I experienced two Ash Wednesday services today, one at the cathedral downtown (I was there for a silent retreat) and one I helped lead at our church.

The imposition of ashes is a very moving thing. "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." This is a fancy way of saying, "You're going to die." And people say the church is just following the whims of the culture! How much more counter-cultural can you get--smudging people's foreheads with ashes and confronting them with their own mortality?

For some reason I found it more poignant experiencing this ritual with total strangers. Seeing people from all walks of life marked by the cross on their forehead and confronted with the weightiness of the reality of death made me realize just how universal death is. Because I don't know their stories, I could imagine what their death might be like. That one, heart attack. That one, cancer. That one, suicide. And it was sad, all that loss of life.

It was a different experience doing the cross-smudging myself, to people I know and see everyday. I think I kept the reality of this action at arms' length. I said the line each time, and people would kinda smile sheepishly at me--it was like two friends playing pretend church. I would say, "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return," and this little part of me wanted to add, "But probably not for a long time." It was a little covert moment of denial--I don't want to think about the fact that someday, these specific people I have grown to care about will cease to exist. Death is more manageable in the abstract.