Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent, and we will offer three services on Ash Wednesday this year. On March 3, there will be services at 12:00 noon, 5:00 pm and 7:00 pm. The 5:00 service, which will last about half an hour, is planned especially for children and families, but all are welcome. The 7:00 pm bilingual service will include music led by the St. Michael’s Singers and will be livestreamed. All services will include the imposition of ashes.

A poem for Ash Wednesday:

BLESSING THE DUST
by Jan Richardson

All those days
you felt like dust,
like dirt, as if all you had to do
was turn your face toward the wind
and be scattered
to the four corners

or swept away
by the smallest breath
as insubstantial –

did you not know
what the Holy One
can do with dust?

This is the day
we freely say
we are scorched.

This is the hour
we are marked
by what has made it
through the burning.

This is the moment
we ask for the blessing
that lives within
the ancient ashes,
that makes its home
inside the soil of
this sacred earth.

So let us be marked
not for shame.
Let us be marked not for false humility
or for thinking
we are less
than we are

but for claiming what God can do
within the dust,
within the dirt,
within the stuff
of which the world
is made
and the stars that blaze
in our bones
and the galaxies that spiral
inside the smudge
we bear.