Ash Wednesday, Lent, and the Spiritual Practice of Combatting Polarization

My family and I spent Valentine’s Day getting smudged with ashes this year. We sat quietly (or not so quietly, in the case of the kids) in the warm glow of the sanctuary at night and listened as the pastor talked about death and sacrifice and our culture’s constant striving for perfection coupled with our utter inability to be perfect. 

Ash Wednesday is one of my favorite services of the whole year because I am a compulsive striver. I work and push and stress. I get anxious and worried. I want to do everything right. I have to get an A. As someone near to me once said, “All I want is money in the bank and all the extra credit points possible.” Oh, how true this rings to me.

But on Ash Wednesday, I am invited to lay all of that down. I am reminded that I am nothing more than dust, and to dust I shall return. I don’t have to be perfect – perfection is impossible, yet I am loved just the same. After all, we may be made of dust, but so are the stars. 

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of the Christian season of Lent, a time we remember the forty days Jesus spent in the wilderness being tempted by Satan. Some Christians choose to fast during this season or otherwise give up something dear to them. We believe this kind of sacrifice can open space for reflection and remind us that some emptiness only God can fill. 

It seems to me that Lent has become co-opted as yet another self-help plan. “Fail at your New Year’s Resolution? Don’t worry! You can try again for Lent!” But this is a corruption of the very idea of Lenten sacrifice. It isn’t about self-improvement. It is about self-emptying. It is about realizing that our striving – for perfection, for escape, for ecstasy, for beauty – can never fill us up. Ash Wednesday tells us there actually is no self-improvement plan. We are dust, and to dust we shall return. 

Our polarized culture encourages striving of a different kind, a striving for righteous purity. We must say the correct things, signal the correct virtues, vote for the correct candidates, and donate to the correct causes. We must show the members of our own group that we are true believers, even when that means sacrificing our own values to do so. There is no questioning allowed. There is no margin for error or room for nuance. 

As I sat with my ashes this year, I was reminded of the messiness of life – the “dustiness” as my pastor called it. What if, when I closed my eyes, I could picture my political rivals with ashes just like mine? What if I could remember that not only did I not have to be perfect, but they don’t either? What if I could stop striving for righteous purity long enough to see the dusty humanity in even those across the aisle? 

Like Jesus in the desert, this year, we will be tempted by the idolatry of our toxic polarization. The idol of our righteousness will call out to us through our social media feeds and cable news channels. We will try to fill ourselves with political zeal and angry rants and shared articles that confirm our own assumptions. But just as the extra credit points can’t fill my emptiness, neither can party politics fill the partisan’s. There is an emptiness that only God can fill.

This year, let us lay down our striving for righteous purity. Let us admit that we are but ashes. I am ashes. And so are you. And so are our elected officials, both those we voted for and those we didn’t. Perhaps when we admit this, we can see our common humanity. We can learn to understand one another. In the end, we might not agree on much, but perhaps simply acknowledging our own mortality, our shared “dustiness” in a world that demands perfection, is enough. At least it is a place to start. 

Chandra

Chandra DeNap Whetstine is the Chief Operating Officer for the One America Movement and a seminarian at Wesley Theological Seminary