Ashes to Ashes

Palm Sunday--
heroes smiling,
people cheering

Mardi Gras and 
Shrove Tuesday's
debaucheries--
reasons for repenting.

Cleaning out
the fireplace--
Ash Wednesday

Ashes to ashes--
yet departed Guides
live on

Forty days
of austerities--
questioning demons

Buds emerging 
on leafless branches--
metaphors of
Rising from the Dead.

Devastating EARTHQUAKES--
Nature
does not care.  

Ash Wednesday

Origins of Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday

By T. S. Eliot, 1930

"The silent sister veiled in white and blue
Between the yews, behind the garden god,
Whose flute is breathless, bent her head and signed but spoke
no word

But the fountain sprang up and the bird sang down
Redeem the time, redeem the dream
The token of the word unheard, unspoken

Till the wind shake a thousand whispers from the yew

And after this our exile


V
If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word.

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Where shall the word be found, where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence
Not on the sea or on the islands, not
On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land,
For those who walk in darkness
Both in the day time and in the night time
The right time and the right place are not here
No place of grace for those who avoid the face
No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny
the voice"