March 3, 2025
"Remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return."
I first attended an Ash Wednesday service two years ago. I was at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri for Army basic training, and it was still the tail end of winter. Surprisingly, it wasn’t as nasty of a day as one would expect from homophonic Misery, and the service offered a convenient reprieve from the burgeoning hand of the Drill Sergeants; there would be plenty of unpleasant antics to come later, to be sure, but not during a church service.
We had been allowed to walk there on our own, (unsupervised, to everyone’s shock), and we had initially missed the church we were supposed to be heading to. There was another, much larger, church a ways north that offered a ‘contemporary Protestant’ service every week (imagine an average low-church evangelical/non-denominational type service). This was, naturally, the church that most of us were familiar with; it, along with a Catholic service attended by a very small handful, was the only option available during the initial weeks of training. When we received a bit more freedom on Sundays to go where we pleased, just about everyone who went to church, went to the Contemporary.
But I, being the haughty dissenter I am, did not attend the Contemporary church. I attended the Traditional (thus were how the two Protestant services were titled).
About halfway through our training, our company received a massive influx of trainees that had originally been training with other companies outside of our particular regiment. We rapidly went from a company of 250-something trainees to about 400. Obviously, this was too much for our original Cadre to handle, and so half of us got sent over to another company that had failed to fully fill for its training cycle. Our first Sunday with this new company, one of our new Drill Sergeants got mixed up and ended up dropping us off at the wrong service: Traditional.
Lutheran-esque is the best way for me to describe it, I think. There was a liturgy, and hymns, and Communion every week. The vast majority of my fellows that had been duped hated it.
I loved it.
I had never grown up in that setting; my family were all Christians, but I think I could count the amount of times I had ever been to a church service on one hand, and those instances had all been the low-church Baptist/evangelical types (save one peculiar memory of a Methodist-esque church from when I was very little). I wouldn’t say that my experiences with these churches left me disillusioned or ill-invested in the Church or Christianity as a whole- I still steadfastly claimed faith in Christ, and I had earnestly desired to be baptized before I left for training (though I didn’t quite understand what Baptism really was, save that I was supposed to do it), but I didn’t like my experience in them.
I had a profound distaste for the Contemporary service at the base, in particular. It was one of those highly-spectacular churches, with a charismatic speaker as the Chaplain- of course, who only ever preached the shallowest sermons on Christ before returning to begging for tithes- and a massive screen that projected his every move. I saw it as a televangelist church, and all the empty spectacle left me revolted.
But this new church was something different. It was dry and solemn, and almost entirely empty, save a few old regulars who lived on base and the poor friend I forced to come along with me every week. But it felt like home to me; reverent, authentic, and holy. So I, as I contemplated my faith more and more (long training days with very little entertainment in the many dragging wait periods left me with a lot of time to read the Bible), found myself coming back to this church week after week.
This yearning for a traditional structure was probably what drew me to attend an Ash Wednesday service. I didn’t really know what it was, but it sounded important and I was vaguely familiar with Lent.
So came I and about a dozen of the wisest of my companions (though whether they came for the service itself, or just for a reprieve from the Drill Sergeants’ wrath was, as usual, debatable), walking down the empty streets of a training base on a crisp March evening. After we initially missed it, our group doubled back and found the small church nestled in a back street. We had passed it a dozen times, but had hardly ever passed a second glance. There were several buses dropping off trainees from other companies around base, and a serious contingent of on-base residence, all of which were soon packed into this little church.
I remember the awe I felt when we made our way inside; all the quiet, somber, poignancy hangs with me just as heavily now as it did then. I remember my companions were boisterously goofing off, and how deeply this upset me. I wasn’t entirely sure why, but this service- exceeded only by the high, holy, horrible memorial of Good Friday- deserved our utmost solemnity. I, being the self-righteous stick in the mud I was (am?), certainly thought a number of choice thoughts on their behavior, and gave more than a few stern looks (not, of course, that it made any difference).
There was a sermon, and I did my best to follow along, but I recall it much less vividly than the apex of the service: the imposition of ashes. I wasn’t sure exactly what we were doing, but row by row we formed a line and approached the altar. We marched forward, and as I steadily approached, I began to make out the words. A cross was drawn on each forehead, and person by person was atomized before me, dismissed with those words assuring the cold reclamation of the earth. Soon, I had made my way to the fore, and the declaration was rendered unto me- assured to us all, and yet then bestowed unto me in fine:
“Remember you are dust, and to dust you will return.”
I felt the weight of it, then- my weightlessness. In a moment I was disintegrated, reduced to the same basal elements that make up us all. I was no better than anyone else there, or anywhere, at any time, ever. I was dust. We all are dust.
Ash Wednesday opens the gateway to Lent, a season of penitence and sober self-reflection. This day is a reminder of what we are, to lead us into a reminder of who Christ is. The eternal Divine, Son of God, the Logos that spoke the world into being- descended into a being drawn up from the same dust He made. He, who numbered every grain upon the desert sand, became a man composed merely of those same composite parts. He, who was always Himself sufficient- never with need or want, for all our needs ultimately are derived from Him- became dust, entered into the wild land composed of dust, and became enhungered.
As He, who never had cause before to hunger, chose to fast- so too we can fast. He poured out His Divine glory into the dust, so that the dust can become more than his composite parts.
God became dust, to die as dust- to raise the dust again with Him.
The Christian Urvogel 