… a place where two ways meet (Mark 11:4).

When red and ash blend, the corollary is, if you care to check closely online, “Always avoid mixing colours that are the opposite of each other,”  especially under, “Can you mix ash with red”? This is only at the level of the literal.

This piece does not attempt to preoccupy itself with the background of the celebrations. The crux of this presentation concerns itself with the “neitherness” (for neither of the concepts is) of the age-long traditions.

While Ash Wednesday is a religious ritual that announces the Lent (the six weeks of penitence before Easter), Valentine’s, with all its surrounding legend and shades, can summarily mean “lovers’ day.” Both attempts lamely point humanity to a better way of living, but like the dead end they are, mankind continues to run headlong into the cul-de-sac of vanity.

Applying the ash on the forehead is mimicking the Passover, but the ash can never imitate the Blood. Holy Writ enshrines,

“And the Blood shall be to you for a token                                                                         upon…. (Exodus 12:13)

It is the Blood, and not the ash, that shall be a token upon. The Speaker here continues, “… when I see the Blood, I will pass over you.” If there is no Blood upon, rest assured that judgement is coming upon. Anything other than the Blood of the Lamb that rests on humanity’s forehead attracts judgement. Only the Blood repels judgement.

If Val is the day of love, then it is also the Day of God, for God is love. The perversion that characterizes lovers’ day with its attendant presentation of gifts only further divorces it from the Love that God is. God is love but He does not give with an ulterior motive; man does. God gives willingly and does not upbraid. Man? Our human relationships are a reminder that we are culprits rehearsing love.

If our mortality is ashen; our immortality is Bloodlined.  Val and Ash commemorate, in a pensive sense, FUN and FUNeral. Fun stretched beyond limits extend to funeral.

Let the Blood speak, for the ash lacks utterance. And, if you must know, the Blood speaks better things than the blood of bulls and of goats (the categories of Ash Wed and Val).

Val-Ash: two ways leading nowhere but perdition. There’s only a Bloodpath that says, “I AM the Way.” Jesus is the Way. Though there are other ways, they lead to a dead end: a damnable end. Two, three or more ways can meet in hell. One Way leads upward to Heaven: Jesus is.