A song for Ash Wednesday and Lent
Listen to "Begin Again," a song for the season of Lent
Happy Vashentine’s Day?
Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent.
The Church enters into forty days of darkness, gazing at the long shadows of our fears, failures, longing, selfishness, and reticence. And on Easter morning, we’ll step through to the light of Easter. I love that the ashes we wear on our foreheads today are made from the burnt palms from the previous Palm Sunday. We enter this labyrinth of jubilee and restoration every year, feeling the limits of our love.
For the next few weeks, I will give up the ways I try and put myself back together, and I’ll sit in this mystery of the Cross: suffering is necessary for wholeness. And through all these little deaths, the love of God will bloom within.
This song took me so long to write - many, many drafts were made. It turns out I had a lot of baggage about sin. Update: read more about that here.
Begin Again
Black ashes on my forehead
Palm Sunday turned to dust
No matter how hard I try
It'll never be enough
Black ashes on my forehead
Will it take away the shame?
You bear all my rejections
And never walk away
I wanna begin again
I wanna begin again
The road out of Eden
is paved with suffering
I've tried to be whole again
I've tried to mask the pain
Well I'm through with all the trying
And I step into the pain
For forty days and forty nights
I need Your love in order to change
I wanna begin again
I wanna begin again
I wanna burn the mask that I'm making
And begin againCredits: Music & lyrics by Allie Levanway Mixed by Meg Settle Mastered by Edsel Holden Allie Levanway: piano, voice John Mark Painter: baritone guitar, acoustic guitar, bass, accordion, drums
Restoration must reverse the process of the fall. Only after we have gone to the depths of self-knowledge and known the hell we have fashioned for ourselves, only when we can love with an identification with the other, can we begin to rise again. - Gertrud Mueller Nelson, To Dance with God: Family Ritual and Community Celebration (her chapter on Lent is SO good)
“To never circle back is its own little hell, but perhaps the gates of hell are locked from the inside.” - from Meg’s conversation with David Dark, episode 1 of her podcast State of Conflict
What does Lent look like for you this year? I’d love to hear. My daughter said she is giving up eating at one specific restaurant for Lent because she likes their hotdogs, and now she feels she is basically a saint. lol