It strikes me as particularly poignant that Ash Wednesday falls on Valentine’s Day this year.
There are no brighter, cheerier decorations than those related to Valentine’s Day. Walk through any store and prepare to be overwhelmed by the crimson candy boxes, balloons and ruby roses. Each Valentine’s Day I’m reminded of the Valentines I helped my three daughters assemble to take to their various classes. The decorated “mailboxes,” the Dum-Dums Scotch taped to the paper Valentines. Everywhere, there are frills and hearts.
And this year, on the altar, ashes and thorns.
I have always loved Ash Wednesday. I revel in the darkness, the solemnity of it. There’s something invigorating about contemplating death while still alive. I always embrace it as the start of a new journey—a pathway to Easter and spring and all things hopeful. Valentine’s Day, on the other hand, seems overly commercialized, silly in many ways. But you have to admit that this year’s juxtaposition between the gleeful Valentine’s Day and the solemn commencement to the Lenten season is ironic.
The tradition of Ash Wednesday originated in the 11th century. It is a take on the Hebrew custom of dressing in sackcloth and dusting oneself with ashes—a sign of penance. Today, we Christians lift our heads to receive a sign of the cross in ashes. This is how we acknowledge our shortcomings and begin the journey through Lent to Easter Sunday. Ashes on our foreheads symbolize that—at least for the next 40 days—we are going to strive to be better.
But those ashes are way too easy to wash off. Literally and figuratively.
It is traditional to give something up for Lent. I’ve been guilty more than once of giving up foods I don’t like. Okay, okay, I say, I’ll sacrifice and give up turnip greens. Or sodas: I drink so few that giving them up was never much of a sacrifice. One year, the universe beat me at my own game: I decided I would give up elevators. Since I parked on the fifth floor of a parking garage at work, and the street entrance was level two, I felt those three flights of stairs represented a sufficient sacrifice—and gave my thighs a much needed workout. I was feeling pretty self-righteous until construction unexpectedly started on the middle floors and I had to park on Floor 11 for three weeks. (I never gave up elevators again).
Someone suggested to me once that instead of giving up something, we should consider adding something. What if we all added a little empathy into our lives? I, for one, catch myself being judgmental without trying to understand what it’s like to walk in someone else’s shoes. We aren’t empathetic to those who don’t share our beliefs, our views—to those who pledge allegiance to a different flag or live on a distant shore. We deny empathy to the downtrodden and the poor because, after all, why don’t they just pull themselves up?
We shun the stranger and the strange.
Many years ago, one of my daughters had a classmate who was a bit of an outcast. Although today there could potentially be countless diagnoses for her, back then we just called her odd. The kids called her strange. She lacked friends, spending most of her time alone. I remember sitting down with my daughter to punch out her perforated valentines. In the kit which I had bought, there were two Valentines bigger and snazzier than all the others. My daughter set those aside and at the end painstakingly secured an extra piece of candy to each one. When I asked who the lucky recipients were, one was her best friend; the other was for the outcast in her class. When I told her how nice I thought that was, she simply smiled and said, “Yeah, she needs extra love.”
And a little child shall lead them.
Perhaps there’s not that much difference in Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day after all. We observe both out of love, out of a desire to spread happiness, to embrace beauty and be our best selves. Valentine’s beauty comes as a kiss, or a chocolate or a fragrant bouquet. Ash Wednesday’s beauty reveals itself in the peace that death often brings, in the quiet acceptance of how much we are loved no matter how big our failings. Maybe in a world of so much polarity and pain, we need the brash giddiness of Valentine’s Day just as much as we need to take stock of our own mortality, our own shortcomings.
To wear our ashes— and not just for one day.
Perhaps such is the road to repairing our society, one person at a time. Surely that road is paved in empathy—even as expressed in a cardboard Valentine with an extra Dum-Dum dangling from it.
IN THE MIDDLE 