Tomorrow at 1:00, Lydians will be making the sign of the cross in ashes on the foreheads of anyone who desires it at Union Square. "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return," we'll say, as we hold a stranger's head in our hands.
In the end, Ash Wednesday is about death. This is a fragment from my journal during a time when my family was experiencing death:
Life felt strangely transparent this week.
God takes you home and there’s just a whole lot of stuff. A house filled with things, with
ticking clocks and figurines, and you’re not there anymore…and everything is
dispersed into the silence. Carried off to be
treasured or sold or given away, and everything accrued over a lifetime gradually and steadily erodes.
I don’t want there to be
stuff left over when I die. I want
to leave just a tea cup and saucer behind, a pot to boil water in, a pillow and
a lamp.
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