Today, I will place an ashen mark of mortality on my 7-week old son. "Hugo, remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." I have been practicing mentally, hoping that I will be able to keep my emotions sufficiently steady to preside over the remainder of worship. I will place an ashen mark on my partner, who I depend on, who I call to come and see when Hugo smiles, who smiles at me as we pass an unhappy infant between us, preserving our patience and our sanity not so much because passing him off enables us to take a "break" but because the knowing glance helps assure us that love has brought us through much more trying things.
"Hugo, remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." "Ben, remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." My own mortality is one matter; the mortality of these two is an entirely different one. Whereas I can mentally sever my own mortality from theirs, my life is inextricably bound to the lives of these two, who have taught me more about love than I thought I would ever learn.
These words are a reminder - however painful - that this little life that Ben and I have nurtured into existence is not ours. It is a reminder that, as easily as the words "Remember you are dust," fall from the tongue, and as beautiful as telling myself that Hugo belongs to God first and me second, that I am still human. It is a reminder that, if I could, I would try to control this little life, attempting to wrench it away from God's embrace so that I could grasp it with my grimy hands, forcing it into a shape that seems good to me. But Hugo's life is not mine to control. It is a gift to pray with him each night, to give thanks that I get to raise him, to teach him, to hope for him, to discover him.
The fragile resilience of life, in all its paradoxical glory, confronts me today. As much as I want to look away, to make mortality something other than what it is, to wrest myself and those I love from the human condition, this is to live in opposition to the call; it is to live in denial of living with one foot in the world as it is (characterized by ashen crosses) and the promises spoken over this world, beckoning me to see it as it should be.
So tonight, as I ash my son and my partner, I realize not only my mortality, but the ways in which my life is so joyfully and painfully bound, reminding me that I am not the Creator and Controller of life, but its grateful recipient.
"Hugo, remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." "Ben, remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." My own mortality is one matter; the mortality of these two is an entirely different one. Whereas I can mentally sever my own mortality from theirs, my life is inextricably bound to the lives of these two, who have taught me more about love than I thought I would ever learn.
These words are a reminder - however painful - that this little life that Ben and I have nurtured into existence is not ours. It is a reminder that, as easily as the words "Remember you are dust," fall from the tongue, and as beautiful as telling myself that Hugo belongs to God first and me second, that I am still human. It is a reminder that, if I could, I would try to control this little life, attempting to wrench it away from God's embrace so that I could grasp it with my grimy hands, forcing it into a shape that seems good to me. But Hugo's life is not mine to control. It is a gift to pray with him each night, to give thanks that I get to raise him, to teach him, to hope for him, to discover him.
The fragile resilience of life, in all its paradoxical glory, confronts me today. As much as I want to look away, to make mortality something other than what it is, to wrest myself and those I love from the human condition, this is to live in opposition to the call; it is to live in denial of living with one foot in the world as it is (characterized by ashen crosses) and the promises spoken over this world, beckoning me to see it as it should be.
So tonight, as I ash my son and my partner, I realize not only my mortality, but the ways in which my life is so joyfully and painfully bound, reminding me that I am not the Creator and Controller of life, but its grateful recipient.
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