Ash Wednesday

On this Ash Wednesday, just a few days after the 11th anniversary of my sister Caity’s birth into eternal life, I find myself thinking about the day of her funeral and burial.  After the Mass of Resurrection and a brief prayer service at the cemetery chapel, the ceremonies were supposed to be over.  The priest said a few closing words and we were told to disperse, trailing away towards the impossible effort of putting our lives back together without our rainbow girl, the light of our lives.  

I stood in that cemetery chapel, stunned and angry, certain of what I needed to do.  I approached the cemetery workers responsible for the actual burial and I said, “I’m her sister.  I will be coming with you.”  Somehow, it felt essential to be there, to see my sister’s body lowered into the ground.  Like so many things in those days of her dying and death, I just knew what I had to do, and it didn’t matter if it was logical or the thing you were supposed to do.  Somehow, fiercely, I trusted my gut, my body.  And my body knew I had to see her precious body all the way back into Mother Earth.  

So on that snowy, cold day in February, I stood, with my partner, and a couple of my siblings, shivering and sobbing, until we could no longer see Caitlin’s casket, until the edges of her human body were completely surrendered to Earth, her Mother and mine, the ground from which she came.  

I guess I’m thinking of it because today this instinct of mine, to go all the way into earth with Caity, makes sense.  This is what you’re “supposed” to do on Ash Wednesday.  This is a day we get to acknowledge mortality, and death, the final turning, and the reality that one day, the circle will be complete for all of us– we will return to the ground from which we came.  Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.  

That certainty– that we all will die, that we came from Mama Earth and will return to Her arms, for me, is so immensely freeing.  When I remember, when I return to this truth, I can relax into Her arms.  Like watching Caity lowered into Her body, this return brings me all the way down into the ground of my being, that space within me that is the total emptiness of surrender– thy will be done– and utter fullness, one in the same.  It is the freedom of giving all the way in to grief those years after Caity died.  It is the unfathomable joy of experiencing her resurrection, the dawn and ongoing reality of Caity Christ, the way her love continues, inexplicably, beyond the duration of her human life and body.  Going all the way down, for me, gave birth to an entirely new way of living.  

Over time I’ve come to realize that this is resurrection.  This is the death that gives birth to new life– happening all around us in the natural world and as those we love surrender their final breath.  Bodies diminish and die, but strength of spirit and the presence of love remains.  And it is happening within us– the many identities of our egos, of how we think things “should” be, are constantly dying to give way to what really is, to what wants to rise.

Lent is a time of return– to the ground of our being.  It is an opportunity to go all the way in, to surrender and release our holds in whole new ways.  Sometimes life does it to us, and we cling to unfolding grace.  Sometimes we have to choose to step in, to see and live differently, to turn towards the love always turning towards us.  

May this Lent be a blessed path of return.  May we trust our bodies and the body of Earth, our Mother, all the way down.