ash

Have you read about the Homeland Security Council's hearings scheduled to begin tomorrow? Or did you see the front page article in the New York Times yesterday about the crowds gathering around one woman's anti-Muslim message?

It's discouraging to be working so hard on understanding the religious traditions, symbols, and discourse that intersect in today's global context - to have my nose in books aiming me at being better able to advocate for religious understanding - and then to come across such rampant, unbridled instances of religious misunderstanding (and ignorance!) being amplified by pundits and political figures.

I say "unbridled", but that's not true. Both articles that I linked to above effectively bridle the mis-placed slant that is being unambiguously applied to American Muslims. And there is plenty more critique, thank God. I say "unbridled" because I haven't done anything to rein it back. Unbridled, as of yet, by me.

So consider this my contribution to the pursuit of religious understanding. (It is a thing that we pursue, by the way, regardless of how impossible it may be to ultimately attain.) Today is Ash Wednesday. It is a day more or less designed to humble us (the Christian population of the world) and remind us of our finitude; remind us that we are not and do not possess, in any conclusive form, the answer to the human situation.

Today I have an ashen cross on my forehead. I have tear stains on my cheeks. I have a heavy heart. I heard this poem (by a Muslim mystic), and it helped:

Troubled?

Then stay with me, for I am not.

Lonely?

A thousand naked amorous ones dwell in ancient caves beneath my eyelids.

Riches?

Here’s a pick,

my whole body is an emerald that begs,

“Take me.”

Write all that worries you on a piece of parchment;

offer it to God.

Even from the distance of a millennium

I can lean the flame in my heart

into your life

and turn

all that frightens you

into holy

incense

ash.