And We Will Become a Happy Ending

Tonight I am thinking about Lent and death and preparation and sin and salvation and hope and the cross. Last week on Ash Wednesday, I went to church and spent most of the evening service trying to still my squirming three-year-old. I came wanting more than a physical reminder of the season I was entering into, hoping to feel my heart realign, my brain calm, and my soul still, but all I left with was a smudged black cross on my head and an over-tired daughter.

I went to a Catholic school for nine years and always liked the Ash Wednesday Mass that marked the beginning of Lent. I think it was because it was one of the few rituals of the Catholic church that I could fully take part in as a Baptist. Unlike Communion, I didn't have to wait in a pew by myself while everyone else rose and formed a line in front of the priest; I got to be a part of the line, feel the priest's thick thumb on my forehead, and then, walk through the school halls proudly marked and sealed for God. But even so, I have always been unable to understand Lent. More to the point, I think, is that I have been unable to understand the meaning of Easter. All that blood and hammering, Jesus' sacrifice and sinner's repentance, the empty tomb, the running women, have often left me cold and guilty, wondering at my doubt and lack of feeling. The older I have become and the more I have learned, the less I remember my need for the cross. Sin has become palatable, and Jesus, embarrassingly dramatic.

I am so forgetful: bills go unpaid, emails unanswered, library books unreturned. I forget that people are starving, that injustice abounds, that we are consuming the earth to death. I forget that God loves me, made the world, speaks daily. I forget that what I see is not as real as what I don't see. I forget that I was once twelve, twenty-two, that one day I will die.

This week, I was on my way to a play when my phone rang. My mom told me that my Grandpa was dying and that I had better go to the hospital immediately. So I did and sat in his room in my fishnet stockings and pointy black shoes with the bows. I held his hand, stroked his forehead, and for a moment felt like a mother to a ninety one year old man as I tried to breathe courage and kindness into a fearful boy on the edge of a frightening journey. He passed in and out of sleep and I knew for a moment, just a moment, (already it's dull in my mind) that soon it would be me: grey, toothless and weak, surrounded by family and helpless to do anything else but die. And I was so furious at the stupidity of death and the brokenness of our lives - the lies and strivings and failings and betrayals and weaknesses and sin. I was so sorry that this man was dying, had to die, could do nothing else but die, and that we would all come to this same point, eventually.

He died at 6:30 Wednesday morning and will be buried on Monday. I do not understand any better where he is today, or why exactly blood pays for blood, but I have remembered, even for just a moment, that death, like sin, kills love and goodness and beauty and that I do not want this to be true. I do not want to believe that death is the last word. This Lent I will pray, "God, oh God. Jesus, oh Lord, thank you," and do my best to remember that Easter is coming, Easter is coming! that Jesus is alive; we have not been forgotten.