Ash Wednesday

"Remember you are dust," the Priest said as he crossed my forehead with the burnt, chrismated remnants of last year's Palm Sunday palms, "And to dust you will return." As I returned to the pew, I thought of all the people I've lost. All the people I will lose. I thought of all the innocence I had once had as a child, and how little I touch the part of me where genuine innocence still dwells. How many times had I murdered or destroyed even my own fragile being, with one smirk or cruel thought? And though I knew it a selfish thing, I allowed the tears to well up, and I let them flow. For the loved ones I can no longer see, and for the little boy who sometimes seems to me to be have been just as lost. It was why I was here, wasn't it?

I went to the Ash Wednesday service after work. It is a solemn beginning to a solemn time. I had planned to rush home and meet up with my wife before going, but the timing didn't work. I found her afterwards, as everyone processed out in silence. She found and hugged all her friends in quiet. The good person she nurtures inside is well, and never far from the surface. I saw in her that people do in some measure stay who they are, since she was always this way. Perhaps it was more true of any of us than I had thought - maybe grace flows more easily than I think. All I know is I am not dining on ashes (pun intended) at the moment. Yes, we've lost - but we've also kept. And gained.

It bears keeping in mind.