This year, Valentine’s Day is the same day as Ash Wednesday. It feels incongruous to connect a day that celebrates love with a day that reminds us of our mortality and need for repentance, but Christians are used to talking about love and death in the same breath. This Lent, we invite you to join Sutton Lowe and Dr. Kira Moolman Pettit as they do a deep dive into one of the prayers from the Ash Wednesday service, with the help of a little poetry.
Videos will be released each Wednesday in Lent beginning February 14th (Ash Wednesday). Make sure you are subscribed to www.youtube.com/thedoorfaithspace to be notified when new videos drop.
Week 1: Ashes and Hearts
"If ashes are to be imposed, the Celebrant says the following prayer"
The Woman Who Could Not Live With Her Faulty Heart, Margaret Atwood
Week 2: Beauty From Ashes
"Almighty God, you have created us out of the dust of the earth"
"Pied Beauty" by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Week 3: The Gift of Mortality
"Grant that these ashes may be to us a sign of our mortality"
"Foley Catheter" by Kimberly Johnson
Week 4: Penitence
"...and penitence"
"The Lambs" by Paul Vermeersch
Week 5: The Gift of Grace
"It is only by your grace that we are given everlasting life"
"The Skylight" by Seamus Heaney