I WRITE THIS on Ash Wednesday of this year — the most somber day of the Christian church year: the day we face not only our sins, but the very fact of our death. For we are, as the Psalmist said, like grass: we’re here today, gone tomorrow. We receive ashes for penance for our sins, but also so we can “remember that [we] are dust, and to dust [we] shall return.” Dust and ashes. That’s our fate, without exception. We all go down to the grave and need each other at times of loss. As Roman Catholics ask, “pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.”
But for all Christians, the story does not stop there.
We are now in Lent, a time of penitence, of resting in this cold and even sometimes snowy part of the year. My husband was walking around downtown as I wrote this.
He rides the bus system regularly for his errands and for fun, so he knows all of Clallam Transit’s many schedules and he knows its traffic flows. He remarked on how the weather (cold and snowy and very gray) caused people “to get home early and hunker.”
He said that it felt safe, somehow, safer than normally, anyway.
I know what he meant. I went to church for Ash Wednesday services that night, and texted him to let him know I had arrived safe. Driving through snow in surprisingly heavy traffic was just a bit scary and I knew he might worry.
Hunkering is good, this time of year, to get to our houses, our homes, if we are lucky enough, privileged enough, to have them and to have them adequately heated. But too many of us have inadequate housing or none at all.
Those in our community who face housing difficulties may have nowhere to go, perhaps huddling under a bridge or in the woods for what shelter there is. So, the season that began today, that of Lent, is a time for thinking of others. It’s traditional to think of our own sins at this time and we are right to do so.
But now we are in the early days of Lent. I’ve written in the past about adding something positive to your life, like special prayers or exercise or more time to get some rest.
This year, for myself, I’m going to work on giving something to others for Lent.
In my case, I’ll be volunteering at the Port Angeles Food Bank (https://www.portangelesfoodbank.org), which desperately needs volunteers, donations of food and cash. Winter is proving especially long-lived this year and far colder than usual.
As you go about your business, think of how you can help.
It’s all too easy for all of us to ignore the unhoused as they sleep in doorways.
As Daphne Macklin commented on Facebook on the subject of the power of simple human contact, “During the COVID Great Isolation a homeless man asked if I would just talk to him. I explained that he would need to keep his distance and that I would leave when my bus came. He agreed to these terms and we chatted for about 10 minutes or so. I feel it was probably one of the most meaningful things I have ever done.”
That has been my experience as well: Some days I think I should just wear my clerical collar and ride the Clallam Transit system all over the place, just waiting for people to ask me what I’m doing and being present for them, or hanging out, say, on the wharf, offering nothing more than a chance to, in E. M. Forster’s phrase, “only connect.”
This kind of work can, in and of itself, change the world.
In the Facebook thread I quoted above, Amy Kratz, noting that this was new work for Daphne, encouraged her to “do more of that kind of thing and because you’re a drop in an ocean, creating a wave of good deeds, washing up on the shores of a world that needs so much reshaping.”
Indeed. Alone, there is too much to do — working together we can get the job done. If we all did this, there are many more steps for us to take as a community here on the Peninsula.
Work on your spirituality, yes, give up something dear to you, if that works for you, but consider this: maybe giving something to an organization or to folks in your lives, maybe that’s a direction you can explore.
Worth a try.
It could change everything.
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Issues of Faith is a rotating column by religious leaders on the North Olympic Peninsula. The Rev. Dr. Keith Dorwick is a deacon resident in the Episcopal Diocese of Olympia.
