Another ash Wednesday has come and gone and once again my forehead remains ash free. As a child growing up in the RCC Ash Wednesday meant more that just the start of lent, to us it meant a half day off from school! We would hop on the "parochial bus" and be carted off to the local RCC building of our parents choice where the priest would hold mass and apply the ashes to our foreheads. We were told that the ashes were from burnt palm branches left over from last Palm Sunday, but we in our 6th grade wisdom knew it was mostly ashes from Monsignor Logal's White Owl cigars. (If that were actually true Monsignor Logal could probably keep the entire Buffalo Diocese supplied in enough ash to make Ash Wednesday a monthly occurrence)
Of course we weren't totally sure of why we were carrying around a blob of ashes on our foreheads other than "it's the beginning of lent", we didn't have Sunday School, and what religious education we did receive was indoctrination in the Catholic catechism, which unless you're an overexcited theology student was a slow method of torture for meat eating 12 year olds. As for bible education - there was none.
Flash forward a few decades and several prayerful readings of the Bible later and I'm now a member of a biblically centered Christian church, and we don't do ashes, fasting before communion, or fish frys. I really miss western New York fish frys. But why do we not do Ashes and fasting during lent? (Then again we also don't do a Bacchanalia on the Tuesday before lent either) I mean, we are much more biblically oriented than the RCC by a very long shot, so why not the ashes... and sackcloth?
