Years ago, I went through a training to be an leadership coach. It was a wonderful experience and was a big part of me coming back to the Christian church, which is funny because no one in the program was Christian per se. I can tell you more about it some time, if you’re curious.

Anyway, we would gather in this upstairs conference room in a San Francisco neighborhood for long weekends for in person intensives that we then followed up by distance learning. This particular day, without any sort of warning that I was aware of, my cohort of 20 were led into an intense experience of reckoning with our mortality. We were given four sentences to quickly memorize. They split the group in half, one in a circle facing outward and the other in a circle facing inward, so that each person had someone they were directly facing. We were told to take turns saying these four sentences looking the other person in the eye. And when we were done with both of us saying our sentences, the people in the circle would rotate one person and we’d do it again. And again. And again.

I eventually learned that these sentences we were given were the first four of the 5 Remembrances of Buddhism. This is what we took turns saying to each other:

• I am of the nature to grow old. I cannot escape growing old.
• I am of the nature to have ill health. I cannot escape ill health.
• I am of the nature to die. I cannot escape death.
• All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. I cannot escape being separated from them.

As the practice went on (and it went on!), we all had tears streaking down our faces for what we will lose, but also in compassion for the dear people across from each of us as we witnessed their pain.

Ash Wednesday is Christianity’s version of this Buddhist practice. It is the day that we gather to acknowledge the reality that we are prone to messing up, but also that we are mortal and so is everything else. All we have, all who we love, all that we treasure, we will lose, including ourselves.

In the Buddhist practice, the fifth remembrance is: My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground on which I stand.

I think we’d all agree with this. Indeed, I think Job would also agree with this. Later in Job, he rants a fair amount about his own integrity, that he will remain honest about his experience, what he knows, and act accordingly. He’s not going to lie to his friends, his wife, himself, or God.

Even as we and Job might agree with this, I wonder if this is still shaky ground as foundations for life go. As people of faith who regularly acknowledge our inherent tendencies to mess things up, I think we’d say that people’s actions are only so good and trustworthy. Try as we might, we’re only so capable of being good.  

So, how could we rewrite that Fifth Remembrance from a Christian perspective? What if we rewrote this “madlib” style? What might be your only true belonging? What can you not escape? What is the ground on which you stand? 

My trust in God is my only true belonging. I cannot escape my changing reality or the consequence of my actions. God’s love, provision, and the promise of new life are together the ground on which I stand.

This Buddhist practice and our gospel today are about putting down the pretenses. Even the beginning of our story of Job is about being stripped of all that makes life good, all that makes us comfortable, any ability to claim being #blessed, and what it feels like to be left naked and powerless before God and life.

When we are brought as low and naked as Job, how does our view of the world shift? How does our view of God shift? This is the question is at the heart of the story of Job, our journey in Lent, and even Jesus’ death and resurrection. It’s also at the heart of this Buddhist practice.

After we went through this wrenching experience, we were asked to leave the room without communicating. We were told to just grab what we needed for a walk and head out into the city for about a ½ hour or so of solo, silent time just being in the world. Shockingly to me, it was one of the most beautiful stretches of time of my life. It’s like I was living inside Louis Armstrong’s song, Wonderful World. I got to watch children with parents and grandparents at the farmer’s markets. I saw people in a hurry for who knows what reason, people eating ice cream cones. I saw a woman being upset with her car mechanic and I felt such compassion for them both. I thought she just didn’t know what a gift life is, what a wonderful person she is at heart, as well as the man in front of her. For just a little bit, I felt like the Buddha, just in awe of the beauty of life and the aching poignancy of love and how fleeting it all is. I must have been a sight, because I kept having to wipe away tears of joy of just seeing people alive on a beautiful day in San Francisco.

The paradox of Ash Wednesday and of this Buddhist practice is that it can be a true gift to be honest about the realities of life. That we will get sick. We will die. That everyone we love and everything we cherish will leave us, including our independence, our physical and cognitive capacities, and maybe even our homes or a world that makes sense to us. It will all pass away, out of our fingers and it is a gut-wrenching reality.

The gift of faith is that we can always call on God. God does not, in fact, change. God does not age or give up on us, even as we age and maybe give up ourselves. The force of God’s insistence on love and new life never abates, even as our own bodies and realities may falter. We are not made to last forever or be perfect. We are made to love, to participate in life, to throw kisses to the world as we go, and to let the weight of our pretenses go.

We cannot control life and we were not made to. We were made to love and be loved, to forgive and be forgiven, and to be a witness to the glory of God and the goodness of all that is. And that is the gift.

AMEN