What’s a Catholic with “New Age tendencies” to do on Ash Wednesday?

This was the question I faced today at 7am, as I sat in the parking lot of St. Isidore’s. I had gotten the Mass schedule wrong, and so had half an hour to contemplate the day, and how someone like me—a person who combines crystals and essential oils and oracle cards with a stubborn attachment to Jesus—might enter into it.

In Catholicism, Ash Wednesday is the kick off to Lent—40 days of introspection and purposeful sacrifice meant to bring you closer to God. It’s like spiritual boot camp. The words we hear when we receive ashes, “Remember you are dust, and unto dust you shall return,” are the ultimate reality check, a not so subtle reminder that someday we’ll shuffle off this mortal coil and be left with who we really are.

And guess what? That’s an idea I can still get behind.

What I realized is that any unease I felt about Ash Wednesday and Lent were not about Ash Wednesday or Lent, but about the way they are frequently portrayed. While there are certainly exceptions to this, it’s been my experience that what is intended as a time of sobriety, reflection, and spiritual growth somehow all too often comes across as a gloomy caricature of that, leaving us with vague feelings of shame, the general conviction that we should be suffering, and the pressure to have a kick-ass answer to the perennial question: “What are you giving up for Lent?”

What a great disservice this is to a truly needed and noble concept. And I do mean needed. Far beyond the question of Catholicism or Christianity, the world needs Ash Wednesday.

Here are three reasons why:

• It reminds us that what we see is just the tip of the iceberg of reality, and what we often spend so much time building up has an expiration date. “Listen up!” Ash Wednesday says; “This life doesn’t last forever, and there’s more to you, and reality, than this physical stuff we’ve got going on.” This is not a morbid thought—it’s actually really good news. I love this life. I love my body, and my home, and I enjoy moving through this physical world and reveling in its beauty and pleasures. But, as Sting famously sang, “there is a deeper wave than this.” It’s easy to miss, because it’s not visible to the eye, and it usually only surfaces in quiet and stillness—neither of which are the norm in modern life. Ash Wednesday and Lent create space for the quiet and stillness we need to reconnect with the deeper realities that lie beneath all the noise, and will, thank God, remain long after the noise has ceased.
• It helps us come back to ourselves and God. Wayne Dyer used the image of a clock to talk about this. Picture a clock when it’s 12 on the dot: the little hand and the big hand are together, perfectly aligned. This is what we’re like when we are born—we are simply ourselves, pure of heart and one with God. It doesn’t occur to us to think of ourselves as bad, or as at odds with others, or as separate from God. As the years progress, we learn things and take on attitudes and misconceptions that separate us from ourselves—the big hand starts to move. The process of spiritual development begins when the big hand turns the corner and starts to move back towards the little hand, back towards realignment. Ash Wednesday is an invitation to move the dial towards realignment—to authenticity, purity of heart, innocence, and unity with God.
• It helps us come back to each other. A glance around any Catholic church today will show the young and old, the rich and poor, people of every race, opinion, persuasion, and status, all equally besmudged. This reminds us of something it’s way too easy to forget nowadays: we all come from the same place, and we all face the same existential reality of experiencing this lifetime in a place where, contrary to all appearances, we have no lasting home. Ash Wednesday is a great equalizer, and as we move the dial back to our authentic selves, and back to unity with God, we inevitably recognize erstwhile strangers as brothers and sisters.

I thought about all of this as I waited in the parking lot, and I’m thinking about it now, as I sit with a cup of coffee, ashes firmly smudged on my forehead by the heavy-handed Fr. Fred, and a collection of crystals lining the top of my keyboard. I embrace them both. I am a Catholic, and today, I’m wearing ashes. I am not sad, or ashamed. I am awake, and I’m moving the dial.