Ash Wednesday is an observance built around the imposition of ashes and not on the proclamation of the Word. The Lenten season is an invitation to think creatively about our discipleship journey. It is designed to be an inward-focused season that challenges us to be outward-focused. The examination of our souls isn’t simply so that we can be better individuals, but so that we can find our place in a wider community and in a world created by God. This year, we chose to focus on the invitation that Jesus gives when he says that he wants to gather us up like a mother hen gathers her brood. So, this season is a call to be gathered—to be gathered together as a community of faith, to be gathered up to a new perspective on our world and life together. It begins with an admission of sinfulness, but within a context of loving grace and forgiveness. The ashes, then, represent not simply our sin and desire to repent, to turn around, but also the recognition that we have been claimed by Christ and now seek to walk with him on this journey of self-denial.