Happy Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday has always been my favorite holy day. Weird, since it's supposed to be the ultimate downer in a 40-day stretch of downers, but yeah, my favorite. I went to Catholic school from Kindergarten until college, so seeing faces smudged with ash once a year was never surprising to me. Still, even as a child I found it incredibly meaningful, being surrounded by hundreds of people bearing a mark of their faith on their forehead.

I'm not the biggest churchgoer, I'll admit. But there's a comfort in the rituals of Catholicism. Incense, songs in a key that no human can sing, eating the flesh of the son of God.

As a child, the ash seemed subtle, a small cross under our bangs to remind us that for the next 40 days we were not to eat M&Ms or watch saturday cartoons or whatever it was our little hearts had given up. Ten years later, with a Church in crisis, the ashes were larger, bolder, a claim to the world that the dying Church has not yet died.

Today, it felt like wearing the mark of a secret club, and I was surprised every time I saw a fellow member step off the elevator, sit down on the subway, pass me on the street with their eyes fixed to my forehead. So much shared experience exists in being a Catholic, devout, lapsed, or fallen off completely.

'Yeah,' the ashes say, 'me too.'

'I wore a uniform skirt rolled up to my underpants.'

'At my first confession, I told the priest I had committed no sins'

'I thought I was pregnant the first time a boy french-kissed me.'