But perhaps they speak the same truth in different dialects. Genesis tells us: “Then the Lord God formed the human from the dust of the ground, and breathed into their nostrils the breath of life.”  Genesis 2:7

Ash Wednesday reminds us that we are dust. Clean Monday reminds us to be clean of heart. But Genesis reminds us of something even more radical: this dust breathes. Not ordinary dust, but God-breathed dust. Animated by spirit, infused with divine breath. We are held together by grace.

Ash does not humiliate us.,it recalibrates us. We are brought back into a right relationship with God, with the earth, and importantly with one another. No hierarchy survives at the dust level. No race, no wealth bracket, no citizenship category endures there. The billionaire and the prisoner share the same origin story. The policy-maker and the deported body come from the same burning stars. Clean Monday emphasizes mutual forgiveness before fasting

On Clean Monday, Orthodox Christians begin Lent not with ashes but with Forgiveness Vespers. Before the fast deepens, people bow to one another and say, “Forgive me.” And the other responds, “God forgives.” So Lent begins not with self-denial, but with reconciliation. The Old Testament reading appointed for that day comes from Isaiah: “Wash yourselves and be clean; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed…” Isaiah 1:16–18

Pastor Emillie encouraged us to make lists of what we would need for the journey. Cleanliness here is not just about scrubbing hands. It is about reordering the heart. Justice is part of purification. Compassion is part of fasting. And then comes the Gospel warning from Matthew: “When you fast, do not look dismal… anoint your head and wash your face.”

The Orthodox even call this first week “Clean Week,” and in Greece, Clean Monday is marked with fresh bread, lagana, and the flying of kites. The springtime of the Fast has dawned, they sing. The flower of repentance has begun to open.

Repentance, then, is not gray and joyless. It is green. It is windborne. It rises. Like me many hear the Ash Wednesday words,“Remember you are dust” as diminishment. But as I listened to Diana Butler Bass's recording of her "Cottage sermon" today, I was struck that the Church has always meant something deeper about who we are. We are dust that matters.

Ash refuses both arrogance and despair. It will not let us pretend we are gods. But it also will not let us believe we are nothing. It tells the truth: we are temporary and sacred at the same time. And that truth levels us. No one gets to pretend they are more than human. No one gets to declare another less.

To deny someone’s dignity is not merely political harm; it is a theological error. It is a lie about what a human being is. Before you were a citizen, before you were categorized or labeled or sorted,  you were dust in God’s imagination.

Belonging is older than law. Dignity is deeper than policy. Identity precedes permission. For me, Lent 2026 begins here this morning.

When Eastern Christians bow in mutual forgiveness, they enact this truth. When Western Christians receive ashes, they embody it. Different gestures. Same confession.

We all come from the same sacred ground. The kite lifted into the sky on Clean Monday becomes a kind of parable, earthbound hands releasing something into heaven’s wind.

Perhaps that is what Lent is. A season of remembering that the dust we are is not abandoned, but also animated. Isaiah’s invitation still stands:

“Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow.”

Lent is not about proving our seriousness. It is about receiving mercy.

So today, whether we begin with ashes or with forgiveness bows, whether we fast in silence or break lagana under a blue Greek sky, we remember that we are dust.

We also remember whose breath fills it.

Rememberance on Ash Wednesday John 10: 1-18 Rend Your Heart and Not Your Clothing

Joel 2:13 - Rend your heart and not your clothing. 

For Ash Wednesday, 2021, Sister Joan Chittister asked two questions that Pastor Janell then brought to the congregation, as Creator pondered this verse from Joel. This brought to my mind answers to these questions:

1) What doors of your heart do you need to open this Lent? and 

2) What "worlds" in life have I "allowed to go sterile" in my life?

I have felt both unsettled and grounded every Ash Wednesday since. I have been aware of impermanence, yet held by a community where faith is lived rather than explained. Ash Wednesday that year became a moment of shared humanity, honest questioning, and sacred solidarity, affirming that faith is something to be inhabited with a life, not just beliefs.

Faith inhabiting a life, what does that mean?  

“Rend your heart and not your clothing.” Joel’s words refuse the safety of surface religion. They cut past gesture and spectacle and go straight for the interior life, the places we protect, avoid, or quietly let go numb. Lent, in this light, is not about what we display, but about what we dare to open.

Sister Joan Chittister’s questions linger with me. They are unsettling in the best way. What doors of your heart need opening? What worlds have you allowed to go sterile? They assume that hearts have doors, that lives have inner ecosystems, and that neglect, not malice, is often what leads to barrenness. Nothing dramatic. Just unattended places where imagination, tenderness, courage, or hope once lived.

Ash Wednesday has a way of finding those places.

When the ritual shifts from well-practiced to embodied, from observed to inhabited, faith stops being something we manage and becomes something that happens to us. Words like you will die stop floating above our heads and land in our bodies. Grief, aging, political anxiety, and communal loss are not distractions from faith; they are the very terrain where faith is tested and told. And last year, I went from observing to inhabiting.

What emerged is not morbid fixation, but clarity. Death was no longer an abstraction; it became connective tissue. Personal sorrow links arms with social fracture. Private fear echoes public unrest. And suddenly Christian witness is less about answers and more about presence, about standing honestly in the truth that we are dust, together. Last year's Ash Wednesday called for the presence we can embody this year.

To rend the heart is to let that truth be felt. That kind of honesty does not come easily. It requires spaces, like Ash Wednesday, that make room for humility without humiliation, sorrow without despair, questioning without exile. Music that aches. Scripture that doesn’t resolve too quickly. Ashes imposed not as spectacle, but as sign of a shared vulnerability. Rather than Pastor Emillie imposing ashes on those attending, we imposed ashes on each other last year. In such moments, faith is not explained. It is practiced. Lived. Breathed.

This is what it means for faith to inhabit a life that begins, not with a demand, but with a voice. Listen.

So we have today's Scripture reading from John. Before confession, before ashes, before bread and cup, there is a call. The Good Shepherd speaks our name into the noise of our lives. He knows where we have wandered. He knows which doors are rusted shut. He knows which inner worlds have gone quiet from neglect or grief or fear. And still, he calls.

Ashes tell the truth we resist: life is fragile; love is costly; death is real. But they also tell another truth just as boldly, we belong. The mark on our skin is not only about mortality; it is about claim. You are mine. Not owned by fear. Not defined by failure. Not surrendered to sterility. Claimed by love that lays itself down.

The cross traced in ash holds both realities at once. We are dust. And we are loved beyond death. Lent does not ask us to choose between them. It asks us to live inside the tension, trusting that what feels like loss may also be an opening..

So Lent is not about proving devotion or perfecting discipline. It is about opening what has closed. Tending what has gone sterile. Learning the sound of the Shepherd’s voice amid the many others competing for our attention. Trusting that even in shadowed valleys, we are not abandoned.

We leave Ash Wednesday smudged and honest, ash on our skin, grace in our bodies. We go not as polished saints, but as beloved sheep who know where to return when we lose our way.

March 5, 2025 - Ash Wednesday - Death Connects All Made From Dust or Clay

Ash Wednesday's service was extraordinary. My faith was not just believed during worship but felt. Past Ash Wednesdays have sometimes been primarily rituals to participate in for me. 

Tonight's service was an encounter and I wasn't in person for the service but participated by Zoom. Creator's shared sanctuary became a sacred space where our hearts beat in unison with the rhythm of the felt divine presence.

As usual, this worship was recorded. For many the readings, Pastor Emillie's reflection, and the imposition of ashes may have been routine. What I felt, however, was orchestrated by the day's events which evoked experiences that have occurred over the past few months.

My needing to engage with mortality differently was made more real last year in October when my wife's younger sister died from cancer. Attending her funeral cemetery arrangements were arranged, including where my wife and I will be buried. 

One of my congregational compatriots, Shirley, well beloved by the congregation and choir, passed at the same time. Another former Creator member, Scott, who was unpretentious and radiant friend; passed close to the same time. Aspects of life's impermanence and the finality of death struck our congregational heart.

And a few weeks back I read a poetry book by sister's husband, Bill Davies, called Oldmanhood.  The title alone made me contemplate slipping, in life and health, from manhood into oldmanhood. I recognize I now reside in a neighborhood where life, health, annuity and continued retirement decisions all need to be made more urgently. Also I received a package on Wednesday morning from a friend who wrote about a road trip where he was taking his late wife's urn along back with him. Ash Wednesday's overwhelming and humbling truths made real.

This is also a season for the ongoing disagreements over truth and the accusation the recent administration has made against Lutherans (among others). This made me think of Gimme Some Truth that John Lennon sang in 1970 "I've had enough of reading things by neurotic, psychotic pig headed politicians. All I want is the truth, just gimme some truth" Now I wonder if I can handle all the inconvenient truths of this new era seen from new perspectives.

For over a month our Creator Wednesday Bible Night Conversations has anticipated the Sunday Narrative lectionary readings. The Gospel reading was the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Reading this on Ash Wednesday changed the framing context of the parable. Thinking that Jesus has turned his face to Jerusalem and chooses to start with "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and took off, leaving him half dead."

This changed who this parable was about for me. The man who fell into the hands of robbers is the Christ figure. As we discussed this, one participant expressed her desire for a satisfying ending to the Samaritan parable. Where the ultimate fate of the man who was helped is given. Certainly one ending to Christ's story is not satisfying either. 

Anyway, because of the timings of both the Bible Night Conversation and the service, I chose to attend via Zoom. Pastor Emillie's reflection began with the reminder that we all will die. Death connects us all in this way, yet it is so hard in this particular season to recognize that connection. 

"Who are our neighbors?" Pastor Emille asked. Sometimes our neighbors are immigrants who don't look like us that are being pulled out of our country. Sometimes our neighbors are the ones taking those immigrants and labeling them criminals. Sometimes they are those sitting next to us in church and sometimes they are the ones who are on the street, hungry and homeless. Through all of it death is the great connector. When denying that basic fact and grabbing power to make ourselves greater, we have scripture to remind us that finally we are dust and to dust we shall return

The imposition of ashes in the service nodded to both past tradition and innovation reaching for more meaning. Those gathered received the familiar ash cross on their foreheads but the cross was made by someone else in the congregation rather than the pastor alone. The moment was immersive, participatory, and deeply personal for me, even over zoom. Matt's music didn’t just fill the room—it moved through me, The song, written by his friend, captured the moment perfectly.

Creator's congregation often embrace the full spectrum of human experience—joy and sorrow, doubt and conviction, reverence and celebration. It is a community where all are welcome, where questions are honored, and where the sacred is encountered in both the ecstatic and the everyday.

Here, faith is not just something to be understood—it is something that to be lived.

March 8, 2023 - Creator's Lent Wednesday Refugia Reflection

Of all the seasons in the church year the lessons of Lent in the past few years at Creator have given many of us a new perspective on what the Bible teaches.

Prior to 2020, Lent was often a time for many to talk about what to give up as a discipline. I would hear things like, "I'm giving up sweets" or "I'm giving up social media." Lent is traditionally understood to be our time to turn away from sin and turn back to God. While what we give up for Lent may be a helpful discipline, this has not been my focus for several years.

The concepts around Refugia better articulated to me what that focus has become. I keenly feel a shift from self-restraint and repentance that opens up other possibilities. I feel my biggest challenge this year is to lament the continued loss of what we, in the past, have always treasured within our community, as a nation and as a world.

During Lent 2020, our community started experiencing multiple crises. Pastor Ray died. We were plunged into the years-long pandemic quarantine. Our habits and traditions of dealing with grief and loss were stripped away from us, both personally and collectively. The tragedy of George Floyd’s death a couple of months later brought a new immediacy to the simmering, longstanding social injustices we face in our nation. And, later in 2020, devastating local wildfires made the threat of a climate change crisis a close by and real problem that apparently was not being urgently addressed or acknowledged by many.    

You just heard a reading from a chapter in the Refugia Faith book, that the author associates with Lent. That chapter is titled “From Avoiding to Lamenting.” During Lent we often talk about repenting. When we repent, we feel remorse for our actions and actively seek to change them. We acknowledge the ongoing wrongs that continue to be done. We take responsibility and attempt to make efforts to make amends or improve ourselves. This is what repentance means and yet the change we may long for is imperceptible to us. Rather than repenting are we choosing to avoid our problems. Perhaps we should pause and try better ways to express our sorrows or regrets over the threats that persist in our lives.

Repenting can effectively address individual sins we fall into as individuals. Now these three years have gone by and repenting feels like an inadequate as either a response or solution to the many calamities we face. Metanoia is the Greek word commonly translated as “repent”. A better English translation is “to change your mind.” How this relates to death, pandemic and climate change is not obvious.   

Instead, Refugia Faith emphasizes the importance of lament. Expressing sorrow or grief over a situation or circumstance first may be unaccustomed for us. Acknowledging that something negative is continuing to affect us and is beyond our control may help us.

Lament does not need to involve immediate action to change the situation. We can express our pain or loss to God without hiding or being fearful of what we feel inside emotionally. We can communicate our humanity to God and to each other. We can reaffirm our trust in God by placing our complaint humbly before our Creator rather than assuming we have arrived at some solution by ourselves.

Lamenting can give us reasons to repent, particularly when it involves corporate or social brokenness. Lamenting is difficult. It can require us to confront past behavior that we might have considered was beneficial, but now exposes our weaknesses and vulnerabilities as a community. We are likely to encounter disagreements amongst ourselves. We may need to consider the different perspectives that we have as individuals.

Our desire to feel we are right and in control can lead us to miss the mark as Christians. Lament doesn’t allow putting pretty bows of quick and tidy resolutions to our problems. Perhaps that might consider a blessing God gives us.

Instead lament gives us humility and offers insights into our humanity, our shortcomings, and can provide, over time, an understanding that moves us to repentance and healing.

We are now on our familiar Lenten journey and yet we simultaneously know this journey is new and unknown. We have never been on this year’s path before, despite the familiarity of our habits and traditions. I have confidence that many of us will continue to look for what is new about this year’s path and learn how to be the body of Christ more fully.

We started Lent with our postponed Ash Wednesday service last week. The ash on our foreheads reminded us that we are dust. This journey will end on Good Friday. We will strip the altar. The book will be closed. We will leave the table bare of each reminder that we found meaningful to our church experiences of the past.

After Good Friday the next celebration this year will be our sunrise Easter Service. Our opportunity to celebrate resurrection will be outside our sanctuary. We will be given new chances, new spaces, and new insights into what is important to us as a community. We may discover new meanings in everything we want to bring back into the sanctuary and keep. And there may be new reminders for us to add.

We likely do not recognize this every day, but God continues to gracefully give us ways to express our faith and trust in divine mercy and knowledge through love.

he church year the lessons of Lent in the past few years at Creator have given many of us a new perspective on what the Bible teaches.

Prior to 2020, Lent was often a time for many to talk about what to give up as a discipline. I would hear things like, "I'm giving up sweets" or "I'm giving up social media." Lent is traditionally understood to be our time to turn away from sin and turn back to God. While what we give up for Lent may be a helpful discipline, this has not been my focus for several years.

The concepts around Refugia better articulated to me what that focus has become. I keenly feel a shift from self-restraint and repentance that opens up other possibilities. I feel my biggest challenge this year is to lament the continued loss of what we, in the past, have always treasured within our community, as a nation and as a world.

During Lent 2020, our community started experiencing multiple crises. Pastor Ray died. We were plunged into the years-long pandemic quarantine. Our habits and traditions of dealing with grief and loss were stripped away from us, both personally and collectively. The tragedy of George Floyd’s death a couple of months later brought a new immediacy to the simmering, longstanding social injustices we face in our nation. And, later in 2020, devastating local wildfires made the threat of a climate change crisis a close by and real problem that apparently was not being urgently addressed or acknowledged by many.    

You just heard a reading from a chapter in the Refugia Faith book, that the author associates with Lent. That chapter is titled “From Avoiding to Lamenting.” During Lent we often talk about repenting. When we repent, we feel remorse for our actions and actively seek to change them. We acknowledge the ongoing wrongs that continue to be done. We take responsibility and attempt to make efforts to make amends or improve ourselves. This is what repentance means and yet the change we may long for is imperceptible to us. Rather than repenting are we choosing to avoid our problems. Perhaps we should pause and try better ways to express our sorrows or regrets over the threats that persist in our lives.

Repenting can effectively address individual sins we fall into as individuals. Now these three years have gone by and repenting feels like an inadequate as either a response or solution to the many calamities we face. Metanoia is the Greek word commonly translated as “repent”. A better English translation is “to change your mind.” How this relates to death, pandemic and climate change is not obvious.   

Instead, Refugia Faith emphasizes the importance of lament. Expressing sorrow or grief over a situation or circumstance first may be unaccustomed for us. Acknowledging that something negative is continuing to affect us and is beyond our control may help us.

Lament does not need to involve immediate action to change the situation. We can express our pain or loss to God without hiding or being fearful of what we feel inside emotionally. We can communicate our humanity to God and to each other. We can reaffirm our trust in God by placing our complaint humbly before our Creator rather than assuming we have arrived at some solution by ourselves.

Lamenting can give us reasons to repent, particularly when it involves corporate or social brokenness. Lamenting is difficult. It can require us to confront past behavior that we might have considered was beneficial, but now exposes our weaknesses and vulnerabilities as a community. We are likely to encounter disagreements amongst ourselves. We may need to consider the different perspectives that we have as individuals.

Our desire to feel we are right and in control can lead us to miss the mark as Christians. Lament doesn’t allow putting pretty bows of quick and tidy resolutions to our problems. Perhaps that might consider a blessing God gives us.

Instead lament gives us humility and offers insights into our humanity, our shortcomings, and can provide, over time, an understanding that moves us to repentance and healing.

We are now on our familiar Lenten journey and yet we simultaneously know this journey is new and unknown. We have never been on this year’s path before, despite the familiarity of our habits and traditions. I have confidence that many of us will continue to look for what is new about this year’s path and learn how to be the body of Christ more fully.

We started Lent with our postponed Ash Wednesday service last week. The ash on our foreheads reminded us that we are dust. This journey will end on Good Friday. We will strip the altar. The book will be closed. We will leave the table bare of each reminder that we found meaningful to our church experiences of the past.

After Good Friday the next celebration this year will be our sunrise Easter Service. Our opportunity to celebrate resurrection will be outside our sanctuary. We will be given new chances, new spaces, and new insights into what is important to us as a community. We may discover new meanings in everything we want to bring back into the sanctuary and keep. And there may be new reminders for us to add.

We likely do not recognize this every day, but God continues to gracefully give us ways to express our faith and trust in divine mercy and knowledge through love.