Holy ashes

Ashes to ashes

Dust to dust

God's love resides in all of us

Love. Each. Other.

We anointed each other with homemade ashes last night.
Took me about an hour that morning to get one palm frond cooked down to ash.
I had to Google it to find out how to make it burn because they don't.
Burn that is.
I must have lit that thing about 20 times and it barely did a thing,
only slightly curling the edge with a slim ribbon of ash the width of a pen stroke.
When he came home for lunch I asked him how to make this palm frond smolder.
That's what Google said, the palm needed to smolder to make the finest ash.
He broke it into pieces placed it in a glass bowl and lit it, blew on it a few times
and sure enough it started to smolder.
Leave it to a fireman to know how to burn something to ash, eh?
I sifted the remains through a fine sieve and voila... ashes like silk.

I swiped his forehead with a perfect little cross and was proud of how it looked.
He on the other hand gave me a cross as wide and as long as his thumb.
I brought a little pot of ashes over to my sister's house so she could anoint her family too.

We used to go to church for every religious holiday.
We used to go to church every Sunday.
We used to go but haven't been in a while.
At first we just took the Summer off.
That led into Fall and we did go a few times.
Christmas Eve services were bittersweet as that was the last time we would have worship at our 150 year old historic church.
Winter came with blowing winds and biting temperatures and we just never went back.

There is restlessness in me. I don't know what it is.
But church isn't the answer and I feel that in my bones.
Please don't misunderstand...I love Jesus. I believe in Jesus.
I've seen and felt Jesus.
But He doesn't seem to show up at our church. I don't "feel" Him there, ever.
There isn't anything wrong with our church, per se, it's just that He's not there.

*I see holiness coming from the color of the winter sky in the morning.
*The smell of smoldering palm fronds made my kitchen smell like church.
*I feel the safety of His presence snuggled in bed with my fireman and our little dog on a cold winters night.
*I hear birdsong out my window or grandchildren uproariously laughing and it gladdens my heart.
*We have full cupboards and running water and we've never known true hunger and I'm so very grateful.

I fully expect to go to heaven someday and I'm not at all worried or concerned that Jesus will tell me that I can't come in because I didn't go to church.
I know there are people who would huff and puff at our "blasphemous" act of anointing each others foreheads with gasp!  homemade ashes.
As if only a holy and ordained man of the cloth should be able to perform such holy and ordained rituals. Like they are the only ones who know what it means to minister to each other.
It meant something to him and I and, for me, that  is what truly matters.

I believe that's what makes it holy and that is what matters to Jesus.

Thanks for reading friends,
Love, Lolly