A rose - even dry, dusty and crushed, never stops being a rose

Really?  

Ash Wednesday is February 14?

Valentine's Day is Ash Wednesday?

Really?

So I wonder how your day has gone?  Off to church in the morning or at noon to confess your brokenness and receive the sign of ashes ... and then out for a candlelit dinner with your sweetie, hoping the low lights will help keep un-noticed the smudge on your forehead so your partner won't ask what you had to confess? 

Can you really do romance and confession on the same day?  Can sweet-talking to your honey and honest soul-searching with your priest and your faith community be done in the same 24 hours?

Maybe. Maybe it's even a wonderful gift that the calendar has given us this year.  (And just wait till you see when we get to celebrate Easter Sunday this year!)

Anyway ... back to Ash-Valentine's Wednesday.  

Roses are good (and yes, I still have to go out and buy some because I forgot on my way home!), and I'm sure Japhia will be glad for them, and I will be glad I got them.

But equally good and gladdening to us, I think, are the messy smudges of dried-out, dusty and even burned-in-the-cauldron-of-hurt-and-anger-and-honesty rose petal ashes we wear as the sign of being compelled to work over the years -- the last few especially, at the parts of life and relationship that lie beyond the first and even second or third blush of the roses.