Our Shared Space - Ash Wednesday

From dust you have come…to dust you will return. I’ll repeat these words over and over this evening. As I touch foreheads. As I look another in the eyes. As I stand in proximity. No questions asked. Just a reminder that we were created in the same way, we will leave this life in a common death, and in between is shared space. It is this shared space that is different and yet the same.

Different in what we experience, how we interpret, the choices we make. The same as part of this creation – with flesh and bones and beating hearts and lungs that fill with the same air.

My heart aches with hearts that ache. And my heart aches for hearts that don’t because they are hardened toward our shared space. Still, we share flesh and bones and beating hearts and lungs that fill with the same air.

How do I reconcile this? I don’t know. It can feel overwhelming. But this I will do – keep praying, remember the dust from which we come and the dust to which we are returning day by day. Remember that I too have a heart that needs softening and kneading to grow. And in these 40 days of Lent I will fast from focusing on hardened hearts and seek instead to be love in the space between us.

Is this not the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?
Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter –
when you see the naked, to clothe them,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
If you do away with the yoke of oppression,
with the pointing finger and malicious talk,
and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,
then your light will rise in the darkness,
and your night will become like the noonday.
The Lord will guide you always;
God will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land.

Isaiah 58: 6-8, 10-11

Lord, help me.
in this together….

Amy MooreMarch 5, 2025