“For some of us, coming to Ash Wednesday, coming to get the imposition of

ashes, feels a little odd. It feels odd because it’s like someone living in

a dust bowl being reminded that things are dusty. We know that; we open the

news and often enough it reads like Henderson’s letters to a friend:

‘Letters from a Dust Bowl.’ And nevertheless, we come. ‘From dust you came,

and to dust you shall return.’ Coughing, tired, struggling for any

visibility – we come.”