“Wow, that guy has dirt on his forehead,” I remember thinking…”Didn’t that woman look in the mirror before leaving the house?” I then wondered. Her appearance struck me as particularly odd because, other than her dirty forehead, the woman looked quite presentable—even fashionable—while strolling along Newbury Street.
After seeing a number of otherwise “normal” looking passers-by with gray smudges on their faces, I finally realized that I must be the clueless one here. Veiled in my private sense of ignorance, I knew one thing for sure: something was going on that a lot of people other than me knew about. I just needed to find out what it was without embarrassing myself…
Why would I be familiar with what I eventually found out was a common, but seemingly unusual, religious ritual? I mean, my Mom is a non-practicing Episcopalian, my Dad was a non-practicing Jew, and I graduated from a private Quaker high school, where none of my friends were practicing Catholics.
That was my first Ash Wednesday as a Boston resident. More than 20 years later, the beginning of Lent usually takes me a bit by surprise, as it did again just last week. But rather than causing confusion, it’s become a pleasant reminder of my having once been a newly minted Bostonian. And thanks to the work of New York-based photographer Greg Miller—whose spectacular portraits of ordinary people observing Ash Wednesday recently appeared on npr.com—I’ll now look forward to this annual observance with great anticipation.
When and how did you first become aware of Ash Wednesday?
Scribe in the City 
Loved this post, Val. I grew up Catholic so my awareness of the ashes tradition was so complete that I probably made it all the way to adulthood before it ever occurred to me that others might find it odd. For me, your post is a nice reminder to celebrate diversity. Thanks for the link to Greg Miller’s work, too. Excellent!
Thank you for the kind feedback and personal point-of-view!
I appreciate your reflection, Val. Even growing up Lutheran and knowing about ashes for a long time, I don’t think I really understood the depth of it until I became a pastor and had the privilege of doing the “smudging.” It’s rather powerful to make that simple cross in ashes on people’s foreheads – wrinkly ones, toddler ones, bald ones, pierced ones. It’s one of those marks that reminds me the ground is level at the cross and life is fleeting, but that there’s hope that new life can come from the ashes.
Megan—thank you for your insightful reply to my fairly shallow discussion 🙂
Sorry – occupational hazard! 🙂