Ash Wednesday, March 5

My life and my death are not purely and simply my own business. I live by and for others, and my death involves them. —Thomas Merton, Contemplation in a World of Action

When my youngest sister, Judea, was three years old, she refused to hold anyone’s hand when crossing the street or walking on a busy sidewalk. Instead, she would stubbornly declare in her tiny voice, “I hold my own hand!”

There is a temptation to begin the season of Lent as a solitary journey, to hear the words “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return” as an individual invitation instead of a communal one. Yet, the prayer that proceeds the marking of ashes on our foreheads begins, “Almighty God, you have created us out of the dust of the earth.” It offers a poignant reminder of our common bonds of birth, breath and death.

Despite this era of great divisions and an epidemic of loneliness, the Holy Spirit is here among us. I wonder how the Spirit might move during this season of Lent if we approach the spiritual practices of self-examination and repentance as a common endeavor instead of a solitary one. What if we sought to make a right beginning, traveling the Lenten wilderness together for the express purpose of being re-bound to each other and all of creation through Christ? What if we spent this season together in prayer, fasting, self-denial and reading and meditating on God’s holy Word, boldly considering how we can right the wrongs and sins of the past and strive to repent of those sins and any we have continued to commit?

We never let Judea cross the busy street or wander the crowded sidewalk alone. We walked alongside her, behind her and with her, gently guiding her by the elbow when needed (she was holding her own hand, after all) and reminding her that her journey was also our journey and that we would all get where we were going—together.

For Reflection

This Lent, what spiritual practice could your community adopt as a communal endeavor? How could we travel the wilderness together with intentionality?

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Daily Lenten Meditations begin March 5

This Lent, “let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” (Hebrews 10:24-25)

Join writer Jerusalem Jackson Greer this Lent as she encourages us to partake in “A Commonplace Lent.”

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