Ash Wednesday (Memento Homo)   Just a smudge — we no longer have to rend our garments. As for the fasting, that too is self-directed, you might say. And penance — well, what am I sorry for? And what do I mean to do about it? Anyway, I might just pass — penance is out of style. But even Jesus needed forty days to face his demons, undergo the trial that every one of us will undergo — the price of life is grief, and Jesus must have felt its sting and the burden of knowing what’s in store for all of us at journey’s end. The smudge is a dark mirror: Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.     © Michael Fleming Dummerston, Vermont February 2023