Mothering Mortality

For as long as I can remember Lent has been my favorite liturgical season. There is just something about spending forty days intentionally preparing, and being presently aware of the paschal mystery that takes place between Palm Sunday and the Easter resurrection that I can’t ever quite get over. I recall my childhood Holy Weeks of hearing the book slam in the darkness of a Tenebrae service. Watching adults sheepishly taking their socks and shoes off in public, an action that as a child felt natural and liberating, not vulnerable and embarrassing. The heavy wooden cross that appeared on Good Friday where I normally knelt to get communion. Memorizing my Easter Godly Play stories in high school on the quietness of Holy Saturday. Reading over the words, “And on Saturday it was so quiet you could almost hear the earth breathing,” I hoped that all my Saturdays might contain a little bit of such quietness. To be able to hear the earth inhale, and to have the time to listen at least once a week would be a gift. A candle light vigil, and the great noise of Easter morning ring in the joy of resurrection that round out the week that I simultaneously want to live in all the time, and know that I can’t emotionally or spiritually bear more than once a year.

This liturgical roller coaster of a faith walk begins where it does every year, with Ash Wednesday. A service set apart, in both feeling and actual liturgical action. Even veteran clergy review the service in their offices in the preceding weeks, making sure their ministerial muscle memory can recall the order of all the moving parts of the service. Altar Guilds search high and low for the ashes saved from last year, perhaps to be mixed with freshly scorched palm branches from last year’s triumphant procession. Christians around the world prepare for the day, and those in the American context who plan to participate pay particular attention to how they will squeeze a service into their busy schedules. Then there is the pondering one must do regarding how long to keep the ashen mark on our foreheads. There is no set rule for this, and sometimes I think people are disappointed to hear they have to discern for themselves how long they desire to walk around marked in such a way. Some will, if not fully understand, at least connect the dots to the religious day and won’t ask questions. Some will helpfully let you know that you’ve got something on your forehead. Most however, will simply stare. While there are plenty of joys and obstacles to being a clergy person I consider this day to come with a certain amount of ease. We walk around in collars, officiate services while wearing unusual garb, and frequently perform acts that modern day society has deemed if not unnecessary, then at least odd. I haven’t noticed much of an increase in attention when walking around with the added mark on Ash Wednesday. It isn’t as notable for me to do weird or strange things, it’s just par for the course. In this sense it is, or should be, a humbling day for those of us who are ordained. It reminds us of what we’re really asking our congregations to do in the public square, not just this day, but every day as Christians. We’re so used to standing out it is good to remember what it’s like to be that vulnerable with our faith out in the world. It is of course not us, but God who is really asking them to do it, but it’s important we acknowledge their efforts and walk with them with more patience than we’re always inclined to do.

Ash Wednesday itself is of course not only meant to plunge us into Lent, but to remind us of our mortality. "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return,” we hear as the smudges of black are placed on our foreheads. It is not new information, and probably not a shock to hearers, but it is one of the few times we acknowledge or openly talk about our eventual death. While our bodies are made up of complicated biochemical systems, they are still fragile, still susceptible to all sorts and conditions of danger and peril. Medical advances can prolong life for almost a limitless amount of time, but no one yet to date has completely avoided humanity’s universal end. Everything that has life, will eventually die. That is simply the nature of our world as it is. Dust to dust.

                Ash Wednesday this year was a little different for me. It was my first as a priest, and it was my first service in a new congregation. Those two factors alone should have made the day unforgettable, but it was something else entirely that made the day significant. I was sitting at my desk reading over my sermon before the service. I was tired, and feeling anxious about the evening at hand. Then, deep in my belly I felt my baby move for the first time. It was light and fluttery, undeniable, and yet I probably would have missed it if I hadn’t been sitting in the still and quiet of my office. Tears of joy followed, as well as the reality of the life inside me, which could no longer hide as an abstract idea. I won’t forget that moment. It’s already etched into memory, along with all the other moments that define who and what I am. “Today of all days though?” I thought to myself. This day, meant to evoke a recognition of mortality and death, had suddenly been bombarded with life, even if only in secret.

And this was a welcomed gift. Death and emptiness had filled my womb before. Out of all the feast and fast days, Ash Wednesday wasn’t one I needed a reminder of. For a time Ash Wednesday had encompassed me for a whole season. “Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming, it is near-- a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness! Like blackness spread upon the mountains,” one reading for the day goes. It’s one thing to be aware of our own final rest, but something else entirely to carry someone else’s. To be a creature’s Garden of Eden beginning and final resting place is devastating at worst and humbling at best. Perpetually a fragrant, sweet refuge and a hewed stony memorial simultaneously.  The new life I felt move inside certainly brought joy beyond measure, and wonder and awe. But it also reminded of the fragility of life, of how precious and small time on this earth can be. Even as the flutters diminished back into a quiet afternoon, I was well aware of how much more nurturing this baby needs before birth, let alone the unpredictable journey they will face once born. This is to say nothing of the craving to feel the movements again, and again and again, as soon and as often as possible. It might be the only clear and true sign of resurrection I’ve ever needed. I know Easter is real because I’ve seen it, felt it in my own body, and have heard the whisper escape my own lips, “Alleluia.”

Hymns and other words of my tradition have taken on new meaning in this pregnancy. Every song is judged by how well I can sing it on my own without accompaniment, and if its low hum will resonate lovingly as a late night lullaby when the time comes. Hymns about the hidden characteristic of God transpose into the mystery of the relationship of mother and unborn child. Thomas Aquinas’ 14^th century hymn is one such treasure,

           Humbly I adore thee, Verity unseen,
           who thy glory hidest, ‘neath these shadows mean,
           lo, to thee surrendered, my whole heart is bowed,
           tranced as it beholds thee, shrined within the cloud.

Even as continued doctor appointments provide images and heartbeat sounds, even as the flutters become stronger in the weeks to come, there is considerable time in-between that is still so full of mystery concerning this new and longed for relationship. This mystery will only continue. From pregnancy to the raising of an infant, then toddler, child, teenager, and adult, the mystery will only grow deeper. It’s an unpredictable work, sometimes with confusion and frustration, even heartache, but never with regret.

I try to only hold onto hope, and not the fear of how long this baby still has to go before they can safely live in our world outside of me. Yet, I cannot escape the death that eventually faces us all. All the love that I can hold isn’t enough to keep even this Love from being mortal, at least not in bodily form. I pray this Love stays strong and true, until long after I’ve already met my own end. But even so, I’ve been changed, marked, not with ashes that wash off with warm water, but with the mark of one who has held life and death and life again. On Ash Wednesday we hear, “You are but dust, and to dust you shall return.” But it is in our burial rite that we finally hear the whole story,

                          "For so did you ordain when you created me, saying,
                          'You are dust, and to dust you shall return.' All of us go down
                           to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia,
                           alleluia, alleluia."

                                       Baby Gonzalez 20 weeks 6 days. Due August 2019