Fairlawn Avenue United Church
Online Ash Wednesday Service
Wednesday, March 2

Rev. Douglas duCharme
Eleanor Daley, Director of Music
Readers:
Mary Ellen Richardson
Elaine Perkins
Jill Klaehn
Jan Schlee
Amanda Hancox
Liberty Leonard

old paper with type text ASH

Music and Reading selections from our Ash Wednesday worship service that took place live via Zoom.

Come and Find the Quiet Centre

Reading – Mary Ellen Richardson:  Selection from Gilead by Marianne Robinson

Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson, is the story of a 76-year-old Iowa pastor, reflecting on his life for the sake of his young son, born to him in his old age. In one passage, the pastor recalls a moment from his own childhood when he watched the community come together to help take down a church that had been struck by lightning. They have one day to do this before harvest, and that day happens to bring pouring rain.

The narrator describes taking shelter from the rain with the other young children under a wagon, while the grownups worked. Then he writes:

The ashes turned liquid in the rain and the men who were working in the ruins got entirely black and filthy, till you would hardly know one from another. My father brought me some biscuit that had soot on it from his hands. “Never mind,” he said, “there’s nothing cleaner than ash.” But it affected the taste of that biscuit, which I thought might have tasted like the bread of affliction, which was often mentioned in those days, though it’s mostly forgotten now.

…. I remember my father down on his heels in the rain, water dripping from his hat, feeding me that biscuit from his scorched hand, with the old blackened wreck of a church behind him and steam rising where the rain fell on embers, the rain falling in gusts and the women singing “The Old Rugged Cross” while they saw to things, moving so gently, as if they were dancing to the hymn, almost. … It was so joyful and sad. I mention it again because it seems to me much of my life was comprehended in that moment. Grief itself has often returned me to that morning, when I took communion from my father’s hand. I remember it as communion, and I believe that’s what it was.

In this scene, in the midst of a blackened wreck, ashes mix with rain, and a biscuit becomes a holy moment, a sacrament.

Reading – Elaine Perkins: Music Miserere Mei

A traditional scripture reading for Ash Wednesday is the penitential psalm, Psalm 51 – today, rather than read it, we will hear it sung in the Latin text Miserere Mei

by the Renaissance composer Gregorio Allegri. It was composed during the 1630s, for the exclusive use of the Sistine Chapel during the Tenebrae services of Holy Week. A mystique grew up around this piece because it was forbidden to copy the music and it was performed only at those particular services at the Sistine Chapel.

Just three authorized copies of the work were in existence prior to 1770 when, according to the popular story (backed by family letters), at fourteen years of age Mozart first heard the piece during the Holy Week services and, later that day, wrote it down entirely from memory, returning to the Sistine Chapel on Good Friday to make minor corrections. However, an element of doubt remains about this story.

As we listen, the English words of Psalm 51 will appear as well. They are the cry of a person struggling to find the courage to pray. Yet, for all the anguish and remorse in the words, there’s also a sense of relief.

Miserere Mei  Gregorio Allegri
VOCES8

Reading – Jill Klaehn:  Psalm 90

Eternal and Immortal One,
you have been our refuge in all generations.
Before the mountains were brought forth,
before you had formed the earth and the world,
from everlasting to everlasting
You are the Alpha and the Omega.

When our days on earth are ended,
You welcome us home to your Heart,
to the city of light, where time is eternal
and days are not numbered.
You gather those who love you as friends
returning from a long journey,
giving rest to their souls.
You anoint them with the balm of understanding,
healing wounds of the past.

For our days on earth are a mystery,
a searching after you
a yearning for the great mystery
to make itself known.

The years pass and soon the harvest is at hand
a time to reap the fruits of one’s life.

Who has lived with integrity?
Who will reflect the Light?
Who can bear the radiant beams of Love?
Who have reverenced the Counsellor,
and opened their hearts to the Spirit of Truth?

Teach us, O Beloved, to honour each day
that we may have a heart of wisdom.

In God Alone

Reading – Jan Schlee:  Blessing the Dust by Jan Richardson

All those days
you felt like dust,
like dirt,
as if all you had to do
was turn your face
toward the wind
and be scattered
to the four corners
or swept away
by the smallest breath
as insubstantial—
Did you not know
what the Holy One
can do with dust?
This is the day
we freely say
we are scorched.
This is the hour
we are marked
by what has made it
through the burning.
This is the moment
we ask for the blessing
that lives within
the ancient ashes,
that makes its home
inside the soil of
this sacred earth.
So let us be marked
not for sorrow.
And let us be marked
not for shame.
Let us be marked
not for false humility
or for thinking
we are less
than we are
but for claiming
what God can do
within the dust,
within the dirt,
within the stuff
of which the world
is made,
and the stars that blaze
in our bones,
and the galaxies that spiral
inside the smudge
we bear.
– Jan Richardson

Hear My Prayer, O Lord         Henry Purcell (1659-1695)

Reading – Amanda Hancox:  The Ashes  by: Unknown

O God, blessed mother of the universe,
We are your sacred children.
O God, blessed teacher and guide,
We are your sacred children.
O God, blessed wind and holy breath,
We are your sacred children.

Journeying on our many roads, we gather here.
We bring our life.
Raising a city from the dust,
We bring our love.
Gathering in our homes,
We bring our light.

In this place, on a day of ashes,
We bring our pain.
Where a light will leap to the heavens,
We bring our fear.
Where ashes will fall,
We acknowledge our mortality.

Where dust and ash will join,
We bring our love.
Take all that keeps us from burning brightly;
Free our hearts.
Take all that keeps us from loving fully;
Free our hearts.
Inspire and fill us with hope and boldness;
Renew our Spirit.

Reading – Liberty Leonard

It is a strange anointing, this cross that comes to mark us as Lent begins. Ashes, dust, dirt: the stuff we walk upon, that we sweep away, that we work to get rid of, now comes to remind us who we are, where we are from, where we are bound.

Ash Wednesday invites us to come back to earth.
To wonder at the gift of life, my life, our life
with the earth, the shared body of our existence.

These ashes were once trees and shrubs, full of life.           
Now they are black and grey. Dry. Lifeless.

But mixed with the waters of our baptism

they help the seeds of God’s new life take deeper root in us
and bring forth the fruits of justice, peace, and generosity.

These are ashes worth wearing.

May we accept this gift, and be blessed.
For from the burnt ashes will spring the green shoot of life
rooted in God’s unending love.

Imposition of Ashes

Closing Words – Rev. Douglas duCharme:  Rend Your Heart      by: Jan Richardson

To receive this blessing,
all you have to do
is let your heart break.
Let it crack open.
Let it fall apart
so that you can see
its secret chambers,
the hidden spaces
where you have hesitated to go.

Your entire life
is here, inscribed whole
upon your heart’s walls:
every path taken
or left behind,
every face you turned toward
or turned away,
every word spoken in love
or in rage,
every line of your life
you would prefer to leave
in shadow,
every story that shimmers
with treasures known
and those you have yet
to find.

It could take you days
to wander these rooms.
Forty, at least.

And so let this be
a season for wandering
for trusting the breaking
for tracing the tear
that will return you

to the One who waits
who watches
who works within
the rending
to make your heart
whole.                         – Jan Richardson

Benediction

And now, beloved friends,
we all are being made new

by the light and love that made us.

Go, therefore,

and share the light and love within you

with those you meet along your path.

Amen.

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