NOTES on PRAYER and DEATH and ASH WEDNESDAY

Tête de moine en prière, etching, 1845, by Charles Emile Jacque.

Public domain, from The New York Public Library.

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Transfiguration lingers for but a moment, a mere three days separating it from Ash Wednesday, which looms larger with each minute that passes. We descend the mountain into the valley. The high places are laid low.

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"By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return."

—Genesis 3:19

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"Death is ordinary."

—William T. Vollmann, Rising Up and Rising Down, Volume 1, from "Three Meditations on Death."

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"We begin this day [Ash Wednesday] with that taste of ash in our mouth: / ... / we can taste our mortality as we roll the ash around on our tongues / ... / that dry, flaky taste of death."

—Walter Brueggemann, Prayers for a Privileged People, from "Marked by Ashes."

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"Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death / Pray for us now and at the hour of our death."

—T. S. Eliot, from section I of "Ash Wednesday."

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"And after this our exile"

—T. S. Eliot, from section IV of "Ash Wednesday."

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"And let my cry come unto Thee."

—T. S. Eliot, from section VI of "Ash Wednesday."

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"In the whole world, throughout the whole of history, even among religious men and among saints, Christ suffers dismemberment...Christ is massacred in His members, torn limb from limb; God is murdered in men."

—Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, from chapter 10, "A Body of Broken Bones."

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"The stench hung over the valley, / palpable. Nobody / waded into the fouled stable // without drowning."

—Kathleen Flenniken, Plume, from "Augean Suite, I. The Fifth Labor of Hercules."

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"[death] [dust] [eyes]"

—Kathleen Flenniken, Plume, from "If You Can Read This"

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What do we see when we close our eyes? What do we hear when we listen for the small still voice? Whom do we become in that moment?