For the past few years I have indulged in a peculiar habit. On Ash Wednesday, to mark the beginning of Lent, I attend the lunchtime Mass at Holy Name Church on Oxford Road and the priest marks my forehead with ashes in the shape of a cross. What does a Unitarian gain from taking part in this ritual? Well, for me, it is less about the cross and more about the ashes.
One of the Roman Catholic priests at the University told me that more people attend Mass on Ash Wednesday than do so at Christmas. It is a very powerful ritual. The Roman Catholic liturgy of Ash Wednesday focuses on sin and penance. The sin and salvation narrative was one of the reasons I left mainstream Christianity. While the words of the liturgy don't speak to my current theology, the ashes do. They are a reminder of my mortality and my earthiness. “For dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return,” Genesis 3:19.
We are children of Earth and Starry Heaven. To quote the physicist Carl Sagan, “The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of star-stuff.” The earth too is made of star-stuff. The elements that make up our bodies have existed since the first supernova. When our bodies return to the earth our atoms become the building blocks of new life. We are part of the cosmic dance of the universe, the natural cycle of life and death, of birthing and nurturing, of sickness and health, of growing up and growing old.
Ash Wednesday is a reminder of our interconnectedness. The interconnected, interdependent web of existence is not only Earthly, but universal. The earth and the heavens, our selves, everything in the universe is made of the same star stuff.
We are made of the same stuff as the earth and our fates are thus bound together. There is an element of penitence in me receiving the ashes. I am reminded of my share in the guilt of humanity for our failure to act as stewards to the earth from which we are made.
The Ash Wednesday narrative of sin and salvation is for me, not just individual, but collective and cosmic. I am not just guilty of petty faults. I share in our collective responsibility, our culpability for destroying the earth, she who is our womb, cradle, shelter and tomb. Redemption, then, is not just individual, but collective and cosmic. When we are redeemed to take care of the earth, according to our true calling, then will the earth also be saved from the destruction we have wrought upon Her.
This year I was unable to attend the Ash Wednesday Mass as I was attending the annual service of thanksgiving I organise for those who have donated their bodies to medical science at the University of Manchester. We hadn't deliberately chosen to hold the service on Ash Wednesday this year, it was just a coincidence, but was I feel quite appropriate. For the service reminded us of our own mortality and our interconnectedness, as we expressed our gratitude to those courageous people who had left us a legacy – a legacy of their own bodies, for the benefit of future generations.
As part of my duties organising the service, I compiled a booklet of messages of appreciation from students to the families. It really brought it home to me that there is a beginning in every ending. For the families, a donor is a personal loss, but for the students they each represent a beginning. One body aids in the education of about 50 students. In death, the donors have an impact on so many lives. What a wonderful legacy.
I have been pondering on my own legacy, my own mortality, asking myself, What is getting in the way of me of how I would like to live my one wild and precious life? Is there something I could let go of or change to honour the gift that is this day? What would allow me to become more loving, more joyful, more grateful?
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