Traditionally the ashes are made by burning the palms from the previous Palm Sunday. The ashes Christians use to mark our foreheads remind us that we are made of dust and will return to dust. Lent is a season for humility, beginning with the most humble of days, Ash Wednesday.
Our lives are a meeting place of earth and heaven, and we bounce between humility and hubris. The slip in one pocket read, “You are nothing but dust and ashes,” and the slip in the other read, “The world was created for you.” We humans are creatures of the dust who are enlivened by the breath of God and created in God’s image. There’s an ancient Jewish tale about a rabbi who carried two slips of paper in his pockets.
