Sunday 22nd February, 2026 (The start of Lent)

I’m reading a book at the moment called ‘The Dandelion Years’. It’s light romantic fiction that I picked up from the free patient library at Peter Mac. Apart from the ‘Peter Mac’ stamp on the spine, when I read it, I can usually pretend that I’m in a world where my troubles are far away. 

At breakfast this morning, the protagonist found a diary from WW II era, in which the writer refers to their wartime reality as their ‘dandelion years’.

“It’s how I think of the war and the effect it’s having on everybody”, she  explains. “The hopes and certainties we used to live by have been  swept away. We live in a time when all it might take is one little puff and  everything could be gone. You. Me. Everything we hold dear…these  could be our last moments here on earth.”

Reading this, I paused with my spoon half way to my mouth, my heart beating noticeably faster. On the one hand, this severely reduced the ‘escapism’ value of my novel. On the other, I somehow felt less alone. Even if these were fictional characters from another time in history, I recognised the sentiment, the feeling. And I realised the reality being described was one that millions of people on this planet have carried with them. 

Throughout human history, I imagine that the number of people who have had to live their lives on the precipice of mortality would vastly outnumber the ‘lucky’ few who have not. If it wasn’t war or occupation (which was statistically likely), it was pandemic. And if it wasn’t sickness, it was poverty. 

Even today, if I am brave and force myself to look at the agony around me, huge numbers of the human beings on the planet live their lives in this way. A quick google suggests there are 123 million people displaced by war who do not have a place to call home tonight. 712 million living in extreme poverty. Up until the invention of antibiotics, even in wealthy countries, it was common for half of your children to die of illness before they reached adulthood. Perhaps that’s why most people were reluctant to decide that ‘God is dead’ before we invented penicillin.

Throughout human history, and for many people today, it has been the overwhelming experience to live life in the knowledge that “all it might take is one little puff and everything could be gone”. 

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Wednesday of this past week was Ash Wednesday – a day where, all around the world, millions of Christians attended a service which marked the beginning of the season of Lent. In the more traditional congregations, this centres around the ritual of ashes, in which the priest dips their hand in ash and draws the shape of a cross on the foreheads of the worshippers, intoning the confronting words

“Remember you are dust

and to dust you will return.” 

This has only happened to me once in my life. During the time that my family attended a more traditional church, we only made it once to an Ash Wednesday service, and that was enough for me. I remember that Hilary, my beloved vicar, dipped her fingers into the ashes of the palm leaves and drew a cross on my forehead pronouncing that ‘to dust’ I would return. I remember being horrified. I was fifteen. I viewed Hilary as ‘old’ but also knew she was only in her 60s. Neither of us seemed to need to be talking about death. And I thought that Hilary was a good, kind person who wanted the best for me. I decided this was a momentary, if repulsive aberration and it would be best for me to forget about it. 

Since that time, however, I have had to acknowledge the pressing reality of my own mortality. And Hilary’s body has actually ‘returned’ to the dust she was speaking of as she drew on my forehead. This is a sobering thought. Yet, this is reality. 

For beneath the white lights of screens and the comfort of air conditioning, the convenience of satellite TV and the cushioning of wealth, our bodies are still dust. And, despite the wonders of modern medicine and the blessing of public healthcare, give us all a handful of decades, and to dust they will return. 

And I wonder why it is that churches over the ages have thought it useful, even helpful, to remind us of this terrifying fact. Why did Hilary draw a cross on my forehead when I was 15? We spend so much time and energy hiding ourselves away from death and the dying. We put a lot of energy into pretending our lives on this earth are immortal. Is this delusion, perhaps, more dangerous, more unkind, than the reminder that our bodies will pass away? What is it about life that our ancestors, and the suffering world understands that we do not? Why does Jesus say ‘blessed’ are those who mourn? Why do the Psalms cry out to God to ‘teach us to number our days’?

And so, I consider the idea of the cross that was drawn upon my forehead. I come away for a minute, sitting on my bench in the garden, and ask God to give me the courage to face my mortality. I take a deep breath in and place a hand on my heart, asking to know his presence in the depths of the panic. 

And, I breathe.