February 21, 2007
Manhattan Transfer
Ash Wednesday 2007
Two friends of mine once sang as part of a vocal quartet at a midtown Manhattan church. They tell the story that after a “lovely, reverent, and rueful” Ash Wednesday service, a small group of them adjourned to the subway and their trek home. This is their story:
We were still charged and energized from the solemnity and sweetness of the service and stood around talking, waiting for the train to show up, when a rather wild, apparently homeless man came up to us pointing at the large ash crosses on our foreheads. We started gently to explain, but he clearly had his own agenda and was not satisfied with our answers.
As the train pulled in, we piled on. The semi-scary man kept haranguing us. As the open subway door kept bumping against him, he shouted, “Whose ashes are they? Which dead person’s?” And we kept repeating, “They’re not from a person! They’re from palms… and they mean…. ” But he kept on, “Palms don’t have ashes!! Who is on your heads?”
The door closed. The man stood there on the platform, shouting, as the train left the station. He was so sure that we were marked with human remains, as, of course, in a way, we are. It is Jesus on our heads. It is Jesus on our minds. We’re all marked somehow, carrying our wounds, our memories, the signs for which we stand, seen or unseen. It is such a deep connection. His voice continues, “Who is on your heads?”
Many passengers around us also had smudgy crosses on their foreheads. To break the mood, we smiled plaintively at each other as we swayed into the night. We made a rough joke that if anything happened to any one of us, the police would charge our priest. His fingerprints were all over the place.
New York is always interesting.
No Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post.
| TrackBack URI
You can also bookmark
this on del.icio.us or check the cosmos