Ash Wednesday 2016

<I would rather wear the smudge on my forehead than to admit its residence upon my soul. I prefer a crude cross above my eyes to questions about runny mascara and smudged liner. In a place where self-confidence is rewarded and any sign of weakness or emotional predisposition is held suspect, it is difficult to consider actually following the advice of the prophet to return to God with fasting, with weeping and with mourning. It is, however, acceptable — maybe even fashionable — to appear in public with a dirty forehead as a sign that I have *religion*. It is amazing how the symbols of piety, sackcloth and ashes, have been transformed into mask that hides me from myself and circumvents the intent of Ash Wednesday...Blow the trumpet that warns a penitent like me to wear the smudge of ashes long after her face has been washed and to admit the smudge on the one place that matters to God, her heart. Blow the trumpet in Zion, the prophet said, and sanctify a fast. Hear the sounds of grumbling need in a world where few are filled — and where we are overfilled. Today we are called to push away from the voracious consumption of everything in our path, for at least a little while, in hopes thatmight realize something about the equitable distribution of the world's resources before the fast is over. Rend your hearts and not your garments,. The gift of the day is personal reflection, a season of confession, and change. Start the arduous journey from shadow to substance, from ritual to reality, from façade to faith. Today, choose the harder course. It is easier to buy new clothing than to mend a soul.>

from 2007 Upper Room Disciplines, Discipleship Ministries, The United Methodist Church

Advent Reflection: Mary's Enthusiastic Yes

painting: Henry Ossawa Tanner
American African American painter in the 1890s
more here: http://bit.ly/1wb3cVL

<For a moment I hesitated on the threshold. For the space of a breath I paused, unwilling to disturb her last ordinary moment, knowing that the next step would cleave her life: that this day would slice her story in two, dividing all the days before from all the ones to come.//The artists would later depict the scene: "Mary dazzled by the archangel, her head bowed in humble assent, awed by the messenger who condescended to leave paradise to bestow such an honor upon a woman, and mortal..." //Yet I tell you it was I who was dazzled, I who found myself agape when I came upon her— reading, at the loom, in the kitchen, I cannot now recall; only that the woman before me— blessed and full of grace long before I called her so— shimmered with how completely she inhabited herself, inhabited the space around her, inhabited the moment that hung between us.//I wanted to save her from what I had been sent to say.//Yet when the time came, when I had stammered the invitation (history would not record the sweat on my brow, the pounding of my heart; would not note that I said "Do not be afraid!" to myself as much as to her) it was she who saved me— her first deliverance— her "Let it be," not just declaration to the Divine but a word of solace, of soothing, of benediction for the angel in the doorway who would hesitate one last time— just for the space of a breath torn from his chest— before wrenching himself away from her radiant consent, her beautiful and awful "yes".>

– Jan Richardson

artist, author, UMC minister 

http://adventdoor.com/

http://www.janrichardson.com/