Dear Ones of St. Columba's,

Earlier this week I attended a memorial gathering for an old friend of mine - a peer of Andrew's and mine from our days as musicians in Seattle's indie music scene. Many of us who gathered to remember this person hadn't seen each other for many years, as life has taken us out of the heady days of rock shows and music making and into different worlds that for many of us include spouses, jobs, children and something that more closely resembles the adulthood we roundly rejected in our twenties. It was weird and wonderful to reconnect. I had more than one conversation about how different it is to be in one's 40's and mourning a death of one of our own. Especially considering how two decades ago in our 20's most of us lived like we would never die. 

There is a truth that lives in every human life, and that lurks in every human body: one day each one of us will die. We are mortal, and this baseline reality is not a thing that anyone can ultimately escape or deny. There are times I can hardly believe this truth - times when life beats in my chest with a vibrancy that seems eternal. And there are times when death seems like it is everywhere and just around the corner. Times like the funerals of a peer, gone too soon from alcoholism. Times like Thursday morning, waking up to the news that Europe is once again home to war. 

On Wednesday night, when it was very clear that Ukraine would soon be the sight of needless bloodshed, a friend said out loud "what does anything mean, anymore? What actually matters in the face of this?" And I heard it - I heard the weary frustration at the contemplation of more suffering, violence, death, and hardship being visited on innocent people. I heard the lurking fear underneath - that our lives will end without anything getting better. 

Next week is Ash Wednesday, the day that marks the beginning of the season of Lent. It is the day we mark our foreheads with ashes and hear the priest say "Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return." It could be discouraging, this day. It might seem redundant, this reminder. It is not difficult to remember that we are mortal, these days. In a world marked by pandemic deaths, war deaths, deaths from addiction, poverty, and so much more. We get it. We're all going to die.

So why set aside a day to remember? Why the first day of Lent? 

I think it is because mortality lends meaning to life. God came and lived with us and died with us. Spending time with the reality of my mortality, as frightening and uncomfortable as it can feel, helps me remember what is important and why I am grateful to be alive. I want to be alive - I want to get everything I can out of this temporary gift, and that "everything" is best experienced in how I love, how I share, how I trust. Not in how I hoard, or consume, or numb out. Mortality is an invitation to truly live. 

This Sunday we will hear about the transfigured Jesus. And then on Tuesday if you like, have pancakes and wear your Mardi Gras beads and say Alleluia as many times as you want. And then on Weds come to worship with us, and receive the ashes on your forehead. Soak up the reality that you were part of this world in invisible and inevitable ways before you were born and you will return to dust after your death. Breathe deeply the gift of life: temporary, fragile, painful, and glorious. Choose for a season to use this life to pursue Jesus, and walk with him toward the Cross.

And then live the Season of Lent - following the One who lived and died with us. The One who promises us that we will be held through death and beyond. It is a journey, and I am grateful that we can walk it together.

We are all going to die. Let's live, and love, and build a world worthy of each one of these temporary and beautiful human lives.

with care and gratitude,

Alissa