ASH WEDNESDAY +------- sacred smear

a temporary tattoo of the end and beginning of pure permanency 

in the middle of the week the first day of the Weakness Season

We stare death in the face today and on the face and faced by the cross. The pile of dust or ash that we came from through Adam and that we return to as punishment for Adam and Eve’s sin is piled up in front of us to contemplate.

Death has changed over the years. As a child many of us prayed, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. Aaaaa-Men!”

Many parents have abandoned that prayer for several reasons, perhaps because they abandoned all bedtime or even any time of the day prayers with their kids. Others because it sounded to scary for kids to hear and have said over them, death and all being something kids don’t and shouldn’t have to have invade their little lives… except in on all the cartoon shows and TV programs and digital games that parents allow to be seen. And finally maybe the prayer stopped being used or used much because infant and childhood deaths are down due to medical science and preventative vaccine shots. Except of course for, these days—measles. Which I understand can kill.

I know some folks who do not like the fact that children who come to church on Ash Wednesday when there is the imposition of ashes, that the sign of mortality be placed on little, healthy, hopefully-long-life-ahead Mary or John. But then are they refusing also the sign of immortality, the cross of Christ who forgives and gives eternal life. refusing that be placed on baby or kid’s forehead who someday will exchange cradle or nighttime bed for coffin?

I have always thought that, “Now I lay me down to sleep…” should have a second half prayer too. Now I rise up to live, I pray the Lord my soul and body to keep… keep in the way of Christ’s living, suffering, dying, death, cross and resurrection. Aaaa-Men.”

It is not in reality death that has changed over the years but our response to it. Christian hymnody, prayer and piety has looked and called death really two vastly different things. On the one hand, it has been called, using scriptural reference, the last enemy. (1 Corinthians 15. 26) Death has also been called the doorway to life for the Christian who in death falls not only to the ground but also into the hands of his or her merciful Father, whose Son stands at his right hand pleading pardon and peace. The Holy Spirit surely can work both images, one which spits at death and the other which is Eden’s dooming and damning gate flung open, flooded by the waters of Holy Baptism.

Washday (actually a spell correction of the computer, I wrote Ashday) is not a Sunday but is one of the pre-eminent weak-days.

thumb bed

Harvey S. Mozolak

Lent is not a cap

with a right angled

smudge as a logo

a hat of holiness worn

out of respect indoors

and taken off after as we eat

fish on Friday

a thumbed hope

for a distant ride

to an unseen place

but an embedding of change

in the decay process

dry earth to earth

dust to dust

where there is wetness

in the breath beyond

that promises

forehead furrows

sown in darkness

to remember the light

and the water that once washed

and oiled with fragrance

where the sign is planted

in the first dew

the residue due

ash leftovers

Harvey S. Mozolak

charcold remains of flames

gray unfoliaged fronds of fear

curling in pleading palms

breathless the branch limbs limp sag

their embers lightless lumber

become a powdered pallor

campfires where we kept each other comforted

awake against the tales of beasts and woods

the path a spot the morning after on the pavement

where the fireworks and rockets of the parade

had shouted hosannas

in the highest

at the fireplace where we ate the meal

quickly and standing

because we were to go out

into the Friday waves

and Sunday sea

to wash

the children's charcoal

smeared as makeup

that hides us in the night before

the forty nods to prayer

begins this

the reddened dark doorway

where the leftovers are right

in leaving

midweek soil

Harvey S. Mozolak

chimney soot

from what is burned

to keep us warm

against the cold that slowly kills

camouflage across the face

smeared to hide who and where we are

from others

who hate us for who we are and have

leftovers from the game

of playing far to hard

and wiped work from tired eyes

dirt furrowed in the trails of sweat

the soil of the week

spent struggling to strengthen

mid-marked

drawn from the earth

singed and flamed by hate

the oil suspended leaf shading

the skin with limbs that carry all

in the filthy mark of cleansing