Of new priests and ash blobs on Ash Wednesday 2015...

I call this one "Birthday Girl With Ash Blob" :)

Hello everyone, and a blessed Ash Wednesday to you! I just returned from Mass with the kids and...SUBLIME! We have a new priest at our parish and this was his first liturgy with us. I was nervous about this, because I really liked our other priest, and well, change is hard for me. ;-)

So we arrived and settled into our pew, our pile of coats, hats and mittens taking up the space of a whole separate person, and out comes the priest. Right away, I liked his face. :) He has a kind face. He seemed enthusiastic about being there, and like he really wanted to put his best foot forward. I warmed to him right away.

When he told a cute Lenten story from his Catholic school childhood to begin his homily, followed by an endearing joke, and then said how happy he was to be there with us...he won me right over. I love that style of presentation, very accessible and easy to relate to. He spoke for a few minutes about how he would share his story with us a little each week, about his journey to the priesthood and to our parish, and also share his Scripture reflections with us, so that hopefully we can grow in holiness together this Lent. And BOOM! That was it. Short and sweet, but extremely engaging and effective. I love this guy! I looked over at Henry and saw that he was actually paying attention and looked impressed.

#victoryisours

We all received our ashes, in the usual form, which is a rather blob-like structure, for whatever reason. A few people left right after receiving ashes, which I have to admit I find a bit baffling. Ashes but no Eucharist? But in fairness, they may have been on their lunch hour and had to get back to work. The fact that people journey to church at all on Ash Wednesday is an excellent thing.

So now we're home and Anne is down for her nap. I'm drinking tea to distract myself from my tempting pink cookie cake, and plotting egg salad sandwiches for dinner. It's truly been a lovely Ash Wednesday so far.

The only sore spot on the day was one minor incident this morning involving my wood knitting needle breaking about 90% of the way down a row of 353 stitches worth of fingering weight leaf lace, setting some stitches loose, and well. It wasn't pretty. :0 I had some *strong* words for that needle and I viciously removed it and replaced it with one of it's nickel-plated cousins. I hope it felt appropriately contrite and insulted. Some yarn overs had to be sacrificed in this process, causing me to have to unknit backwards so that I could fix the problem spot. I wasn't too happy about all of this, but all is well that ends well. I have one leaf that looks a bit drunk but it'll have to do.

OK! I'm cold and need more tea. I'm planning a quiet rest of the day, but I'll be on Twitter for anybody who wants to chat. :) And I'll be back tomorrow! How is your Ash Wednesday going?