Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday 2023

This week marks the beginning of Lent on Ash Wednesday. Lent is forty-days long and leads up to Easter in the Western Christian Church calendar. As much as I like to mark various spiritual seasons and celebrations, there’s something about Ash Wednesday and the generic framing of Lent that puts me off. For years I didn’t give it much thought, except for the one day a year in elementary school when I was envious of my Roman Catholic classmates who got to come late to class because they’d gone to Ash Wednesday services to get a big dark smudge on the center of their foreheads.