Hospice worker and psychiatrist Kathleen Dowling Singh is best known for authoring three books.

The Grace in Living, the Grace in Aging, and, the grace in aging, and the grace in dying.

And I've not read a single word of any of them, primarily because she's a Buddhist and Hindu spiritual

teacher, and she writes from that foundation. What I find interesting, though, and why her name is worth mentioning

this evening is the unorthodox cadence of her books. She wrote them in reverse order, dying,

then aging, and finally living. And she never set out to write a trilogy just one book about death.

What she found, though, was that observing the dying as a hospice worker,

reflecting on and writing down those experiences actually taught her about living,

how to live her day's fullest.

Ash Wednesday is a sacred day in the church year for looking hard at death,

mine, yours, and everyone else's. Ash Wednesday, though, is not morbid reflection or fear-mongering.

It's for life, for living my day's fullest while I'm actually living them,

and carefully observing death is a critical practice for fully living life. Ash Wednesday is both a

one-day reflection on mortality, and it is the first of the 40 days of Lent, a journey into the

wilderness for the sake of formation and life. Lent, a journey into the wilderness for the sake of formation

and life. Lent gets its 40-day period from Jesus's 40-day temptation in the wilderness

and the traditional practice of fasting as an identifier with Jesus' fasting during those 40 days.

Lent is the intentional annual practice of self-denial in the wilderness.

Why?

Why would I want to do that?

For the same reason that you'd want to ponder your death?

For the sake of life.

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