A Home Observance for Ash Wednesday

Salal + Cedar 2024

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Lent (from the Old English word for Spring) is the season when the church prepares for Easter; it is a time of solemn anticipation and getting our hearts ready. During this Covid pandemic many of us have already given up a great deal, so our shared practice at Salal + Cedar will be to cultivate noticing and wonder. You may have received a container of blessed ashes or collected some from places where trees, homes, fields and creatures are touched by fire and the changing climat. As you take time to prepare for this season, alone or with members of your bubble, make use of those prayers, readings, and actions below which speak to you.

Prayer

Creating God, who loves us and made us and called us good. We know that we do harm to ourselves, to one another, and to this good earth by our choices, our mistakes, and our participation in systems. Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we turn from harm, acknowledging our brokenness, and return to your love and right relation.
In the name of your child Jesus, who greeted the friends who denied and betrayed him saying “peace.”
Amen

A Reading from Isaiah 58

Is not this the fast that I choose:
   to loose the bonds of injustice,
   to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
   and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
   and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
   and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
   and your healing shall spring up quickly;

Poem

From stardust you came, and to stardust you will return:

Blessed be the Divine Dark that resides within you.
Blessed be the miraculous particles that comprise you:
Each migrating molecule, each vibrating string, each holy encounter that defines you.
Each humming meridian, each tiny transformation, each riff and rhythm that forge you,
Each imperfect iteration that forms the symphony of you.

Blessed be you, who are never alone.
Blessed be you, who are made of multitudes,
Microbes, memories, matter, magic.
Blessed be you, glorious convergence of being,
God-breathed creature, animated cosmos,
Interconnected, interdependent, wildest dream.

From Stardust you came, and to stardust you will return:
Blessed be you,
Beloved in this body,
Holy and wholly alive.
Blessed be you,
Everyday sacrament,
Marvelous mystery,
Everyday defying and remaking history,
Everyday a little more fire,
Everyday a little more free.

A Lenten Blessing by Céline Chuang

Ashes

 
We begin our journey to Easter with the sign of ashes, an ancient element speaking of the transforming power of fire and the fragility and the cycles of human life. We gather these ashes from the sites of wildfires in our region and mix them with the sacred oils we have wildcrafted using cedar, poplar and rosehip. Take a moment holding the container of ashes or sitting in front of it, notice the smell and feel of these sacred elements then consider and let go of whatever you need to release, that keeps you from wholeness.  

When you are ready, use the ashes to mark your own forehead or your companions’ with a cross saying one of the following:

You are/I am dust and to dust you/I will return. or

You are of the land and will return to the land. or

You are earth and to the earth you will return.

You are invited to observe a holy Lent, to prepare your heart for wonder by the traditional practices of self-examination, penitence, prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, and by reading and meditating on the word of God in scripture and in nature.


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