An Opening: Ash Wednesday & Making Space

Making Space for Children, for Jesus, for Good Things to Grow

Dear Friends,

If you’re reading this on the day it lands in your inbox, Happy Mardi Gras! Blessed Shrove Tuesday! One last Alleluia! Hurrah!

And, if it’s already tipped over into Wednesday or later, I wish you a solemn Lent.

We are really standing right on that cusp, on that essential hinge between seasons – from the ordinary, the Ordinary Time of the season after the Epiphany – and this most serious season of preparation and repentance. It’s a tonal shift, a move into a minor key.

But first, pancakes. Or King Cake. Or both.

A Moment of Orientation

As this Tuesday turns over into Ash Wednesday, where do these first days and weeks of Lent find us?

First, of course, is Ash Wednesday. I had the opportunity this season to write for a regional (Province I) Lent devotional coordinated by a colleague, the Rev. Adwoa Wilson and her project, Communities for Spiritual Vitality, and in my submission I describe myself as a Lenten sort of character. I resonate with the penitential. It’s no surprise, then, that Ash Wednesday is my personal favorite worship service. It’s the service where I’ve heard some of my all-time favorite sermons. I want to be anchored in my mortality. I want to be summoned to the work of repentance.

It is not the most child-friendly mood, though, at least at first glance. And, conversely, children are less anxious about death and sin than our adult minds are about discussing these topics. While Carolyn Brown’s original Blogspot site is gone, I always return to her words about observing Ash Wednesday with children, which have luckily been shared by the Children’s Spirituality Summit. As she notes, first, the imposition of ashes is less about sin and death for children and more about affirming their full membership in the community. Bringing them into this ritual is part of saying that they belong here now, already.

Brown then goes on to explain Ash Wednesday as being primarily transitional for children. It signals a shift and prepares them for the devotional practices of Lent. And I think this is particularly notable because it falls on a weekday. We pull ourselves out of our routines to mark this change and that is an important signal for children, making the season of Lent more obvious than other liturgical season shifts.

That break in our routines “makes space” as Laura Alary puts it in the board book adaptation of her must-read guide to Lent & Easter. This is a season of making space for Jesus in our lives more intentionally. We pray and give things up/give things away to make more space.

How will you make space at home or in your classrooms or prayground spaces for Jesus in this season?

Throughout the course of this month we’ll be invited into other particular opportunities to make space for Jesus. We will mark St. Joseph’s Feast Day on March 19 – Joseph the father who made space in his life and understanding for the Christ Child, to love and nurture that child who turned everything upside down, whose birth could have left Joseph on the margins of his community, or at least destroyed his then-impending marriage.

We celebrate the Annunciation on March 25th, when Mary made space for Jesus in our heart and her body and her life. When she made space for God’s will. When, like Joseph, she made room, she said yes to being the mother of God at great personal risk.

The first panel of Faces of Easter from Godly Play includes some of my favorite language about this making room -

“In the beginning the baby was born. God chose Mary to be the Mother of God.

Listen. God chose Mary to be the Mother of God.”

Here is a piece of this great mystery. And it is an invitation to ask what we are making room for in our lives, and how we will open up that space.

Resource Round-Up

• They’re expensive, but between St. Joseph’s Day, the Feast of the Annunciation, and Holy Week, it might be the perfect time to invest in the Holy Family dolls from Be A Heart – and maybe even adult Jesus and his donkey. (Joseph actually appears to be out of stock, but I’m sure he’ll be back soon!)

• Looking to grow in family prayer this Lent – I’m going to send you back to Bedtime Chapel again – but this time with the caveat that I’m the Bible Study interlocutor beginning this week and the next 4(?) weeks. We’re navigating the lectionary for the week, but also really diving in on faith at home practices.

• I’m a huge nerd and made these Saint Trading Cards for my parish’s Lent Madness practice – but we’ve hit the big time. (Which is to say, they’re linked from this week’s Monday Madness. Thanks Tim & Scott!) I printed and folded a few sets and encouraged folks in my context to look for saints who shared their name, had a feast day on their birthday, or were known for something that is also close to their hearts (for example, a little boy visiting for a baptism asked me if there were any musicians, to which I offered up Gregory the Great, who is the patron saint of musicians and singers).

  

• I offer you this very brief blog post from Habitat for Humanity of Greater Los Angeles. It looks at the meaning of Ash Wednesday in the context of our opportunities to serve and the closing prayer is just lovely.

• If you’ve ever considered signing up for some kind of professional ed/continuing ed call in the church space, this is the one to hit: “The Meaningful Inclusion of Children in Worship: Theology and Practice” with Wendy Claire Barrie, through the Yale Divinity School’s Youth Ministry Institute (April 2, 2025). It will be recorded for those who can’t attend live, but let me tell you, Wendy is one of the people who helped me become who I am in this work and this is so essential.

• In a similar vein, this article from Refocus Ministry draws our attention to children’s meaningful inclusion in worship. One thing I always notice when I’m in our primary worship service with the kids in my parish is that even though our rector doesn’t directly call out to kids in his sermon, his nature is such that there is often something familiar to them in his words – and I see how it catches their attention.
  
  Also, my note on Busy Bags and Worship Boxes: in addition to the idea that they’re not a distraction, I tend to be very literal about their contents. Essentially I don’t put out any materials that won’t support the engagement or behavior I want to see in worship. That means labyrinths and other tactile breath activities, coloring pages and books that are thematic to faith, liturgy, etc. If it has high potential for misuse or disruption (even the distinction between a tangle-style figet and a stress ball style one, where the stress ball is more likely to be thrown), then it’s not an appropriate choice.

Let’s call it a day here – I hope you’re having pancakes today! I’m getting excited for our last loud Alleluia over here, and then on to Lent. (Also, who are you favoring in Lent Madness? I’m calling it for Philip, Hiram Kano, with a personal fondness - but not high hopes - for Lucy of Syracuse.)

Peace,
Bird