Ashing

Inspired by Malcolm Guite’s commentary (quoted below) here is my celebration of Ash Wednesday: me, hair unbrushed, no makeup, sitting in bed, with a Christmas jumper on over my pyjamas (which even the Hermes delivery lady laughed at!) - a look which is normally kept well away from photos!

In the words of Malcolm Guite here’s why this is my celebration of Ash Wednesday:

“Sprinkling ashes on one’s head was a sign of mourning and grief - the opposite of the oil of gladness - and went with ‘rending’ one’s garments, a rejection of all those sleek tricks of self-presentation with which we seek to disguise our true selves from God and from others.

I sometimes wonder whether instead of a brief ritual ‘ashing’ we shouldn’t use Ash Wednesday as a day to rebel against our culture’s obsessive concern with body image, presentation, clothing and appearance. Fashion models could be encouraged to dress as dowdily as possible, and we could all be invited to eschew the pressures of those ‘photo-shopped’ images of the impossibly thin and glamourosa, resting instead on the inner beauty of simply being loved, at last, and in spite of all, by the maker of the cosmos.”