“If I say, ‘Surely darkness will cover me,’
And the light around me becomes night. ”
Even darkness is not dark to you.
The night is as bright as the day,
Because darkness is like light to you. ”
—Psalm 139:11–12
Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, a season of repentance, self-examination, and renewal. We receive the imprint of dust and hear the words, “Remember that you are dust.” This is a sobering reminder of mortality and humility. It’s not hopeless. It’s simply accurate. We come face to face with the creatures we have spent our lives avoiding.
But ashes are not a sign of futility. It is a symbol of both what perishes and what is ultimately irreversible. That horizon, for us as for Jesus, is Easter, the promise of new life.
Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel, a survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, became one of the enduring moral voices of Holocaust memory after World War II. He was well reminded of the Talmudic legend about Rabbi Shimon ben Yohai and his son, Rabbi Eleazar, who rebelled against Roman rule and hid in a cave for 12 years without accepting martyrdom.
When they emerged, they were stunned to see that the world had not changed – life carried on with the same injustices and trivialities. They were furious that their suffering left no trace. The Talmud says that everything they saw turned to ashes. A heavenly voice rebuked them, “Have you left your hiding place only to destroy My creation? Return to your cave.”
They came back for another year. When they reappeared, the son was still smoldering, but the father had learned self-control. “Whatever hurt the young Rabbi Eleazar had in his eyes, the old Rabbi Shimon’s eyes were healed.”
Wiesel saw in this legend the dilemma of Holocaust survivors and their children. After the camps, the world also seemed to have its brutality intact and its hatred alive. Should the survivors surrender to their wrath against God and humanity? Will they turn the world to ashes in their hearts? Or do you choose to heal, like Rabbi Shimon? Will anger become responsibility, repair rather than revenge?
A recent anecdote I heard from Jewish artist Aliza Olmert, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, captures the same tension. Two elite paratroopers, one secular and one religious, nearly collapse during a grueling training exercise carrying a comrade on a stretcher. A worldly soldier asked his friend where he found the strength to keep running. “From the God of heaven,” replied the religious soldier. “you too?”
“From Auschwitz.”
The healing gaze of the old rabbi suggests that the ultimate truth of reality is restoration, not violence. The paratroopers’ answer does not glorify fear. It draws strength from memory. Not because evil saves, but because memory can evoke a defiant fidelity to life. To keep running is to refuse to let annihilation define what is real.
Persistent hope is chastened. It faces the abyss and knows the tenacity of cruelty and the fragility of goodness. Even so, he will not give in to violence until the end. In honest remembrance, patient justice, and chosen mercy, it works quietly. In this day of ashes, hope shines like an ember beneath the dust. Tested by fire, death never reigns, and sustained by the promise that love never dies.
These words came to me as I was flipping through poems by Dylan Thomas and all sorts of people. This rambunctious Welsh poet committed suicide by drinking himself at the age of 40 – this is a sobering fact. But in the preface he writes, “These poems, with all their vulgarity, suspicion, and confusion, were written out of love for humanity and praise of God. I would be a damn fool if I didn’t.” You probably remember the refrain that makes up one of his poems.
And death cannot be controlled.
The dead will be naked and united.
With the man in the wind and the moon in the west.
When their bones are picked clean and there are no clean bones left,
Stars will be placed on their elbows and feet.
They can go crazy and stay sane,
Even if they sink into the sea, they will rise again.
Lovers may be lost, but love is not lost.
And death cannot be controlled.
notes and reading
Elie Wiesel—Excerpt from his “To Our Children,” Against Silence: The Voice and Vision of Elie Wiesel (1985). See also “Hope, Despair and Memory” – Nobel Lectures (1986). “Hope without memory is like memory without hope.”
Aliza Olmert-in God, faith and identity from the ashess (2015).
Dylan Thomas Poetry Collection: New 100th Anniversary Editioned. John Goodby (2014). “Death shall have no dominion over him” reflects Romans 6:9 (“Death shall have no dominion over him”) and draws imagery from the writings of John Donne. dedication in times of emergency (1624):
Reading by Thomas (1:56), something only he could do. Charles Laughton approached. Thomas once jokingly referred to himself as a “poor man’s Charles Laughton” when he adapted Laughton’s “pulpit class” voice, or what he called a 1950s performance style, for American audiences.
[*] Unlike the West, the Orthodox Church begins Great Lent on Clean Monday without the interment of ashes. The focus is not on the visible traces, but on the inner changes of the heart moving towards the joy of the pasha. This is the same celebration of life beyond death, approached along a unique liturgical path.
deep dream
hard pluralism
Approximately 2+2=5
Source: 2 + 2 = 5 – williamgreen.substack.com
