Ash Wednesday

Attended an Ash Wednesday service—I'm sitting at the computer with the little ash cross still marked on my forehead. Until this year, the church we attend had always had the custom of wiping the cross off when you went up to commune, because the Gospel reading for the service is the passage from the Sermon on the Mount about not showing off your piety to be seen of others. This year, they announced that we could wipe the cross off or keep it, according to our own discernment; they put out towels by the basin of holy water for people to use if they wanted. It looked to me like most people left after the service with their crosses still on their foreheads.

During the Eucharistic prayer that they like to use for Lent (there's a variety to choose from), there's a passage about "God of our fathers, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." These days, I usually hear that read as "God of our fathers and mothers," or "God of our forebears," and then sometimes the priest will start plugging in the names of wives: "God of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and..." And then things get tricky. "Jacob, Leah, and Rachel," is how I seem to remember hearing it done. (One year I heard a priest take an entirely different tack: "God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; God of Deborah, Ruth, and Mary.")

Last year, I was teasing the priest here, who adds the names of the wives, by daring her to add the concubines as well. So she did, much to my surprise. All through Lent last year, she read, "God of Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, and Keturah; God of Isaac and Rebekah; God of Jacob, Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah." That's one name short of being able to constitute a new Quorum of the Twelve. She did it again tonight. Afterwards I told her, "You know, you don't need to keep doing the polygamous thing on my account." She laughed and said, "But it's so much fun—all those Hebrew women."