Among Christians, marking with ashes first occurred in the early Middle Ages as a sign of sorrow and repentance. Perhaps if we had lived then, with the Visigoths and the bubonic plague bearing down on us, when the slogan of the day was memento mori (“remember, you will die”) and a woman’s average life expectancy was 32 years, we too would have thought it was a splendid idea to show up at church once a year in sackcloth and ashes.
The symbol of ashes emerges from the depths of the earth, as old as fire, as bitter as shame, and as fundamental as death. When Abraham decides to bargain with God over the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, he says to God, “Who am I to bargain with you? I am nothing but dust and ashes.” After King David’s daughter, Tamar, is raped by her own brother, the scripture says she covered her head with ashes.
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