I have always loved Ash Wednesday. I'm not sure why that is but probably because it is predictable and always falls on a Wednesday. Easy-Peasy. We also get to be dirty, just like when we were kids.
I have grown in appreciation for this beautiful moment because life does not present us with many opportunities that focus so intensely on our mortality.
It is amazing how many people don't care or fail to observe the point. We watch the Walking Dead, but we fail to see that we ARE the Walking Dead.
Lent is the sister to brothers Ramadan and Yom Kippur, and she reminds us that we have to get ready to die.
Happy Wednesday everybody, you're going to die!
If you have ever attended Ash Wednesday services, willingly or unwillingly, you had your head smeared with ashes. Ashes that are the labour that destroyed and burned palm branches from the previous year's Palm Sunday. For a brief moment today, the Catholic world gets to experience the texture and smell of decay. Thankfully, our souls are odor free.
There are three things you are likely to hear as you receive the ashes: 'Repent, and hear the good news' or perhaps 'Turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel', but my favourite is 'Remember, o man, that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.'
Remember that, dear reader. We are dust, dust in the wind. With the deepest irony, I am reminding you that were born to die. There is no cure for life.
This reminds me of the Tragically Hip and their song The Inevitability of Death.
It was written with cheeky humour and is part of the Day For Night album. Gord Downie, wrote the lyrics to this jewel of a song, imagining the radio deejay struggling with himself how to introduce this single, as the listeners begin their morning commute. It would probably be slotted somewhere between the Insurance Broker commercial and the Retirement Home ad.
But I thought you beat the death of inevitability to death just a little bit
I thought you beat the inevitability of death to death just a little bit
It is time for me to stop beating this drum of death.
But it is also our time to stop watching and awake from our slumber.
