Today millions of our siblings 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 marking the beginning of the season of Lent. “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Below are one and one-half stanzas of by T. S. Eliot’s poem: “Ash Wednesday“, and below that you can hear the entire piece.

Ash Wednesday (a glimpse)

by T. S. Eliot

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
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.

Peace, dwight

the day of ashes
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