To dust

When I was little, and just learning what death was, I was scared. I remember nights sitting on my bed with my mom sobbing over the inevitability of this thing I didn't understand. I remember Mom trying to comfort me, telling me that probably neither of us would die for a very long time. Eventually she took me to a therapist, who I remember suggested that belief in heaven was an answer.

I have no other memories of this counseling and don't recall if I went anymore. I know that I now consider myself a fairly well adjusted adult, on most days, probably no more or less wrapped up in morbidity than the next person. But I am still scared of death. The word "forever," if I stay with it a little while, is enough to make me panicky. Of course, the alternative is no better. Forever is forever, whether you spend it alive or dead.

I am scared of death, and yet it is my job to tell others that they should not be scared of death. I know that is an overstatement. But it is my job to speak at funerals, to stand at a casket and proclaim resurrection; to reassure people taking their loved ones off life support that to let them go is the unselfish thing;to preach on scriptures that tell us to lose one's life is to gain it; and to smear people's foreheads with ash and remind them that they will return to dust.

We had two Ash Wednesday services today, and I thought about this more at the second than at the first: for one thing, there were about a hundred more people at the evening service, so I had a lot more time, and for another, I read this essay by Sara Miles in the meantime, posted by several friends on Facebook.

Miles writes that a woman came up to her with a week-and-a-half old baby to receive ashes for both of them. "I crossed his forehead with ashes," she says, "and took a deep breath, and told the baby he was going to die."

I didn't tell any babies they were going to die tonight. I did tell one girl, maybe age nine, and I didn't like doing it. Miles writes about giving ashes to kitchen workers, and truck drivers, and drug dealers. I didn't tell any drug dealers they would die, as far as I know. But I did say those words to my senior pastor, and a retired bishop, and a bunch of college students with makeup on and hair done from their concert before the service. Telling people they were on their way back into dust, I felt embarrassed, even apologetic. True or not, who I am to tell them this--I, who am also dust, who am scared of my own dustiness?

I believe and love the words it is my job to say: that we will die, but that we will ultimately live. And I think that we're allowed to be scared, even if we believe that. And as always, I hope the truth and the good news of the words I say come through to people, whether or not I am scared.