Lent has begun and it started as it always does, for me at least--with a smudge of ashes across the forehead. As a pastor I have the privilege of smudging the shape of a cross while saying the words; “From dust you were born and to dust you shall return.”

This past Ash Wednesday, as we gathered around a fire, I walked among the people and shared this act before landing on the forehead of a young parishioner. As I finished making the cross and saying these powerful words, he said; “I want more.” So I moved my dusty finger slowly down his forehead and one could feel the Holy Spirit in that moment. When I moved my hand away he whispered; “I don’t know why.”

Almost 16 years of ministry and it took a child to verbalize what so many of us feel--we don’t know why. We don’t know why we want more, more of Jesus, more of the sun, more of the sky, more mud, more trees, more waves, more birds singing, really more of anything that connects us to the Creator of the earth from which we come and will one day return.


The Quaker hymn “How can I Keep from Singing” by Henry S. Burrage sings:

My life goes on in endless song

Above earth’s lamentation

I hear the real, though far-off hymn

That hails a new creation

Through all the tumult and the strife

I hear its music ringing

It sounds and echo in my soul

How can I keep from singing?

This is the mystery of faith that we cannot express--the contradictions of joy in the midst of sorrow, peace in the midst of loneliness, and the hymn that stirs inside us even on the most discouraging of days.