My ashen birthday

I have one of you to thank for bringing this piece of chorale music to my attention. It was passed along by someone who assumed I'd like it, and you were right, abundantly so. Thank you.

Stop me if I repeat myself, but I learned this week that it's not an altogether great idea to have a birthday on Ash Wednesday. At my age--at most ages--birthdays already send out sufficient reminders of time's passing, of how we are, all of us, creatures of the dust to which we shall return. The word of the day on most birthdays is woe, and woe, and woe. 

People in my fellowship have now unofficially adopted traditions from the Roman Catholic church, which is fine--I much prefer it to the excesses of showy evangelicalism. But, for the very first time, on my birthday, I got myself ashen-ed, a black cross placed on the back of my hand. Why the forehead was eschewed I don't know, but getting religiously marked like that was for me, a rookie experience.

I'd never seen the ashen cross on foreheads until 1971. I was 23, a first-year teacher in rural Wisconsin. Some of my students--not necessarily the most religious ones--came back from their noon hour break with smudged foreheads, then acted, oddly enough, as if all that dirt wasn't there, never mentioned a thing about how weird they looked, and had me therefore pretty much flummoxed. I wasn't a total idiot--I didn't ask. I figured it out somehow, although I may have mentioned it to the principal, who was an deeply religious Irish Catholic from New York City. 

"Jim," he said to me one day, "when I take the host, I have Christ in me in the flesh."

I liked the deeply devotional way he told me that, but what he said also made more clear to me how I was, for better or for worse, a child of the Reformation. 

If being moved is at least something of the mission of all worship, then I wasn't moved particularly far at our Ash Wednesday worship, even though I did join the processional and walk away with an ashen cross on my hand.

Years ago, I remember, we were visited here by a big male choir from Urk, the Netherlands, who gave a wonderful concert. I don't remember if they sang Psalm 42 or not. What I do remember is that their visit was charming and wonderful. 

If you haven't clicked on the video above, do it now. It's a recording of Psalm 42, sung in the Dutch language, not in whole notes the way my ancestors likely sang it, but an old Genevan Psalter version nonetheless. The choir, from Urk, the Netherlands loves it. 

On Tuesday I posted this choir's rendition on my Facebook page, where it garnered rave reviews, even from old friends who may have tulips in their hedges but never saw a Reformed church. People loved it.

I'm fifth-generation Dutch-American. I safeguard no sepia-toned images of the old country. I can't speak nor understand the Dutch language. But this music just about draws tears. No, does. I wouldn't trade it for an Ash Wednesday cross. 

For me at least, heart-altering, soul-searching spirituality isn't easily engineered. Those Urk-ers singing their hearts out the way they do on Psalm 42 cues something immensely deep inside me, a birthday present and a Lenten blessing. 

I have no idea if that makes sense or why. What I do know is this first week of lent I've been greatly thankful for Psalm 42.