Ashes on the hearth

We don’t have much day-to-day contact with ashes these days. Awood stove in the winter, a fireplace, a barbecue grill, an ashtray. None of these is particularly symbolic or even suggestive of anything spiritual. And yet we gather once a year in great numbers to receive a cross of ashes on our foreheads.
In a book [...]

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Palms to Ashes

Each year we celebrate Palm Sunday.
We commemorate the triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem.
Our palms on that day suggest our hopes for victory.
We welcome our dream of a messiah.
But the green palms of feverish, excited hopes
can dry and crack in a long year of sorrow and joy.
Perhaps our hopes have been disappointed.
Perhaps we’ve betrayed another’s [...]

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