in honor of the day...

[lagilman]

Many years ago, a friend walked into our wednesday lunch and announced "I had forgotten it was Ash Wednesday until I saw people with shmutz on their foreheads." To which another luncher announced [paraphrasing due to memory loss] "only in NYC would an excommunicate Mormon use Yiddish to describe a Christian tradition..."

Comments

[sabriel-0405.livejournal.com]

This is definitely the funniest thing I have read today. Particularly since I am a good Jewish girl living in the heart of the Mormon church.

[yourbob.livejournal.com]

"only in NYC would an excommunicate Mormon use Yiddish to describe a Christian tradition..."

True - In SF it would be a gay pagan ex Mormon.

[ckd]

That is a good one! (I bet I can guess who the excommunicate Mormon is, too.)

[amygrech.livejournal.com]

That's a riot!

Amy

[quarkwiz.livejournal.com]

Hee. I do believe I was at that same lunch when she walked in. I've never forgotten that turn of phrase.

[alfreda89.livejournal.com]

Yes, but T has a Jewish feel about herself sometimes, at least as viewed by a non-Jew. (Perhaps especially in the fact that she insisted on being excommunicated.)

My introduction to the practice was my mother telling us one day before going to school that if we see a smudge on anyone's forehead not to comment, because it was Ash Wednesday and they probably had been to church.

I saw more than one individual taking advantage of the holiday to rub dirt on their faces, thus demonstrating early in my life that no cow is sacred and can and will be gored, by some American. Not knowing about Ash Wednesday yet, being raised Presbyterian, I did wonder why the church was specifically making people dirty. Fortunately for my Mom, it was one of those days I didn't immediately take her off into weird questions about churches.

We are the most religious and least spiritual people, as a whole, and it's interesting.