Ashes

When Holy days of obligation occur during the week, I often go to church at noon instead of all of us going to the evening mass.  Unfortunately, today I had a conflict, so we all went to mass together.  As soon as Karsten heard we were going to church, he asked if Father was going to put dirt on his face.  Apparently Karsten's teacher had ashes on her forehead and Karsten didn't like it.

This wasn't surprising to me as he doesan't like to have temporary tattos or face painting.  We told him if he didn't want to get ashes he could stay in the pew while the rest of us went up.  Sure enough, he stayed in his seat and waited for us.  When we got back, he kept looking at the ashes on our forehead.

Liam didn't pay too much attention to the ashes, but when we got back to our seats, he looked at me and said 'what on your face?' with a frown?  I chuckled because he didn't realize he had a very faint cross with ashes on his forehead.