In graduate school, it can often seem as if all of the good ideas have already been taken. Someone smarter and older has already written on whatever idea you may have. To remedy this seemingly unending problem, one begins to form ideas by pairing disparate and often times random things together. I have thus decided for this season of Lent to reflect on the lectionary texts in conjunction with the music of Bruce Springsteen.
I have never participated in Ash Wednesday. It is not that I am opposed to the practice, because I have actually wanted to participate for that past few years. The business of life and school seemed to get in the way, but hopefully this year I will make time to participate.
Earlier this month as I looked through the lectionary texts for Lent and pondered how or if I would give something up this year, my mind drifted between thoughts. I turned on some music, and inevitably music from one of my favorite artists came through my speakers — Springsteen.
My fingers tapped the keyboard on my laptop and I surfed through endless amounts of information, only to come upon the lyrics of a song from Springsteen’s 2009 album, Working on a Dream. The song, “What Love Can Do,” is by no means one of the Boss’s signature songs, but a stanza struck me.
On the bench you lie all is nails and rust
And the love you’ve given’s turned ashes and dust
When the hope you’ve gathered’s drifted to the wind
It’s you and I now, friend
You and I now, friend
Such a rich lyrical text opens up so many creative avenues of thought — a bench with rusted nails covered in ashes of love. Perhaps some of us find the image of the cross to be a stretch, but perhaps others have expansive imaginations that implicitly see such an image. We see a hope scattered in the wind. Scattered, perhaps both east and west, with nothing remaining but humanity — you and I now, friend — a Markan ending to the Gospel if I ever saw one.
Even so, the idea of ashes as love remains on my mind. On Ash Wednesday, tradition reminds us to “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” I cannot help but think that if there is love in our creation and love in our lives, surely there will be love in our death — a love seen, felt and experienced in the very dirt over which we walk each day and in the very dirt we rub upon on our foreheads.
One of the lectionary texts for Ash Wednesday tells us that it is this love helps us “through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger” (2 Cor. 6:4b-5).
How clearly I hear God’s voice through Springsteen sounding out: “Let me show you what love can do. Let me show you what love can do.”