What does Ash Wednesday feel like for those who need no reminder that we are earth creatures, mortal, of the flesh?
Who hear gunshots, see hospital rooms, taste fear, smell fire, touch bodies on a daily basis, hearts heavy and guarded?
I don’t need a reminder that life is fragile. I witness it on my siblings faces and in their testimony. We are in a broken, scary world.
There are systems that need to die. There are beliefs that need to die.
Repentance in words is not enough. Not enough to turn over the money-lenders tables. Not enough to turn over white supremacy. Not enough to root out the seed of violence we sow in men and boys. We return to the earth in order that new life may grow. We should be nurse logs, not remnants of war bombs.
I am smudged with the ashes of complicity. Of silence. Of not knowing how to navigate the minefield we ourselves planted. And today we celebrate love under late-stage-capitalism. Love that is meant to be holy and good, and somehow we still choose to inflict violence.
Today I lift up in prayer survivors of domestic abuse, physical, verbal, and emotional assault, and gun violence. God, may you turn our hearts of stone to living flesh, sent forth to enact your unending and grace-filled love.
Reed Fowler 