Aschermittwoch fragt nichts

Ash Wednesday Asks Nothing The first Ash Wednesday that ever felt true to me was not in my native South but in New England, where winter presses into your bones and dusk seems to fall in midafternoon. I remember walking up Commonwealth Avenue as the last hues of daylight turned to dark gray over the Mass Pike. The cold thinned the breath inside my scarf. Marsh Chapel, Boston University’s neo-Gothic sentinel, glowed from within. The air inside was cool, smelling of wax and old wood. I had shed...