Today millions of our sisters and brothers in Christ join together in an 1,100+ year-old tradition of commonly referred to as 'ash wednesday'. The ashes - which are from the burned palm branches from the previous year's Palm Sunday service - are placed on the forehead in the shape of a cross to mark the beginning of the season of Lent.
Below are one and one-half stanzas of
T. S. Eliot's poem: "Ash Wednesday"
As I am forgotten
And would be forgotten, so I would forget
Thus devoted, concentrated in purpose. And God said
Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only
The wind will listen. And the bones sang chirping
With the burden of the grasshopper, saying
Lady of silences
Lady of silences
Calm and distressed
Torn and most whole
Rose of memory
Rose of forgetfulness
Exhausted and life-giving
Worried reposeful
The single Rose
Is now the Garden
Where all loves end
Terminate torment
Of love unsatisfied
The greater torment
Of love satisfied
End of the endless
Journey to no end
Conclusion of all that
Is inconclusible
Speech without word and
Word of no speech
Grace to the Mother
For the Garden
Where all love ends.
Thanks to a fellow blogger, thinker, teacher, leader, artist, counselor, learner, disciple, and friend Dwight Friesen who shared this with my through his blog last year. "May the dust of you rabbi be on you" as you move into the season of Lent [taken from some thoughts by Rob Bell]
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