Ash Wednesday in London
Nick Spencer
October 1, 2001
The meeting ended just in time. I scampered down St. John's Street, across Smithfield Market and into St. Paul's, arriving under the dome just as "The sacrifice of God is a broken spirit … " I drifted over the congregation. My mind was still juggling with the pitfalls of brand equity and refused to rest. I noticed a gaggle of tourists who had sneaked into the service, gawping at Wren's handiwork and ignoring the lesson. I berated them silently, and then noticed myself noticing them and wondered who I was really irritated with.
Eventually, my mind settled and, under the vast, brocaded bell jar, I was reminded that I was dust and would return to dust. I was pushed to that comforting precipice of faith: "God can make and remake you from dust. Will you countersign that? Because if you will, you have waved goodbye to reality and you might just begin to understand what he really is capable of." And I was marked accordingly, with the sign of the cross.
But it was the walk back to work which struck me. Down Ludgate Hill and left to Blackfriars, a hundred people eyed me curiously. Very politely, or course. No overt staring. No gawking. In that delightfully English manner, my fellow pedestrians would double-take—faintly, quickly, subtly—when they registered the smear on my forehead. Sometimes, I would catch their eye and in that microsecond's intimacy I would try to read through their surprise. What was it they saw?
Dirt at first, no doubt. And then? An oddball? A religious nutcase? Or perhaps a relic? A curious fossil of a near-extinct culture? Why was I wearing the sign in public? |I could remind myself of my mortality without publicizing it. Was I telling them I was a Christian, or myself?
The brand, we are told, has ...
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