Ash Wednesday

Most Merciful God, we confess

that we have sinned against you

in thought, word, and deed

Yesterday I met a woman with an serious problem. She sat through my presentation on cholesterol (colesterol es tres mal para tu corazon!) and patiently waited while we screened a roomful of people for hypertension, piecing together their symptoms and complaints with only a handful of common words. I'm not trying to wring sympathy from your heart, but you need to know what we were up against: she has a small daughter playing under the table, no money, can't speak English, can't read at all. She has a mass you can feel through her t-shirt; she is in so much pain she has not eaten since Sunday. Outside, snow covers the ground and she is wearing flip flops.

I want to know. What would you do?

We left.

by what we have done

and by what we have left undone.

Back in the classroom, Tim kicked off the discussion on structural discrimination in health care. A couple weeks ago, I led the seminar on disenfranchised populations & the gaps in health care access and quality. This is the part of the course where it's supposed to become clear why it was the right thing to leave that woman and her daughter there, the part where the shame flips off and the light bulbs flip on in our newly educated & enlightened minds. Believe me, I understand the need for sustainable programs and all the reasons we weren't allowed to drop the woman off at the hospital or give her cab fare from our own pockets. I believe in consequences and fear the law of unintended consequences. Dangerous precedents. Greedy & deceitful people. But we talk and talk and talk, myself right along with the best of them, and forget the Golden Rule. It's not partisan, political, theoretical, hypothetical, cultural, parochial. It's everyone. The failing is everywhere.

We have not loved you with our whole hearts.

We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.

After class, I went for a run before going to the Ash Wednesday service. Since college, I've found myself anticipating Lent more than Advent. This season of house keeping - the setting of things to right - both stretches me beyond comfort and comforts me beyond reason. The chance to sacrifice small comforts in celebration of our great, incomprehensible reprieve and the anticipation of redemption to keep us afloat. So I walk into the hushed sanctuary, flushed from the fresh air & the endorphins, glowing with commitment, ready for holiness. The minister speaks and I am so convicted, so hopeful & thankful. Yes! I'm so terrible! Yes! I can love my neighbor as myself. Amen! My house is not 2 miles from the church and before I make it through my front door, I'm seething with murderous thoughts, wishing I could take a hammer to his head or tell her what I really think. And if my own private thoughts aren't bad enough, I'm needlessly rude to my dear friend Tim.

For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ,

have mercy on us and forgive us;

T. S. Eliot wrote a poem called Ash Wednesday and in it is a line I go back to again and again when I don't know how else to pray. Teach us to care and not to care. Teach us to sit still. Only a handful of words and yet they are strong and broad enough to hold all my questions & inadequacies. I need to be taught to care for my neighbor better - how to love that woman, how to love Tim, how to love people who hurt me. How to love like Christ, because of Christ's love for me. I need to stop caring about the things that don't matter, the voices who really won't have a say in the final count. Thank God for these 40 days to learn to sit still, to turn, to listen, to change. Thank God that His grace is not limited by merit, time nor space.

that we may delight in your will,

and walk in your ways,

to the glory of your name.

Amen.