Ashes, ashes

Truly random bullets of Ash Wednesday:

• I did not see any students running around campus today with ashy black crosses on their foreheads. I did not see any teachers in a similar state, either. Nor was I among them, as our service is in the evening.
• Am I weird for noticing the ash particles falling from my forehead and the priest's finger to my nose? I've got an obvious cross-shaped black smudge across my forehead, but I'm worried about getting smudges on my nose. Really.
• It is surprisingly simple to make ashes for Ash Wednesday. I had to do it once, when I still attended Once-Amazing-Church-that-Tragically-Imploded. Take the palm fronds from Palm Sunday (of the previous year); put fronds into metal roaster pan; start gas bbq; place open metal roaster pan onto grill; flames will erupt of their own accord before long; allow fronds to burn down into ashes; allow ashes to cool; sift ashes and place in appropriate container. That's it; no tricks, no accelerant, no additives. One Palm Sunday's worth of fronds made enough ashes for several years.
• Psalm 143 was assigned this morning. Verse 10 in most versions reads, "Teach me to do your will, for you are my God." I prefer the way the English Standard version (the Authorized) puts it (as I often do; I am, after all, an English teacher and Shakespeare fan, so I love the old poetic language): "Teach me to do the thing that pleaseth thee; for thou art my God; let thy loving Spirit lead me forth in the land of righteousness."
• Lent is a time of both taking off and taking on, of shedding and adding, of retraining focus. It is not merely about deprivation and metaphoric self-flagellation. It's about portfolio diversification, as it were -- pulling resources out of less productive vehicles and reinvesting them in more effective and profitable funds. As it were.