“Ring around the rosy, pocket full of posies, ashes, ashes, we all fall down.”
When we hear that simple little rhyme that goes along with a child’s game the last thing that comes into our mind is a devastating plague. But, as we all quickly discover, looks can be deceiving. It is thought that this rhyme dates back to the time of the bubonic plague; the ‘ring around the rosy’ described the bubo, or lesion that developed as a symptom. Ashes spoke of the almost certain death for one so afflicted and the truth that, eventually, “we all fall down.” Morbid? No. It’s an attempt to overcome devastation and panic in the face of something we can’t control. It’s a means, like comedy or any number of things we use, to try to manage our rather unmanageable world.
Now when I think of that rhyme my mind goes back to September 11, 2001 and the billowing, choking clouds of dust and ash that came from those devastated buildings. Ashes, ashes, all fall down. Annie Dillard captures something of the mood and spirit that sometimes overtakes us when we confront the ashes of our world.
Ashes, ashes, all fall down. How could I have forgotten? Didn’t I see the heavens wiped shut just yesterday, on the road walking? Didn’t I fall from the dark of the stars to these senselit and noisome days? The great ridged granite millstone of time is illusion, for only the good is real; the great ridged granite millstone of space is illusion, for god is spirit and worlds his flimsiest dreams: but the illusions are almost perfect, are apparently perfect for generations on end, and the pain is also, and undeniably, real. The pain within the millstones’ pitiless turning is real, for our love for each other – for the world and all the products of extension – is real, vaulting, insofar as it is love, beyond the plane of the stones’ sickening churn and arcing to the realm of spirit bare. And you can get caught holding one end of a love, when your father drops, and your mother; when a land is lost, or a time, and your friend blotted out, gone, your brother’s body spoiled, and cold, your infant dead, and you dying: you reel out love’s long line alone, stripped like a live wire loosing its sparks to a cloud, like a live wire loosed in space to longing and grief everlasting.
Dillard’s words are powerful, but as she reels out the line she forgets that the one whose dream is our reality is also the source of love and waits for us. Out of the ashes of sorrow, of disappointment, when things seem gritty and ground to dust, that’s when we send out a line to God who catches it and who knows, because God cared enough to become one of us. Looks can be deceiving and God can come in ways we can’t even begin to imagine.
Did you know that the World Trade Center held millions of dollars in gold down in its deep vaults? There were also millions of dollars in jewels there as well. In the midst of all those ashes, there was treasure. So it is with our lives. Gold gleams inside us in our will to do the right and to be loving people. The light dances on the jewels of our hopes and dreams. And the gold and jewels within us glitters even when they’re shrouded in ashes.
Sometimes ashes indicate that something’s been reduced to it essential nature. Perhaps we need the ashes to remind us that things aren’t what they seem, that looks can often be deceiving and that God can do wonders in the midst of the ashes of our lives. Perhaps, too, we need those ashes to remind us of who we are and of what we’re made, so that we can get on with the business of growing into what we’re destined to become – united with God.
Lent is a season of reflection, reconsideration, stocktaking, and priority making. Use the season to find the treasure of your heart – that is your heart. Use it to discover that things aren’t what they seem and that those ashes might just be concealing a treasure or be fertilizer for the next stage of your growth. Walk with Christ the path of the Passion and see the eternal now become present to you.
You see, Lent is more than “give ups;” there are take ups, too. Taking up a renewed commitment to live our lives toward God and away from fear, or hurt, or jealousy can make for a holy Lent. For that matter, learning to realize, as Sam Wells has so brilliantly shown in his book GOD’S COMPANIONS, that we are to realize the abundance we have and not be constantly thinking that everything is scarce. Taking up the right attitude, the attitude that looks to God and others, and away from self, can make all of the difference in how we live, but also in how we feel. Taking up the opening of the treasures of our lives to the world around us
Taking up a spiritual discipline for the 40 days of Lent can tune us up and make our lives more effective witnesses to the love of God, which this whole season is about. Lent calls us to be a bit more systematic in our daily prayer and Bible reading, or in attending services of worship. We have a tremendous heritage in the Anglican tradition, the BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER. We don’t need a lot of special books on reading the Bible and prayer – use the Prayer Book. The offices of Morning and Evening Prayer are designed to plunge us into Scripture. If you do the Psalms as they are set up in the BCP you’ll do all 150 every month. Working through the assigned readings will take you through the Old Testament once and the New Testament twice in the year. All by taking just a few minutes morning and evening to step aside and give some intentional time to God. Add to that doing an intentional “good deed” and we may set the stage for a whole new way of seeing ourselves and those around us.
Putting our lives into the midst of God’s life is far more important than making a tick next to successfully avoiding chocolate for 40 days. After all, as the great father of the early Church, Irenaeus told us, “God’s glory, human beings fully alive.” Truly, God GLORIES in us, that’s why Jesus came among us. Lenten discipline is designed to make up more fully alive to God. The ashes we will receive are signs of a renewed commitment to be God’s people, and to follow Christ’s way. Out of ashes good things can rise.
Ashes can be deceiving, indeed. I was in New York and saw a new building that rose where the World Trade Center stood. A single, taller, tower marks the spot and life continues afresh. “Ring around the rosy, pocket full of posies, ashes, ashes we all fall down.” Ah, but for the Christian we discover that there is a different end to the rhyme. We may fall down, but we get up. We are a Resurrection people. Have a blessed and fruitful Lent.