Ashes On This First Wednesday
Join Us NowPurpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!
Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and the hashtag is #IWSG.
Every month, we announce a question that members can answer in their IWSG posts. These questions may prompt you to share advice, insight, a personal experience, or a story. Include your answer to the question in your IWSG post or let it inspire your post if you are struggling with something to say.
Remember, the question is optional!
March 2 question – Have you ever been conflicted about writing a story or adding a scene to a story? How did you decide to write it or not?
The awesome co-hosts for the March 2 posting of the IWSG are Janet Alcorn,Pat Garcia,Natalie Aguirre, and Shannon Lawrence!
I’m skipping this month’s question because I don’t have an answer. I can’t remember being conflicted about including a scene. Now, I’m scratching my head because I’m wondering if I should have had this experience and somehow missed it.
For those who want to continue playing with WORDS FOR WEDNESDAY, please carry on. This is one long-lived meme!
Ash Wednesday MoonIt’s Ash Wednesday, so when that dawned on me, I turned my thoughts to what that day means for so many. Because my mind seems to skip around a lot, I re-read one of my favorite poets, Mr. T. S. Elliot, and then wrote this post.
The practice of marking people’s heads with ashes from the burnt palms of Palm Sunday gave this day its name. As I remember, the ashes are a symbol that represents man’s mortality. “From ashes you came and to ashes you shall return.” The ritual of this day is meant to remind Christians that while they are physical beings, they are also spiritual beings.
T. S. Elliot, had long been dissatisfied with the materialistic world of his day, and set out to explore this dissatisfaction in his poetry (The Waste Land and The Hollow Men). In his poem, Ash Wednesday, Elliot speaks to hope for human salvation in a faithless world. In it, the point of view character, begins as one who is hopeless and distraught about his human error. As the poem continues, it moves on to address what Elliot himself was striving for, an acceptance of true love. This was about spiritual love, not worldly love.
It seems that by the time he penned this poem, Elliot had turned from the materialistic world toward the spiritual one. He wrote, “Because I do not hope to turn again.” I take that to mean he believed he was on the right course away from the world he’d left us in with The Hollow Men and The Waste Land and was now headed toward one that was full of meaning and hope and spiritual fulfillment.
I’m sure my take on this is simplistic, but this is how I’ve always thought about these poems and T. S. Elliot who grappled with one of man’s largest choices in life. I’ve always been fascinated with how brilliantly he put such an important philosophical journey into words for others to consider.
If you’d like to read the entire poem, here’s a LINK that will take you to it.
Quote of the Week: “When the whole world is running headlong towards the precipice, one who walks in the opposite direction is looked at as being crazy.”– T. S. Elliot
