Beloved Friends in Christ across the Dakotas–Minnesota Episcopal Area, 

Grace and peace to you as we step across the quiet threshold of Ash Wednesday and into the 40-day season of Lent. 

This Ash Wednesday, many of you will receive a cross traced in palm-dust either placed on your forehead or perhaps the back of your hand. This marking is a reminder of our mortality and of our humanity. A reminder that is both tender and unsettling. 

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. 

These words are not meant to frighten us. They are meant to locate us. To ground us in truth.  We are finite. Dependent. Held in the mercy of God.  

When we receive the mark of the cross, we are invited into 40 days of self-examination and reflection shaped by repentance, fasting, prayer, service, alms-giving and preparation for Easter. The cross is an outward sign of an inward trust. It quietly declares, “I belong to Christ. I am following Jesus.” 

This tradition of ash marking reaches back into the Old Testament, where ashes signified repentance and humility before God. It also draws us to the desert-dust of Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness.  

There is another ancient symbol that invites us into this holy season: the Ichthys, the simple fish.  

In the early church, the ichthus was drawn with two curved lines, sometimes in dust, sometimes etched into stone. A confession hidden in plain sight. The Greek letters formed an acrostic: 

ICHTHYS: Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior.

Iēsous Christos Theou Yios Sōtēr 
Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior. 

But the symbol carried more than doctrine and theology. It marked belonging. It signaled community. It told a story.  

It re-members us, quite literally gathers us back into, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.  

We are re-membered to the shoreline at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry at the Sea of Galilee when he calls the first disciples (Mt 4.18-22).  We are re-membered to another shoreline after the resurrection (John 21), when he welcomed his friends to breakfast and restored both their identity and marked a redemptive return to their calling as disciples of Jesus Christ.  

Lent invites that same re-turning in us. The cross and the ichthys are symbolic reminders of that.  

This transformation is about kingdom living, on earth as it is in heaven (Matthew 5:1–16; Matthew 25:31–46). It begins with holy examination, a willingness to pray: 

O Lord, you have searched me and known me. 
You know when I sit down and when I rise up; 
   you discern my thoughts from far away. 
You search out my path and my lying down 
    and are acquainted with all my ways. (from Psalm 139) 

We are about to enter these forty days together on a shared journey, a journey that reminds us of who and whose we are. I trust you will find faithful ways to mark this season. You may take on a new practice such as daily reading of Scripture, journaling, or a service project. You may fast from habits that hinder your ability to love God with your whole heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself.  

Over these next forty days, I invite you to dwell more deeply in the meaning of ichthys: Jesus Christ, Son of God. Savior as we journey to the foot of the cross.  

If you look at my wrists during Lent, you will see that I carry the mark of the ichthys (ick-toos) and the cross drawn in marker on my wrists near my radial pulse mark. I do this as a reminder to take my spiritual pulse throughout the season. Am I following? Am I loving? Am I listening? 

That is the invitation of Lent. To take your spiritual pulse. To step again into the waters of your baptism. To love God with the whole of who you are, so that the whole world might glimpse the reach of God’s grace.   

With you in the Lenten journey, 

Bishop Lanette