EVERYONE is invited to join in this special parish Ash Wednesday Communion service co-led by Open Table, our LGBTQIA+ Community. We’ll be taking part in the international Glitter Ash initiative. Yes, you’ll get ashes - with a bit of glitter. It may sound frivolous, but it carries a serious message.
Glitter+Ash exquisitely captures the relationship between Ash Wednesday and Easter -- which is the relationship between death and new life. We do not live in fear of ash - of death - we place it on our foreheads for the world to see. We know that fear will rise, cramping our hearts.
We also know that God specifically calls us not to project that fear onto the Other, the alien, the stranger in our midst. God insists that we look for the spark of life, of hope, in ourselves and one another. This Ash Wednesday, we will make that spark easier to see. As Christians, we will witness to the gritty, glittery, scandalous hope that exists in the very marrow of our tradition.
Liz Edman, founder of the initiative says "what I was imagining with glitter + ash...the glitter from a drag queen's makeup falling to the floor, being swept up with the dust as that same drag queen walks home on darkened streets, risking life and limb by being their full self in view of others. This courage, this embrace of abjection, this determination to find joy while making queerness and beauty visible, audible -- all of this is the history and the conviction that I hoped we would smear on our foreheads for the world to see"
For more about the initiative visit
https://www.queervirtue.com/about-ga
