On changing tack, and a new writing community

Detail from the Reservoir Church Lenten Guide: Earth

Hi friends! Today is Ash Wednesday for many Christian traditions, the first day of Lent, and as usual I’m feeling disconnected from the rituals and practices of the church. I haven’t actually been to church in a long time, and I was thinking of going tonight, but then I began to think about what the focus of Ash Wednesday is, thinking about death, remembering our own mortality, and repenting of our sins, and I realized I wasn’t up for it.

For one thing, I already think about death every day. I’ve always had this bent, but even more so in the fifteen months since my dad died. Every day I remember that I am dust, and to dust I shall return, as the liturgy says. Every day I remember that everyone I love is going to die, myself included, and I am either going to have to grieve their death or they are going to have to grieve mine.

I don’t need a day to think EXTRA hard about death.

The other focus of Ash Wednesday and Lent is repentance, an examination of our sins and a turning from them. But again, I already feel saturated with that. This time not because of my own tendency to dwell on the subject, but because of the religious tradition I grew up in. Every week we heard again that we were sinners, and said a prayer repenting “of what we have done, and what we have left undone.” Every week I posed that internal question: “What is my sin? What is wrong with me? There’s got to be something wrong with me.” If I couldn’t think of something I had done, there was always something I had left undone, which, when you think about it, is a potentially infinite number of failures.

I don’t need a day to think EXTRA hard about my failures.

But as I thought about repentance, I thought about the meaning of the Hebrew word teshuvah — to turn, or to return. That’s usually understood by theologians to refer to turning away from your sins and back to God. But I thought, what if I understood repentance this year as turning away from my usual preoccupations? What if I thought of it as a change to balance the thoughts of mortality, death, and sin, with thoughts of life and joy? What if I thought of it like changing tack in a boat, turning the sail into a different wind?

My friend Ivy Anthony, one of the pastors of Reservoir Church in Cambridge, MA, put together a gorgeous Lenten guide, which you can read on the church’s website. She commissioned a few poems for the guide, from me and some other amazing writers, including Rose Percy who writes here at A Gentle Landing. And I actually trust that Reservoir Church is going to hold space for all these doubts and questions. I trust, too, that they understand sin in a communal sense as well as an individual sense, and will not forget that Ash Wednesday falls during Black History Month and that there absolutely racism and other systemic, collective sin to repent of.

But when I sat down to write my poem for the guide, I felt like I wanted to upend the solemnity of Lent. I felt like I needed to turn my sails into a wind of joy, and playfulness, and self-love. So I started with death, with the Lenten ashes and my dad’s, but I gently but firmly turned the sails into a different wind.

Poem to My Father’s Ashes
by Jessica Kantrowitz

These are the words read solemnly graveside:
“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” But we didn’t bury you, Dad
And we didn’t have a funeral. Are you disappointed?
We tried to make it beautiful for you, for us—

A warm summer day on the riverside
Three paper boats for me and Dave and Mom
Each carrying a portion of you downstream
Until they melted into the water, into the mud.

None of us ever did anything perfectly, you know, Dad
We were never that kind of family
But we found our own paths, our own beauty
You in your way, David in his, Mom and I in ours.

Now I try to love your ashes by loving my own broken body
The way you couldn’t love yours—free of shame
Free of the weight of the world’s judgement, of our own.
I carry you with me into that freedom.

And look at us now, Dad! Just look!
Dancing over the water in the sparkling sun
Glowing golden as embers, silver as stardust
Ashes to mischievous ashes, dust to joyous dust.

Please do check out the rest of Reservoir’s Lenten guide if you’re interested!

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I’ll share more about this next week, but I wanted to mention that I also started a Substack for the Finding Your Voice Writing Community! For writers or aspiring writers who, like me, struggle with depression or other mental illness, this is a space for us to connect and practice our craft together. Most of the content there will be for paid subscribers, to preserve privacy for the work we share, but if the $8/month is too much for you right now, please let me know and I can give you three months for free. Find out more here:

What is the Finding Your Voice Substack?

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And I recently had the honor of going on Meghan Riordan Jarvis’ podcast, Grief is My Side Hustle. We had a great conversation about grief and writing. You can listen in here.

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Thanks so much for reading, and for being a part of my community! Please feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts. I’d love to hear from you! And please feel free to share:

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