Buechner: Ash Wednesday

Buechner: Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday Duke University Chapel

“In many cultures, there is an ancient custom of giving a tenth of each year’s income to some holy use. For Christians, to observe the forty days of Lent is to do the same thing with roughly a tenth of each year’s days.”

 —Frederick Buechner in Whistling in the Dark: An ABC Theologized (Harper & Row, 1988), p. 82.

We begin our Lenten journey on this Ash Wednesday. It is a day to remember our mortality: “Dust you are, and to dust you shall return.” I think of my favorite aunt, who had Alzheimer’s for more than ten years, who died on Ash Wednesday.  

I remember watching the members of our parish receive the imposition of ashes. Some have cancer or other illnesses, and I know they worry whether they will be present in this body at this church next Ash Wednesday. Some are filled with tears as they stand or kneel at the altar. I wonder who will meet death face to face before next Easter. Could it even be a member of my family or me? I never imagined we would not be in our churches for two Ash Wednesdays.

I travel back in time to the Cathedral School on Ash Wednesday, when we heard elementary students comment as we placed ashes on their foreheads: “Will it stay on? How do I look? You look funny.”

I remember a beautiful young mother holding her three-month-old baby girl and coming to the altar. Our priest traces the sign of the cross on the mother’s forehead. I do not want her to put the cross on this baby’s head. I watch as she asks the mother, and then applies the black ashes to the tiny forehead. The little girl does not cry out, but I want to stand up and protest: “No, don’t do that!” My life’s profession has been to care for tiny babies. I do not want to think of this precious one dying. I will not permit it. I still have no answers as to how to handle the death of a child. 

Ash Wednesday is a reminder of our immortality. I still have difficulty with it. A huge part of me lives as though I and others will live forever. As I grow older, I realize this is not true, and I begin to treasure each day as a gift. Easter tells me there is more than this life—resurrection—a resurrection, a new life. Barbara Crafton calls this life in the resurrection The AlsoLife.

I think again of my aunt, who died on Ash Wednesday. I still sometimes feel her presence. That same Ash Wednesday she died, someone calls to tell me that a dear friend is having her first baby and has asked for prayers. I pray that the presence of God in the spirit of my aunt will be by the bed of my friend to guide and protect her and her unborn child. 

It is always thus. One person dies, another is born. We all carry the blackened sign of the cross on our foreheads. My mind returns to the Cathedral School as I remember a sermon by Beth Maze on Ash Wednesday: “Creation Is Made from Dust.” 

It is good that we have these forty days to ponder all this.

Joanna https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Hillesum: Finding Answers in Emotional Difficulties

Hillesum: Finding Answers in Emotional Difficulties

“Thinking gets you nowhere. It may be a fine and noble aid in academic studies, but you can’t think your way out of emotional difficulties. That takes something altogether different. You have to make yourself passive then and just listen. Re-establish contact with a slice of eternity.”—Etty Hillesum in An Interrupted Life, Daily Quote, June 29, 2018, Inwardoutward.org, Church of the Saviour.

Etty Hillesum, a Jewish writer who died during the Holocaust, shares her formula for finding a way through difficult emotional situations. Those who make decisions using their thinking (T) function, what is reasonable, will probably disagree. Considering the importance of relationships, those who make decisions using their feeling (F) function may agree with Hillesum. They both are right. We need both thinking and feeling when making decisions.

Looking beyond personality types takes us to another level. Hillesum is trying to tell us to let the committee in our heads rest by whatever means we use: reading, meditation, music, walking, praying, writing, or just being. She tells us to connect with the God within us, especially after the silence that follows our spiritual practice. Jake Owensby also recently wrote about Hillesum and her experience of feeling God’s presence.1  He reminded us that hope in times of great difficulty is not a spiritual achievement on our part.

We do not generate hope with our practice. Instead, spiritual practices open us to the source of hope: to the God who is always already present to us and with us.

 We are to try to find an answer from something greater than ourselves, our God who is always beside us. We may not know the exact answer. We will recognize it because we know it will have something to do with love.

1 Jake Owensby in “A Hope-Shaped Life,” The Woodlands: A Place for Exploring the Spiritual Life, February 13, 2026.

Joanna  joannaseibert.com   https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Charleston: Stll Being Watched Over By Those Who Have Gone Before Us

 Charleston: Watched Over

“They are watching over you, the ones who have gone before, the ones who know you best, the spirits of a love that never dies, your ancestors of hope and courage, those bright souls who shaped your life and gave you life and showed you what life really was.”—Bishop Steven Charleston, Daily Facebook Page.

I know I am watched over by loved ones who have died. I do not doubt it. There are times when I can do things I know I could never do alone, without help and care from others.
My grandfather was the most significant person who taught me about unconditional love in my growing-up years. When he died, I was devastated. I wanted to do something to honor him. I knew he did not like my smoking. I had tried to quit many times without success. Quitting smoking for me was a spiritual experience. I have not had a cigarette since December 7, 1979, the day of my grandfather’s funeral. I have written a book about how my grandfather loved me while he was alive, and saved my life after he died—Letters from my Grandfather, A History of Two Decades of Unconditional Love.

One New Year’s Eve, I walked the labyrinth at Christ Church. It was a cool evening, and I wore a long black shawl with fringes like the ones you sometimes see over pianos. Suddenly, during the walk, I felt my grandmothers holding and surrounding me like the shawl I was wearing around my shoulders.

This weekend, I dreamed of receiving a letter from my former spiritual director, Peggy Hayes. I knew it was from her because of the address and writing, but I woke up before reading the handwritten message on the short, folded-up letter. My prayers have been asking what was in the letter. I plan to ask my dream group about it this morning.

Joanna https://www.joannaseibert.com/