The chimney sweep came last week and reminded me that, so long as only wood is burned, the ashes from the stove can be scattered on the garden due to the potash and other elements that can be good for the soil or a compost heap. That’s also one of the hopeful signs of Ash Wednesday, which marks the start of Lent when the sign of the cross is made on the forehead using ashes from last year’s palm crosses. Lent is a traditional time of fasting, prayer and almsgiving, when the words ‘dust you are and to dust you shall return’ remind us of the need for repentance and renewal as well as the mortality faced in our own lives and the world in which we live. One day we, too, will return to the good earth whence we came, in burial whether of a body or its ashes, if in a churchyard – although the scattering of ashes is possible in other locations.
That’s not easy to think of but it’s important to take stock of time and our use of it and, in token of this, people sometimes put a rose in the place where ashes of cremated remains have been interred in the hope of it growing into a living tribute to a loved one. However, the high temperatures needed to cremate a body mean that nothing organic is left to sustain the plant and so more earth needs to be added between the ashes and the roots as it will otherwise scorch and possibly kill the rose. Some people don’t know that and so the plant may not flourish. Ash can fertilise but it can also harm – it depends on its origins and application.
That’s why the sign of the cross made in ash is so potent. It’s a symbol and reminder that, although Lent leads to Good Friday and the terrible crucifixion of Jesus, it also leads on beyond that to resurrection and new life because sin and death did not have the last word. Like the empty cross symbolising Easter Day, new life can spring from the ashes of broken dreams and failed hopes. As we are marked with that same sign, may the ash be a symbol, like potash, that can nurture and sustain the new life that is to be and not a sign of the sterility of cremated ashes that can’t. We may be caught up in the mess and dirt of life but God meets us with hope in the wilderness that our lives can sometimes become. His grace and transforming love can turn the ashing into the stuff of new life and the ashen cross can become not only a mark of penitence but also a sign of hope of what God has done through Jesus and is still able to do in our lives – no matter how messy things seem. And so may Lent bring blessings and renewal as well as penitence and temptations as it begins today.
With my prayers; pob bendith,
Christine, Guardian.