Chastisement of our Peace

I read through my stuff on here again. And thought about the stuff on xanga instead of reading it, since I'm fasting from xanga for Lent.
I didn't like what I read.
I am tired of trying to sound clever. I'm pretty sure I just come off sounding pompous and stilted.

Lent has been interesting. This is my first time observing it; that is, actually sticking with whatever I had decided to fast from. I hadn't planned on it, but on Ash Wednesday I made a spur-of- the-moment decision to join some friends of mine at a church service, at some Lutheran place halfway across town.
I wasn't sure how I liked it. The words in the program were not ambiguous, and not calculated to make one comfortable.

"He hath no form or comeliness, and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid, as it were, our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not."

I don't like reading that. I didn't like proclaiming that I was the one who made him cry in Gethsemane. I didn't like wearing a gritty smudge on my forehead, the echoed acknowledgment of "ashes to ashes" as we knelt. I don't like to be reminded of what I am.

"Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him..."

Chastisement of our peace. What does that mean? Chastisement of our peace? The discomfort that had to be stood before our restless, endlessly tossing and turning souls could be quieted? Did it take all of that to put us to rest? Is our peace so important then?
I don't like to dwell on it. I don't like remembering my griefs and sorrows, much less so recalling that he bore the bruises of them. Why should he care about our griefs and sorrows? our peace? Wasn't taking our iniquities enough?

"...and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep are gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth."

All we have gone astray. Ash Wednesday we proclaim our collective stupidity. Like sheep, acknowledged as some of the stupidest creatures ever to have speaking roles in movies, we stray, and in doing so place the burden on our shepherd to take the fall for the chaos we wreak.
And he opens not his mouth.

Not a word of remonstrance. No eloquent dictum or bamboozling demagoguery. No blame. Not a word. Only a meek compliance with the letter of the law. Despised, oppressed, rejected, afflicted.

Silent.
Ash Wednesday we remember how weak we are when we are loud, and how strong he was in his silence.

I go back to campus and manage to forget about the slash on my forehead, until people start to ask questions. It's amazing, on a Christian campus, how few people knew what it was for.
"Hey, you have something on your head."
"I thought Ash Wednesday was just for Catholics and stuff."
"Um, did you fall in something?" (leading me to ponder how exactly I could fall in something that would leave nothing but a smudge in the middle of my brow...)
"No," I explain. "No, this is for Ash Wednesday. It's not for a specific denomination. It's just...just for, um, Lent. And stuff."

I don't want to say that it is to remind me of why Easter is important. I don't want to admit that I still need an Easter. I don't want to bring that up. The cross was my fault. The pain was my fault. The tears were my fault.
The pain was mine. The sorrow. The grief. The lack of peace. Mine.
He did not just take the iniquity. He took the pain. And something in me resists that, says loudly that I have no need of the smut on my face, that I have no sorrows that need taking, no iniquities to be cleansed.
It isn't true.
He knows it, too.
But he doesn't say a thing.