Now is a good time to reflect on our faith and civic lives. This month, the NAACP will celebrate its 110th anniversary. And to commemorate Black History Month, also in February, Managing Editor Daniel Imwalle looks at the role we Christians play in race relations in his editorial “Keeping the Civil Rights Movement in Motion.”

To get where we’re going, we have to remember where we’ve been. We’re glad you’re with us on the journey.

This poem is a perfect reminder of God’s great gift of love as revealed through the suffering and rising of Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word.

In this beautiful poem, all created things seem to remind the poet of God’s incredible love, dramatized through the person of Christ.

About the Poet, Joseph Mary Plunkett

Born in Dublin in 1887, Joseph Plunkett wrote many poems of rare, mystical force. Plunkett was one of the signers of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic and was imprisoned by the English army. He was executed in 1916 for his part in the 1916 Easter Rising. Shortly before his execution on May 4, he married his fiancée, Grace Gifford, in the jail’s chapel. Plunkett was 28 years old.

Because of his great love for the Incarnate Word—and the Word’s close connection to all created things—Plunkett saw Christ’s destiny and great love as forever entwined with this earth and this universe.

“I See His Blood upon the Rose”

I see his blood upon the rose
And in the stars the glory of his eyes,
His body gleams amid eternal snows,
His tears fall from the skies.
I see his face in every flower;
The thunder and the singing of the birds
Are but his voice—and carven by his power
Rocks are his written words. All pathways by his feet are worn,
His strong heart stirs the ever-beating sea,
His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn,
His cross is every tree.”

My Line-by-Line Meditations

I see his blood upon the rose
When we gaze at a rose—or any other part of this universe—we see not only the individual beauty of the rose, but also the intensity of God’s care behind that rose and behind the universe itself.

And in the stars the glory of his eyes
In the stars, we see not only the glory of his death and total self-giving, but also the glory of his risen body and his death-conquering gaze.

His body gleams amid eternal snows
When we look at snowcapped mountains or other snowy vistas, we might see glimpses of Christ’s pale body, as when taken down from the cross—or his glorified, transfigured body shining brighter than snow.

His tears fall from skies
Again, behind the lovely everyday processes of nature, we can’t help seeing the love of our Great Lover—and the tears he shed over Jerusalem or during his agony in the garden.

I see his face in every flower
Every flower, indeed everything in this universe, reminds us of Christ. As St. Paul tells the Colossians (1:16), “All things were created through him and for him.” We recall, too, that St. Francis saw in the beauty of flowers the One who is Beauty itself.

The thunder and singing of the birds/Are but his voice
Singing birds and all other sounds of nature communicate one thing: God’s great love for us.

And carven by his power/Rocks are his written words
Christ, the Word made flesh, is truly intermingled with the universe. Creation itself is a reflection of the Word through whom “all things came to be” (Jn 1:3).

All pathways by his feet are worn
At the Incarnation, God made this world his home. Every path, trail, and road of this earth has taken on an elevated dignity and meaning because of the pathways Christ took while accomplishing his mission on earth. All paths remind us of the pathway he took to save us—the Way of the Cross.

His strong heart stirs the ever-beating sea
In the sea pounding against the jagged coast, we get glimpses of Christ’s mighty heart pounding with love for us.

His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn
Every thorn is somehow intertwined with Christ’s crown of thorns. Indeed, in every created thing we see Christ’s saving love.

His cross is every tree
Behind every tree, we can see Christ’s cross—and the Creator’s unconditional love.

“How good God is to the upright,
The Lord, to those who are clean of heart!
But, as for me, I lost my balance;
my feet all but slipped,
Because I was envious of the arrogant
when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.”
(Psalm 73:1-3)

The psalms are unflinchingly honest. I like that. Anger, envy, gratitude, and trust can tumble out within a single psalm. Any emotion can be the springboard to honest prayer. Nothing needs to be hidden from God—even though the psalmist fortunately does not act on every emotion mentioned.

The author of Psalm 73 sometimes envies people who ignore God, yet always seem to be prosperous and successful. They “suffer no pain; their bodies are healthy and sleek” (verse 4). You can’t write words like that without having already felt them!

Some people think that prayer should always be serene. I used to think that way until I discovered that psalms are not always calm, and yet they are very genuine prayers.

Luckily, the author of Psalm 73 has no need for any pretending. He admits to having envied arrogant people. He certainly wonders why people who reject God’s values seem to prosper so much. Who knows what other questions this author may have put to God? Luckily for us, the psalmist knows that prayer can incorporate emotions that we might try to hide from God—much as Adam and Eve tried to hide their nakedness from God.

Yet how often do we say to ourselves, “I’m just not in the mood to pray—maybe after I’ve calmed down a little”? The problem here is that by the time we “calm down,” our hearts have probably hardened in some significant way. Prayer under these circumstances brings only part of our life to God—not our whole life.

Is God Paying Attention?

We easily imagine that God’s love and mercy should protect us from life’s roughest edges, from cancer, divorce, the premature death of loved ones, financial worries, from wars and the worst horrors that people can inflict on one another.

We know that we live in a fallen world; sometimes we are tempted to forget that we also live in a world created and loved by God. When we remember that, we regain our “balance,” as this psalm describes it. As prayers written after moments of darkness and joy, the psalms often remind us of what we once knew, had forgotten and can now reclaim with even deeper conviction.

‘Life Is Messy’

How often, in response to adult complaints about life’s injustices and disappointments, are we tempted to say: “Get a life! There’s a big world out there and it’s not waiting for you to give it a passing grade. Yes, human suffering is very real and we should meet it with compassion. But we don’t have to live in an ideal world in order to love God and neighbor. Life is messy for everyone.”

If asked, we would probably have arranged the world differently—but without the full range of human freedom that God entrusted to us.

Psalm 73 can help us remember that God never abandons us and that evil-doers have only an apparent victory. If we allow ourselves to be consumed by a sense of envy about the injustice of life, we will certainly miss what God wants to give us.

Understanding Psalm 73

Psalm 73 is a thanksgiving response to being delivered, not from some physical threat, but rather from a personal crisis. It begins and ends with an affirmation of the goodness of God, but in the middle stands a profound struggle of faith.

Why do the wicked prosper and apparently not face punishment? Through some kind of experience at the temple in worship, the psalmist comes to a deeper awareness of the closeness and presence of God. Worship of God and theological struggle can coexist in the heart of the believer (see verses 1, 13, 21, and 26).

Next Month: Psalm 18

“Being Christian is a call to go against the current [and] to recognize, welcome, and serve Christ  himself, abandoned in our brothers and sisters.”
—Pope Francis

Like holidays or holy seasons, commemorative months such as Black History Month can fall into the trap of becoming purely symbolic, routine, and thus stripped of their power to transform us. We may even find ourselves a bit fatigued by the repetitive cycles of the calendar year. But by remembering the myriad contributions to society made by African Americans and the immense challenges they have overcome, we may also find new energy and joy by responding to God’s call for us to love and respect one another.

Though the word history is in its name, Black History Month is as much about our nation’s present and perhaps even more about its future—one strengthened by both the rich cultural diversity and the principled unity of its citizens. It’s a time to look back and learn, but it’s also a time to take stock of our society’s health with regard to race relations. As a historical era, the civil rights movement is over, with many historians giving it a date range of 1954 to 1968. But in no way does that mean that the struggle for equality by African Americans and other minorities has ended. In that sense, this movement is a living, breathing one that can continually challenge us.

Where Are We Now?

The first national observance of Black History Month in the United States occurred in 1976. So there’s been quite a bit of time for the month to settle in as an American tradition. Yet a 2017 Gallup poll reported that 42 percent of Americans worry a “great deal” about race relations in the United States. That number was 14 percent when the same poll ran in 2014.

Could the cause be the resurgence and higher visibility of white nationalist groups, their numbers and energy unchecked by apathetic members of the white majority? The footage of a car driven by James Fields Jr. ripping through a crowd of people protesting a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, was terrifying, graphic, and unforgettable. Yet that story, like so many others, faded from the headlines after the news cycle moved on.

The excessive use of force by police on black citizens and other minorities could be a part of the problem as well. One morning last December, while getting ready for work, I saw a story on the news about New York City police officers who forcefully pried a 1-year-old from his mother’s arms at a social services office. The mother, a 23-year-old African American woman named Jazmine Headley, was at the office to renew a childcare benefit. There were no chairs available, so she sat in the corner, holding her son. After an exchange with a security guard, who requested that she move, despite the fact that there was nowhere to sit, police were called, and the incident ensued.

A bystander armed with a cell phone recorded video of the situation and posted it to Facebook, where the story quickly went viral. What’s more disturbing is that we’ve almost come to expect to see these stories in the news. Still, there must be some way to work through these problems as citizens and children of God.

Where Do We Go From Here?

This may all sound like doom and gloom, but God puts things in our paths as individuals and as a society to help us out of this mess. We have all the tools we need to rectify the broken places in our hearts and in our world. The beauty of the Gospel call to build the kingdom of God lies greatly in its simplicity and directness. We need not look much further than the Golden Rule and the beatitudes to guide us and to help cultivate tolerance and compassion in our diverse nations.

We can also look to the words of Pope Francis on racism for inspiration. In a September 2018 speech he gave at the Vatican during a conference called “Xenophobia, Racism, and Populist Nationalism in the Context of Global Migration,” the pope commented on the recent worldwide uptick of racism. “We live in times in which feelings that to many had seemed to be outdated appear to be reemerging and spreading—feelings of suspicion, fear, contempt, and even hatred toward other individuals or groups judged to be different on the basis of their ethnicity, nationality, or religion,” he said. “In Christ, tolerance is transformed into fraternal love, into tenderness, and active solidarity. . . . Indeed, being Christian is a call to go against the current [and] to recognize, welcome, and serve Christ himself, abandoned in our brothers and sisters.”

With the message of the Gospel and the words of Pope Francis resonating in our hearts and minds, we can welcome this year’s Black History Month with a newfound hope for a world healing, not hurting, from the evil of racism. This year, let’s look back, look around, and look forward with spirits ablaze with compassion.

A Franciscan friar and medical ethicist, Father Thomas Nairn helps us understand these hot-button issues and how to address them.

So what does a Franciscan friar know about the top five issues facing the health-care system in the United States? Plenty, if he’s Franciscan Father Thomas Nairn, minister provincial of the Sacred Heart Province of the Order of Friars Minor. He spent 25 years as a consultant to a Catholic health system in Chicago and a decade as the senior director for theology and ethics at the Catholic Health Association before being elected provincial in the summer of 2017.

With a doctorate from the University of Chicago’s Divinity School, four books on medical ethics along with countless essays in scholarly and secular journals, numerous teaching positions throughout the United States, and as a Vatican-appointed assistant to the International Catholic Committee for Nurses and Medical Workers, Father Nairn can speak on health care—and does.

He calls the Catholic Health Association—the largest group of nonprofit health-care providers in the US—”the best of corporate America and the best of Catholicism.” His work as an ethics consultant has taken him around the world and into hospital boardrooms where the nitty-gritty decisions are made, such as whether to treat an immigrant without insurance who needs a bone marrow transplant and how that decision would affect the institution.

The depth and breadth of his experience as a Franciscan ethicist make him uniquely qualified to identify the top five health-care issues facing the Catholic Church.

1. The Affordable Care Act

Dubbed “Obamacare,” the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) became law in March 2010 and the major parts were implemented in 2014. Within Catholic health care, there have been objections to the ACA, especially by many US Catholic bishops.

First, the positives. “The ACA did bring health-care insurance to the poor,” says Father Nairn. “One of the things the Catholic Health Association was very concerned about is that a significant number of bankruptcies were because of unexpected health-care needs, especially with poor families. It was devastating.

“What the ACA was able to do was stabilize that situation; create a situation where more people in this country were insured than ever before,” he says. “That had some very positive effects.” The bishops, however, took issue with other aspects of the ACA, particularly concerning abortion and birth control. “The first one was how the ACA was structured. It didn’t change anything regarding abortion. While the government would not pay for abortion and while the government said that in every state there had to be at least one insurer that would not offer abortion, abortion was still offered within insurance companies as part of the ACA,” says Father Nairn.

“Second was the so-called ‘contraceptive mandate’ for Catholic health care, Catholic universities, everything other than actual churches, ” he says. Third, the ACA failed to provide access to health care to immigrants. For these reasons, the US bishops could not embrace the ACA.

At the same time, under President Donald Trump, “The bishops have been against his trying to destroy the ACA without having something in its place,” he observes. “So interestingly, although they were not in favor of ACA, they are also nervous, because of the number of people insured, that it will simply go back to where it used to be.”

2. Eldercare

According to a May 2018 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics, the US birth rate fell to a 30-year low in 2017. “This country is aging because fewer and fewer Americans are being born, and more and more Americans are living longer,” says Father Nairn. Those 90 and older are the fastest-growing demographic in the United States, he adds.

“This affects all sorts of things ethically,” says Father Nairn. “Sadly, this country has not been very good in respecting its elders. We are sort of a youth-oriented culture. We need to be very respectful of elders; we need to have meaningful lives as we get older.”

Nursing homes have become the way to deal with elderly people, but “sadly, many become abandoned in nursing homes,” he says. “We need to keep people at home as much as possible.” In the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ document “Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services,” of which the sixth edition was made available last June at usccb.org, Father Nairn says the bishops “try to tell us eldercare is a joint effort between patients, family, physicians, and nursing care staff. We need to dialogue about what is truly best for a patient at every stage of life, including the end of life.”

End-of-life issues can be complex and, at times, the Church’s teaching can be misunderstood.

The Catholic tradition has been very clear that life is a valuable gift, and we take reasonable care with it, acknowledging the needs of others.

“And so our whole tradition of so-called extraordinary means has to be understood by people, and sadly I don’t think it is. Many people honestly believe that [we’ve] got to do everything we can to keep a person’s heart beating. That’s never been the Catholic Church’s tradition.”

Father Nairn tells the story of a member of his community who was terrified of dialysis, so much so that he would shake as he walked into the unit. The friar asked if he could stop doing dialysis. “Now for most people, it would be considered ordinary and beneficial, not burdensome, but for him, he was so terrified it became burdensome to the extent that he stopped.” He says there’s no way to make a general rule on ordinary versus extraordinary measures because it differs for each patient. In making these decisions, it is important to acknowledge the “disease is killing the patient, not our decision to treat or not treat,” he adds.

3. Conscience Protection

Conscience protection means health-care providers may not be discriminated against for refusing to be involved in or provide coverage for procedures or treatments that go against their religious beliefs, such as abortion or contraception. Father Nairn believes this will be a major issue within the next five years for both health-care professionals and health-care facilities.

“On the one hand is conscience protection for health-care workers—physicians, nurses, social workers, pharmacists, etc.,” he says. “The second is whether we can talk about conscience protection for an institution such as a Catholic hospital.

“Historically, there are about three or four pieces of legislation that helped deal with the issue of conscience, and basically it dealt with the issue of abortion and contraception, wherein physicians and nurses have legal protection if they, in conscience, felt they could not help with abortion or prescribe contraceptives,” he says. Although this began with physicians and nurses, new questions were raised about what a pharmacist or pharmacy would do if the pharmacist does not want to dispense these things. “That has never been resolved,” he says.

Furthermore, he says, “Over the past five years, and it came from the medical heath-care industry itself, people began raising the questions whether that personal conscience conflicted with a physician’s professional duty to give the patient what the patient wanted, and again especially regarding reproductive issues, contraception, abortion.” Father Nairn adds: “Several philosophical health-care ethicists began raising the question of when professional duty trumps one’s personal conscience. That has not been resolved either.

“So you have a group of ethicists who are saying we have to respect individual consciences, including the conscience of an institution; [and] another group of health-care ethicists, philosophical usually, not theological, are saying we have to acknowledge professional duty and that is the important thing,” he says. “We’re right now in sort of an uneasy truce, but I think it’s going to erupt again soon.”

Pope Francis addressed a delegation from the World Federation of Catholic Medical Associations in May 2018. He urged them to defend the right of conscientious objection for health-care workers. “It is not acceptable that your role be reduced to that of being a simple executor of the will of those who are ill or of the demands of the health-care system in which you work,” he said.

4. Immigration

“Immigration and health care—this is, to me, a sad issue,” Father Nairn says. “Most immigrants coming to this country, especially those from Latin America, are healthier than most Americans,” he says. “The difficulty is that we have this law—it’s been on the books since 1996—that the government will not help them with their health care for five years. By the time the five years [go by], they are sicker than most Americans. Why? Because they have not had access to health care.”

Father Nairn says it would be in the best interest of the United States to “be much more generous and, in the long run, we would save money.” He acknowledged the difficulty for that to happen in the current political climate. “Sadly, immigrants are being vilified. Our own Catholic tradition says we need to welcome the stranger and the alien.”

“I think religiously, ethically, and—interestingly—practically and financially, to have a more compassionate attitude toward immigrants would be in the best interest of all, not only the immigrants but the rest of us as well.”

5. Physician-Assisted Suicide

Physician-assisted suicide is legal in Washington, DC, and seven states: California, Colorado, Hawaii, Montana, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington.

Father Nairn says an attempt to legalize it was done much the way that abortion was legalized in the 1970s, by taking it to the US Supreme Court. “The argument was that to prohibit assisted suicide was against the 14th Amendment, the equal protection clause,” he says. Proponents of physician-assisted suicide argued that if patients have a disease that, left untreated, would kill them, they have the right not to be treated and, therefore, die. Under the 14th Amendment argument, then why wouldn’t patients with a terminal disease—that is not killing them at the present time—have the right to proactively end their life by use of technology, injection, or pills?

“The Supreme Court rejected this argument but did allow states to decide,” says Father Nairn. He points out that many proponents of physician-assisted suicide prefer to call it “medical aid in dying,” a more neutral term because the word suicide makes them “nervous.”

“The Catholic Church obviously has opposed assisted suicide, acknowledging that we simply don’t have the right to kill ourselves,” he says. He believes there has been limited success in Catholics trying to oppose it. In Massachusetts, for example, an attempt was made to get a referendum on assisted suicide. Polls showed two-thirds of people supported it. “That law was not well-written,” says Father Nairn. “And what the Church was able to do was show the flaws in that particular law, and it was narrowly defeated.”

He says the Church did not couch it as a Catholic issue, but instead found allies in other communities. “The coalition building became a way that this was stopped,” he says, adding that he believes that is the “only way this can work.” During its 2017 session, the Maryland General Assembly considered a bill allowing physician-assisted suicide—the “Death with Dignity Act.” Disability-rights advocates joined the coalition against the measure, including former NFL linebacker O.J. Brigance, who has ALS and relies on a computerized voice to communicate. He gave powerful testimony against it in 2015. It was never brought to a vote in 2017.

However, Father Nairn isn’t optimistic about stemming the tide in favor of assisted suicide, and he expects more states to pass legislation allowing it. “What Catholic health care needs to do and has done is ultimately show that it is not necessary,” he says. “If we are against assisted suicide, we need to show that we will not abandon patients at the end of life. We need to show that patients will be kept as pain-free as possible.”

Ten or 15 years ago, the physician-assisted suicide movement focused on intractable pain. Today, fewer than 25 percent of patients who want physician-assisted suicide give pain as a reason, Father Nairn says. “Pain management is much better today than it was even eight to 10 years ago,” he says. “So to keep a patient pain-free is possible.”

He says the two major reasons proponents give are “autonomy—’It’s my right and I should be able to choose it if I want to’—and secondly, ‘I don’t want to be a burden to my family.’ If we as Catholics want to show people that assisted suicide is not the answer, those are the questions we have to answer.

“I think we’ve shown well [through] palliative care that the pain issue does not have to be an issue. Secondly, that people in their old age or in illness are not a burden to family, or perhaps even better, that as Christians we bear one another’s burdens. Thirdly, that while people might have a right under the law to assisted suicide, is that really the best way to end one’s life? Are there things that other people might need to learn from us even as we approach death, that we are basically robbing them [of], by short-circuiting the process?”

As individuals, health-care institutions, and governments continue to wrestle with these issues, the Catholic Church offers much-needed perspective and values. As provincial, Father Nairn will continue to add his voice, bringing his expertise as a medical ethicist and his Franciscan values to the discussion.

“Our mission is to permeate our society with Gospel values,” Father Nairn says. “We are to be instruments of change and heralds of peace in a broken world, serving all people, especially the poor and marginalized, through reconciliation and healing.”

For Catholic Health-Care Systems, the Prognosis Looks Good

WHEN LOOKING AT THE FUTURE of Catholic health care, Father Nairn believes Catholic hospitals might fare better than their secular counterparts by drawing on the mission and values that have anchored them throughout their history.

“When Catholic hospitals began, they were places for the poor, Mother [Frances Xavier] Cabrini being one of the major ones behind that,” says Father Nairn. “It was a place where immigrants could feel comfortable going.” Now a saint, the Italian-born nun began her ministry in the United States when she founded two hospitals in New York City in the late 1800s.

At that time, hospitals were smaller and more personal. “There was no high tech, so they were places of care,” he says. “With the 20th century, you had the burgeoning of high tech—X-rays, MRIs, and more costly medicine. As that occurred, Catholic hospitals and their secular counterparts changed their business models and became, in a lot of ways, big business. Some even lost their understanding of the need to take care of the poor, and they became almost indistinguishable from their secular counterparts.

“What has happened in the past 40 years is we have kept the business model of giving the best care possible, but the mission imperative has become very strong again. I’ve been very impressed working with Catholic hospitals. They are very concerned about the poor and Catholic values.”

He believes that the corporate model must include the Catholic model where management and staff both know and live Catholic values. He foresees less need for hospitals in the future as more is being done on an outpatient basis. Health systems must confront the competing values of responding to the needs of the community and doing it as leanly as possible.

Catholic hospitals can draw on their history and values in meeting the challenges that lie ahead. “I think Catholic hospitals might be in a better place than for-profits to deal with these issues,” Father Nairn says.

In Lent, we find both the challenge and the opportunity to look inward, acknowledge our shortcomings, and ask for God’s pardon so that we may more fully embrace our loving Creator.

As we enter Lent, we are reminded that we are “dust to dust” and “ashes to ashes.” After a year full of sorrows such as the separation of families at the US border, destructive wildfires, mass shootings, war and famine in Yemen, refugees fleeing Syria, and much of the world’s suffering that frequently goes without notice if it is not in our own backyard, I am ready for a season of somber humility. Lent offers an invitation, as is our faith’s custom, to pray, to say I am sorry, and to go hungry once in a while knowing that others do so often. And I do so with genuine grief—but not without hope.

Coming on the heels of a season of joyous festivity, from Christmas and New Year’s to Mardi Gras, Lent is an opportunity to cleanse the palate so that we can taste all—the bitter and the sweet. This season calls us to witness the good and the bad—and to own our own responsibility and potential for being agents of both.

Whether we contribute to suffering through our human capacity for making mistakes and selfishness or experience pain and loss as one of earth’s vulnerable creatures, we must also see the other side of things, the yes/and of living this life. While we are capable of doing so much harm, we also are gifted with the power to be and act in ways of compassion and to receive the abundant blessings of a benevolent God.

Lent is about looking deeply within and simultaneously experiencing gravity and wonder. In my book Wondrous Encounters: Scripture for Lent, I describe the invitation to know ourselves and God more fully: There are two moments that matter. One is when you know that your one and only life is absolutely valuable and alive. The other is when you know your life, as presently lived, is entirely pointless and empty.

You need both of them to keep you going in the right direction. Lent is about both. The first such moment gives you energy and joy by connecting you with your ultimate Source and Ground. The second gives you limits and boundaries, and a proper humility, so you keep seeking the Source and Ground and not just your small self.

Human and Divine

St. Teresa of Avila said that we find God in ourselves, and we find ourselves in God. Authentic spirituality seeks to facilitate this knowing of self and God. I believe that only when humans realize and embrace their wholeness—their smallness and their greatness at the same time—will there be any in-depth transformation.

Lent is about being human and divine. Though we are made of dust, we are called to participate in the divine creative dance.

Jesus showed us how to walk the human-divine path through self-emptying. It is the journey of death and resurrection, with life taking ever new shapes and forms. Even as we face our little ego deaths, we trust that resurrection inevitably follows if we walk through fall and winter. New beginnings invariably come from old falsities that are allowed to die. We know that the story ends in resurrection. After Lent, Easter! Weeping may endure for the night, but joy comes in the morning (Ps 30:6).

Author Cynthia Bourgeault wrote in her book The Holy Trinity and the Law of Three: “Don’t be afraid of darkness, of the things that look like they’re going in the wrong direction. The soul has to go through this overwhelm. So often I realize the difficulty was exactly the thing that needed to happen in order for there to be clarity.” Trust that even when it seems our world is moving backward—away from justice and peace—this friction can help us discover a new way forward.

Desire to be Transformed

The word Lent comes from the Old English lencten, or springtime. Resurrection is not a one-time anomaly in the body of Jesus, but the pattern of reality. The Trinitarian flow is mirrored in every atom and circulatory system, the change of seasons and substances, and all the orbits and cycles of the stars, planets, and galaxies. We are a dynamic universe echoing a very dynamic God.

Most of us were taught that God would love us if and when we change. In fact, God loves us so that we can change. Loved people have the courage and the energy to imagine new things. The experience of being loved creates in us the desire to be transformed. Yes, even the desire is a gift.

Even as I rub ashes on parishioners’ foreheads and do my own deep shadow work, I am also grateful, remembering and anticipating transformation. I celebrate the moments and undergirding constancy of Grace. I give thanks for the people and things that have touched me with love, that have nurtured my True Self. I pray you, too, may know how absolutely valuable you are within the context of the bigger Life and Love.

This Ash Wednesday, we will hear again that we are “dust to dust” and “ashes to ashes.” Each moment is precious. How will you spend these 40 days? The rest of your life? We must not stop the flow, but we must give mercy away as freely as it comes to us—so that it multiplies and spreads to many others. How might you be a conduit for mercy in this season of Lent? What practices could help you clear the channels of heart, mind, and body, to let love flow more freely through you and from you?

Thank you for being part of this journey, for not losing heart or giving up, but choosing hope. Thank you for doing the hard task of facing shadows, both within and without, and bringing them to Love’s light. Thank you for being dust and ashes whose DNA holds Divine Presence—you can’t help it; it’s who you are!—and carrying this responsibility with humility and joy.