Welcome to A Prayer Practice,
A podcast by The Gathering.
I'm Kelly Webber,
And I'm a spiritual director.
I've always found it fascinating,
This ancient practice of keeping a skull on one's desk,
A continual reminder of our mortality.
While the expression memento mori,
Latin for remember you have to die,
Began with early Christianity,
The concept is most likely as old as humanity itself.
The idea to keep our end in sight might seem morbid,
But actually its purpose is to bring us back to life,
To remind us that in spite of feeling like time is inexhaustible,
It is actually quite limited.
I'm reading a book right now titled 4000 Weeks Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Berkman.
The 4000 weeks refers to the lifespan,
That's 80 years.
When I asked my teenage students how many weeks they thought we lived without doing the math in their heads,
They guessed numbers like 60,
000,
40,
000 weeks.
And it wasn't just their youth,
I asked a man in his 60s and he guessed 14,
000 weeks.
Less than the kids,
But still that's 269 years.
4000 weeks,
That's it,
If we're lucky.
That should give us some perspective.
Growing up when I'd visit certain churches,
I'd stop when the singing turned to the when I get to heaven hymns.
Like life here and now is merely to be tolerated.
I sit and write this on Ash Wednesday at the beginning of our Lenten season when we are reminded that from dust we came and to dust we will return.
It's humbling,
Yes,
It should be.
We are dust,
Just like everything else.
In our culture we've placed so much importance on,
Well,
Importance,
On achievement,
On numbers,
On likes,
On follows.
We've decided that our inherent worth is a metric.
Just like our short lives measured in weeks,
We measure our worth by some arbitrary emoji system.
The ashes on our foreheads tell us otherwise.
The ashes give us perspective,
Taking away our false identity claimed by false systems.
The ashes also don't allow us any kind of spiritual bypass.
No matter how much I know I am loved by a loving God,
I can't escape the fact that I am a creature who was born and who will one day die.
But in between those two inextricable truths,
There is the infinite possibility of heaven here and now.
God doesn't only invite us to heaven in 4,
000 weeks.
God invites us to heaven today,
To be co-creators of heaven here on earth.
That's the practice of memento mori.
That's why the skull sits on the philosopher's desk.
Jesus fasted in the desert in order to lean into the suffering,
In order to be transformed by it,
Transmuted into transfiguration,
Burnished into something beautiful.
Pain gives us perspective.
It's generative.
If you asked a biologist what would happen if we never died,
She'd say we'd never change.
Evolution,
God's brushstroke,
Uses the cycle of life and death in order to manifest growth,
In order to transform everything.
How awesome is that?
Today's prayer is about perspective from down here in the dust.
Let's pray.
Take a minute to find the silence,
To feel your body held and grounded by the earth,
And feel your spirit lifted by the promise of love's eternal gaze.
In this present moment,
We consent to be in the presence of God,
And consent to God's action within us.
God of dusty things,
Of moon dust and cat dander,
Of crystalline silica and sawdust,
Of the dead skin of the ancestors we never met,
But still breathe into our lungs each day.
We acknowledge that we are small things,
Us,
People trying hard to be big.
Forgive us.
We confess that we don't want to live out of justs.
To us,
Just an ordinary day is a humiliation.
And yet to a man sick or a woman scared,
Such a day is a gift to be dust,
To be anything,
To just be.
We thank you.
Thank you for the nobility of the normal,
For the weight of each moment heavy,
Not with potential,
But with the moment itself,
With is-ness.
Ground us in the everyday each day.
Prepare us for the journey of this season,
And help us recognize that in our quotidian lives,
Our dusty existence matters in as much as we can be present to it,
And mark its magnificent unfolding.
Amen.
Thanks for praying with me today.
Take this blessing as we begin this Lenten season.
May you rest in the shadowy places and breathe deeply into solitude.
Find comfort without the adoring voices.
Die a little death.
Swallow your hunger for more.
May you have the patience to stand and wait and see what doesn't come.
Find gratitude in the waiting anyway.
Go deeper into the cave where mystery dwells,
And may you come out having faced the darkness and more sensitive to the light.
Be well,
Friends.
Join me next week as we continue our practice.
