Ash Wednesday

I’m from the Central Coast of California, close to the Salinas valley, a landscape of dark olive scrub oak trees and luxurious hills of rolling tan and gold. And although my hometown is on the cusp of the powerful Pacific Ocean, often blanketed in a thick, drizzly marine layer of fog, I grew up in a place of dryness. A place of drought, parched soil, dead grass, and of course, fires. Wildfires have always been a heartbreaking truth of life on the West Coast, a truth that has been amplified by the climate crisis in recent years. These fires bring so much destruction, terror, loss, and death. It’s been terrible in these past few years, watching from the opposite coast as my home state is ravaged by fire.

There is however, something that children in California learn early on in their science classes. Which is that forest fires later become the sites of massive ecological rebirths. Indigenous communities have known this for a long time, that fires have the capacity to keep the forest ecosystems healthy. When old growth is burned away, what emerges are pioneer species, including fast growing grasses and weeds. Moss and lichen take over, and mushrooms pop up to help regenerate the soil. After a few years fledgling trees start to emerge, especially pines whose pine cones are adapted to open only after a period of intense heat. These small pines continue to grow in the area and start to amend the soil so that hardwood species can grow. I remember as a child seeing recently burned hillsides in Big Sur and Carmel Valley, starting to pop up with delicate oak shoots and tiny new Monterey pines - shades of bright green that were rare in those parts. And it was always bittersweet, seeing the charred remains of huge, fallen pines, peppered with new growth.

In addition to climate change, part of what has made the wildfires more common and less controllable in recent years, is that for a long time the government has neglected the ancient and indigenous wisdom of forest management, and instead has focused all of its energy on total fire prevention. The policies put in place in the early 20th century have allowed forest landscapes to grow denser and denser across the U.S., creating a huge buildup of quick burning fuel that cannot be contained. It turns out, a regular practice of setting small, contained fires is actually the most effective way to care for the land and keep large fires from getting out of control. And so now the U.S. forest Service has been trying to collaborate and learn from some of the native tribes in Northern California who have been using contained burns for a millenia.

Today we are reminded that we are but dust, and to dust we will return. This is a direct reference back to God’s creation of human beings, molded from clay, dirt, dust…. ash. Remember that you are ash, and to ash you will return. The bible is full of imagery of fire and burning as cleansing, refining, as creative as it is destructive. As the Indigenous fire expert Amy Cardinal Christianson says, “We coexist with fire, we need fire and fire needs us.” 

And so this year, I’m thinking about Lent as a contained, controlled burn of the soul.

This is a time set aside our policies of self-protection and self-preservation, and instead allow the fire to burn. It does not need to tear through us like a raging wildfire; in fact, we may be better served by tending the fire carefully, gently. But we do need to give room and oxygen for the fires to roll through us. The fires of grief, regret, and shame. The bright and sharp flames of fear, self-centeredness, the illusion that there won’t be enough to go around, that we need to keep a tight grip on all that lies within our reach.

Ash Wednesday relieves us of that burning hot hubris. Today we begin the work of moving through the sharp heat together, becoming righteously broken and burned down; becoming the charred remains from which new life emerges. And so my invitation to you is to take on these ashes as, yes, a reminder of your mortality and your finitude, and also to allow this Lenten season to be a time of recovery, of nurture, of slow, quiet growth.
A time of letting the towering idols fall, letting the thickets that have gotten too dense burn away.
A time cultivating the forest-floor grasses, rich moss and lichen.
A time of tenderness, healing, and slow turning.
This is how we prepare for the Paschal mystery that lies ahead. 

And so as we navigate the controlled burns and barely-visible regrowth of this season, let us hold fast to the words of the Prophet Isaiah: The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.