Pineridge Blog

I Had Forgotten

I had forgotten the date when the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, happened last year. Isn’t that sad so many school shootings have happened that I can no longer remember all the dates? News outlets have reminded us that on February 14, 2018, a lone gunman and former student opened fire at Marjo-ry Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killing seventeen students and staff members and injuring seventeen others.

But I had forgotten until I saw this picture in the Kansas City Star, the first anniversary of the tragedy that February 14, 2018, was also Ash Wednesday. An AP photographer caught this mo-ment as two moms waited to hear if their children were alive or dead. They cry and embrace. One has the cross of ashes on her forehead having been placed there no doubt by her pastor or priest at an Ash Wednesday service just prior to the early morn-ing shooting.

“From dust you have come, unto dust you shall return,” are the traditional words in Ash Wednesday liturgy spoken as the ashes are imposed on the forehead of each worshipper.

In some sense the words sound hopeless. “All we are is dust in the wind,” the old rock song says. But in the context of worship the words are rooted in sure and certain hope. We are living ones, created by God from the dust of the ground into which God continues to breathe life and love. The words speak of the fragile beauty of each life. And they speak of resurrection, hope beyond senseless death.

I would image that at the moment the camera shutter clicked this woman had long forgotten that she had an ashen cross on her forehead. But the cross is a silent witness of not only her faith, but of the presence of God. The cross is always a symbol both of unspeakable cruelty and death and the promise of God’s undying love. In the parking lot at MSDHS as people mourn a senseless shooting is exactly where the cross belongs.