Ash Wednesday, A Holy Returning

“Even now, says the Holy One,
return to me with your whole heart—
with fasting, with weeping, with mourning.
Rend your hearts, not your garments,
and return to the One who is your God.”

These ancient words from the Prophet Joel rise like a summons across centuries. Not as a threat, but an invitation. A call to return to what is deepest and truest in us. A call to let our hearts be touched again. It lands in the real world — in our griefs, our wounds, our longing for healing. It lands in the places where life has broken us open and demanded that we return with our whole selves. The Prophet’s words ask us to come back with our whole hearts — not the polished parts, but the tender ones, the bruised ones, the ones we try to hide. And sometimes, the wisdom we need comes from someone who has walked through more than we can imagine.

There is a kind of grief that doesn’t announce itself. It settles quietly in the chest, like a stone placed there by an unseen hand. At first, it feels like too much to carry. It tightens the breath. It hardens the edges of the heart. It convinces us that nothing tender can survive inside us anymore.

But over time — sometimes a long time — something begins to shift. Not because the loss disappears, and not because we “get over” anything, but because the heart, in its mysterious wisdom, grows tired of being closed. A small crack forms. A single tear falls. A breath deepens. And in that tiny opening, a consoling God slips in. The Sufi poet Rumi once said, “The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”

Slowly, the stone begins to warm. The grief is still there, but it is no longer the whole story. The pain remains, but it is held differently — not as a weight that crushes, but as a truth that shapes. The loss becomes a place where God works quietly, patiently, tenderly, softening what had grown rigid, awakening what had gone numb, teaching the heart how to feel again. This is the sacred tension so many of us live with: the ache that does not leave, and the grace that keeps arriving anyway. It is the place where mourning and mercy meet. Where breaking and blessing coexist. Where the heart, even in its sorrow, begins to return.

Ash Wednesday invites us into that very place. Not into shame, but into honesty. Not into guilt, but into alignment. Not into self‑punishment, but into a deeper truth about who we are and what we are capable of becoming. The ashes we receive today remind us that life is fragile — and because it is fragile, it is so very precious.

Lent is about awakening; it is about clearing away whatever keeps us numb or distracted. It is about remembering that we are woven together, that our lives are intertwined, that the Holy One calls us not only to return, but to return together. And this is where the prophetic edge of this day meets the world we inhabit.

We live in a time when heartbreak is everywhere — in our families, in our communities, in the quiet corners of our own spirits. We live in a time when violence, in all its forms, has become so common that many have stopped noticing. We live in a time when the loss of even one life — to despair, to neglect, to the pull of a trigger — should break us open, yet too often passes as just another headline. Ash Wednesday dares us to feel again. To soften again. To return again.

If we are dust, then so is every child, every elder, every neighbor whose breath is stolen by forces that should never have the final word. If we are dust, then we belong to one another — in grief, in hope, in responsibility.

Another favorite Sufi mystic said, “God breaks the heart again and again and again, until it stays open.” The ashes we receive call us not only to lament, but to live differently. To let our hearts stay open. To let compassion become a daily practice. To let justice become the shape of how we love.

There is a practice in some communities where, after a funeral, neighbors bring food to the grieving family. Not because a casserole can fix anything, and not because anyone knows what to say, but because grief makes even the simplest tasks feel impossible. One woman once described how, after her husband died, she opened her front door to find a pot of soup left on the porch. No note. No explanation. Just warmth waiting to be received. She said, “It was the first time I realized I wasn’t carrying this alone.”

That is what returning looks like. No grand gestures. Just one heart softening toward another. Just one act of tenderness interrupting the ache. Just one reminder that we belong to each other, even in the dust.

May the ashes we receive today awaken in us a holy tenderness. May they strengthen our resolve to honor the sacredness of every life — not only in prayer, but in practice. Not only in lament, but in the daily work of building a world where peace is possible, where justice is lived, where love is the shape of our choices.

We begin this season not bowed down, but standing open — hearts softened, spirits awake, ready to return to the Holy One who calls us still.  Amen.

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