Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, Carnival holds a towering contradiction. All this celebration and joy, this riotous spree just before Lent, is in preparation for the great fast. We let loose on Tuesday to be ready for Ash Wednesday. The party ends with Christians drawing a cross on each others’ foreheads and whispering, “Remember that you are dust and unto dust you shall return.”
If someone invited you to a party and at the bottom of the invitation wrote, “At the end, we will come together to remember our own, inevitable deaths,” would you go?
As I write, carnival is in full swing in some of the most Catholic parts of the globe – Brazil, Venice, New Orleans, Macao. Our celebrations in Canada are more modest. A stack of pancakes and a little maple syrup hardly compare with dancing through the streets of Rio de Janeiro or jazz bands parading down Bourbon Street in New Orleans.
I am also, as I write, a guest on Unceded Wiikwemkoong Territory – a stranger in your midst. I am here researching a book about an elder who has served this community with generosity her whole life.
Perhaps we are all guests. As guests, we have been welcomed into this life by good people – our parents, friends, teachers – to share in the joy of being here. As guests, we can see Ash Wednesday in a different light. It’s not about celebrating our death. We rejoice that we have been alive.
In the Psalm for Ash Wednesday we strike a deal with God:
Give me back the joy of your salvation, and a willing spirit sustain in me.
O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall proclaim your praise.
That is, if God is God to us, we promise to be joyful in response. Of course, God is always God. The deal is done. Our Fat Tuesday celebration is more than justified. We must be joyful guests in this world, where we have been welcomed by a generous God.
– Michael Swan
