Ashes to go, with a little extra sparkle
Smearing her thumb across 6-yearold Genevieve Dalton's forehead, the Rev. Robin Anderson repeated the solemn words of Ash Wednesday: "From dust you came. To dust you shall return."
Then Genevieve whirled away from the pastor, her forehead twinkling. "I really like glitter," she proclaimed.
Genevieve, like thousands of other Christians nationwide, got her ashes on this Ash Wednesday with a side of sparkles. The Glitter Ash project, created by New York nonprofit Parity, encouraged clergy to mix glitter into the ashes this year, to represent the inclusion of LGBT people in Christian life.
"People are responding with such joy that they can show their faith and show that they are LGBT," said the Rev. Marian Edmonds-Allen, executive director of Parity. "LGBT people are people of faith, too. ...On the day, Ash Wednesday, when Christians are publicly Christian, we are going to be publicly queer."
They encouraged heterosexual supporters of LGBT inclusion to wear the glitter ashes, too.
Glitter in the ashes, Anderson wrote on a whiteboard, is "a symbol of the gritty, glittery, scandalous hope that exists within all of us." She propped the board up in front of the Braddock Road Metro station entrance in Alexandria, Virginia, and offered sparkly ash to a stream of morning commuters.
Most of the people who stopped at Anderson's "ashes to go" station outside the subway entrance were looking only for ashes, not glitter. "I won't have time to go to Mass today," quite a few of them muttered.
Christians of numerous denominations typically mark Ash Wednesday – the beginning of a 40-day period of repentance, known as Lent, that leads up to the celebration of Easter – by having a minister mark a cross on their foreheads with ash, a remembrance of mortality. The practice is most common among Catholics, but is observed in many Protestant denominations as well.
Those who wanted just ashes, no glitter, at Braddock Road went to the Rev. Jeanette Leisk of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, who was doling out plain ashes. But over the course of the morning commuter rush, more than a dozen people opted for the glitter ash.
"This is to be affirming for those who are LGBT and allies," Anderson explained to those who were interested.
And for those in a hurry, she said simply, "These ashes have glitter in them."
"That's fine," one man said, crossing himself after he got his glitter ash and then sprinting to catch a train.
When Parity came up with the idea of glitter ashes, some Christians, even liberal ones, objected to the concept, saying that joyful glitter doesn't belong on Ash Wednesday, a day of repentance. Others said that asking people to choose between glitter ash and regular ash would only deepen the bitter division in many Protestant churches over homosexuality.