These ashes will not burn you, far from it. A surprising possibility is that the gritty, dark touch of these ashes may feel like a needed relief.
Don’t live by Pharaoh’s rules. Live as the gifted bearers of God’s image that you are. Such was the deep wisdom of the Torah. Such is the life Moses and Elijah and Jesus kept calling people back to in different places, different times, is it not?
Down through the trapdoor, God’s kingdom is a place where grace is an antidote to violence and retribution. It’s a realm where tenderness and kindness are signs of strength and resistance because once we go down we understand that the love and generosity we show is a revelation of who we are and how we choose to live.
Jesus loved and sought out people on the margins. Foreigners and sinners. The unclean and the poor. Women and heretics and more. He sought them out because he wanted them to see they were beloved and blessed by God.
We often make the deep water a metaphor for going out on mission work to distant places or places we have never been. Peter and the disciples would later venture into places across Europe and Asia they never could have imagined. But I wonder if deep water could also be a metaphor for the uttermost places within our hearts, our minds, our souls.