Ashes for the World

Lent is not for me alone, but for all of us. Together.

Agustín Ljósmyndun

Lent, these weeks of bright sadness, are not merely a season for reforming or deepening my personal spiritual experience and discipline, but also a way I am invited to enter into the suffering of this aching world. Lent is an act of solidarity with the world, offered in hope and humility to our God.

On Ash Wednesday, as we walk to the front to receive ashes, we make the shuffling trek together with others. We form a long line of humanity, friends and strangers, receiving a sooted cross on our forehead. From dust we come, we’re told, and to dust we will all return. We process back to our seats, but the truth is we all continue the path from there, walking together toward the end we share. We are companions toward death. With every other human who has ever lived, we labor under death's grey gloom. In Lent, we remember our human story is bound together. Whether we like it or not. Whether we like each other or not.

And so, on Ash Wednesday, we repent. Not merely for my s…