The past year has been filled with different ways of living as well as worshipping. There are fewer people in church.  No holy water in the font. Communion only in the hand. No coffee and doughnuts.  Yet, we still worship and pray.  

Instead of giving ashes as a cross on the forehead – which has been deemed unsafe in this time of the COVID-19 pandemic – we can sprinkle them on the top of the head (permitted by our ritual rules of the church).  We will look a little cleaner, yet we will still be called to repentance and conversion of heart. And we will still bear ashes home to begin the disciplines of Lent, just not in the manner we have been used to overtime.