I received an email response to my previous post that reminded me of a very earthy Ash Wednesday experience.
Five years ago I was serving First Presbyterian Church of Cadillac and on Ash Wednesday Paul and I led the Ash Wednesday Service together. After the others had come forward we offered the imposition of ashes to each other. When he dipped his finger in the bowl he ended up with a large clump of ashes. Try as he may to make just a cross on my forehead the whole clump fell apart and I ended up with ashes on my glasses, nose and forehead, perhaps looking more like a raccoon than an Ash Wednesday worshipper. And try as we may, we couldn’t quite stifle our chuckles. This was my invitation to a very incarnational Lent.
I had been experiencing leg pain while sitting but as Lent started the pain got worse and within 10 days I was off work. I half jokingly said that I gave up church for Lent ~ a peculiar predicament for a pastor. As Paul reminded me that was 5 years ago. This 5 year journey has taken me down paths I couldn’t have imagined: struggling to receive disability benefits as pain is difficult to document; moving to a new community and creating a new and extended network of support; ending my marriage and claiming my new life; leaning into the lessons of living with chronic pain and its limitations ~ all the while discovering the endless ways that God provides: the love and care of family, friends, and the wider community of saints, deepening faith, layers of trust and healing, opportunities to peel away who I am not and embrace who I am. Lent was, and continues to be, a physical experience linked closely to pain.
Three years ago, after ranting and raving in my journal about pain, the words below found their way to my page. I shared these words before but since pain has many faces: physical, emotional, spiritual, relational, environmental, communal, global ~ I still ask these questions:
Can I honor this pain?
Can I dare call it sacred
and believe that You are
right in the midst of it?
Are You inviting me to call it holy
and receive it with compassion?
To know this pain, like all other pain,
is on the cross
because of Your unending love for all?
Does redemption, healing
come by entering the pain
rather than asking
that it be removed from me?
Not many images come to mind for this post but I have a figurine of open hands… as I try to live with open hands ~ open to receive, open to let go, open to be led ~ I offer them here, for all who wrestle with pain, who open their hands and hearts in the midst of struggle and during Lent…
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