It dawned clear and below zero again here. In the early morning now Jupiter moves down the western sky and for a time pre-dawn hangs in the middle of my southwest window, brighter than any star.
The last time I received ashes for the beginning of Lent was by accident. Though as Freud would say, there are no accidents. It is the moment, I realize now, when I began to really think about grace.
Three years ago I went to Chicago to visit Christophe, there working briefly for the Obama campaign. It was unbelievably cold, and though I was prepared for Chicago being cold (that lake!!!) the forecast had been temperate for February so I’d brought a lighter coat. Wrong. But determined not to spend the entire time in the (wonderful, civilized) underground tunnels I doggedly scurried about outside until half-frozen I’d succumb and dart in to somewhere warm.
It was the first year after my mother died, she’d been gone less than five months. She was devout as these things go, and so I was thinking of her and maybe I would stop in to some grand Chicago church and get smudged in her memory.
Running across Michigan Ave to Millenium Park– I don’t know that I ever walked the entire time, just for the sake of staying warm– a small cluster of people approached. That first, automatic reaction of ignore them and walk on did not have time to set in. A priest in cassock and collar, young and very beautiful, with a few– apostles? Wasn’t clear. Helpers, also young.
Would you like to receive ashes? I realized he had a container of some kind and was offering to give me the cross. It was a surreal moment. My mother, growing up Catholic, visiting my son in this amazing city, it felt like a bunch of invisible lines were coming together in some cosmic juncture.
I looked at him, he had the most beautiful blue eyes, was incredibly handsome and he and his helpers emanated kindness. I hesitated– was this for real, out of nowhere on Michigan Ave– but not long. Yes.
He must have said the verse, from Genesis, know that you are dust, and to dust you shall return, but I don’t recall. His thumb in the ashes, then making the sign of the cross on my forehead; for the day you go about with this witness to mortality on your forehead, though you forget it’s there others will sometimes do a double take.
They gave me a card for their church, a progressive one it seemed, nearby, and I thought of going but didn’t get there. Probably was too cold.
It was a moment of pure grace. When I thought about it later the word just appeared. There was something angelic about the encounter, the priest’s beauty and the randomness–when I looked back a few steps on, they were gone– but the ashes were real.
Outside of any religion– though that may seem strange given the context– it was my mother, and the warm, sure hand of something greater; I could not know then just how much I was going to need it in the coming months, and years.