“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
On the morning of Ash Wednesday we came to the Chapel of St. Paul’s Cathedral to pray together, emptying ourselves to take on the mark of the ashes, to take in this truth, and to be fully with Jesus during these forty days. Then, in our emptiness and vulnerability, we vested and, with tiny boxes of ashes in hand, headed for the street to offer ourselves, the message, and the ashes.
Did we see Christ in the stranger? Yes, we did! In the man hurrying to the hospital, so grateful for this opportunity; in the face of a four-year-old girl, receiving the ashes for the first time and in the enthusiastic words of her mother, glad for our presence. In the drivers and passengers who rounded the corner and pulled over to receive the sign of the cross on their forehead. In the man who brought us coffee and chai lattes, the young women who brought us tangelos from their grandfather’s tree. In the expressions of those who, for a few mysteriously long moments, received something for the yearning of their soul, left changed, and changed us.
“Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”
Karla Holland-Moritz
SPC’s Ashes to go project was organized by Canon Chris Harris. Here’s the slideshow!
