Beginning here with the season of Lent, the CCA will feature a series of weekly reflections written by CCA members serving in diverse contexts, who are living the vision of the Appalachian pastoral letters within and outside the region. As our last pastoral letter opened:

“Here in Appalachia, we are people of stories. These mountains have heard the stories we tell, and have told, across time and space. The mountains hold our stories, and they have stories of their own…Wherever we are, and whatever our relationship to these hills, telling our stories connects us once again, takes us home, and gives us a place from which we can act for justice” (The Telling Takes Us Home, 3).

And so in the coming weeks, we make space for stories. Taken together, the reflections will be like a prism, refracting divine light in as many ways as there are writers. Our series begins today - Ash Wednesday - with a meditation by the Reverend Theresa Brion on our mortality and interconnectivity.

“You are dust, and to dust you shall return.” These words raise emotions within me more so than most any others that I say as an Episcopal priest. If I could just say “we” instead of “you,” perhaps it would be less so; I do not know. To make that statement about another’s mortality—I dare say, another’s fragility—while making an oily, ashy cross on their forehead is not easy. I do so as a parish leader and yet I am reminded of my mortality and thus humbled as I approach God and the season of Lent. How dare I put smudgy ashes on another’s forehead when we share in the knowledge of our creation from earthly clay by an almighty God? There is an intimacy in touching another’s forehead through which we sense our connection as fellow members of a community of believers. God created us to be, to live and to work within the context of community; these thoughts about my humanity, humility and connection run through my head as I make the messy crosses. People stand in line and seek that connection with me and God; I simultaneously am honored and humbled by that desire to seek me out for us to make that intimate connection. I truly am blessed that I can begin the Season of Lent in this manner each year. Truly blessed indeed.

This year, I begin my Season of Lent with a new community of faith, having followed a new call from and by God last November. Will this sense of humility and blessedness flow through my veins and make my heart rush all the same? Will this community allow me to connect with them in this same intimate manner? Will they sense the same rush of emotions as we are reminded of God’s creation, of our births, and of our deaths to sin that lie ahead as we enter God’s Holy Kingdom?

I do not know the answers to these questions. Yet, I prepare myself for this Lent as I do each year, a humble broken person, with the hopes of exiting Lent still humble, still broken, but also a better servant of Christ than before. With the help of my spiritual disciplines for this period of 40 days (plus Sundays) that lies ahead, I pray that I will find the strength to stand firm against temptations to stray from that discipline. With you and God to companion me along this Lenten pilgrimage, I sense those prayers will be answered as God may so will.

Theresa Brion is an Episcopal priest raised in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and currently serves St. John’s Episcopal Church (stjohnswp.org) in West Point, Virginia, a small town with many of the characteristics that she loves about Appalachia, absent the lack of lovely mountain views. A “mountain girl” at heart, Theresa maintains connections to her mountain and Appalachian roots even if blissfully and physically called elsewhere for now.

Member Meditations: Ash Wednesday