WE WILL BE SEEN

Yeah, we'll get ashes -- with a bit of glitter.

Glitter is like love. It’s irresistible and irrepressible. Any contact and it’s all over you. Try to get rid of it? You can’t. Want to put it back in the bottle? Good luck!

WE WILL TELL THE TRUTH

  • Ashes are an in-your-face statement that death and suffering are real.

  • The glitter will be a sign of our hope, which does not despair.

  • The glitter will signal our promise to repent, to show up, to witness, to work.

  • Glitter never gives up -- and neither do we.

THEY'LL KNOW WE ARE CHRISTIANS BY OUR LOVE AND BY THAT BIG OL' GLITTERY/ASHY SMUDGE ON OUR FOREHEADS.

It's a Black Smudge

KIND OF LOOKS LIKE A CROSS.

YOU CAN'T UNSEE IT.

It tells everyone in your world -- in the office, at the grocery store, walking down the street: I'm a Christian.

A Film about Glitter + Ash

THE NEED FOR PROGRESSIVE CHRISTIAN WITNESS HAS NEVER BEEN MORE URGENT

Glitter is an inextricable element of queer history. It is how we have always displayed our gritty, scandalous hope. We make ourselves fabulously conspicuous, giving offense to the arbiters of respectability that allow coercive power to flourish.

Glitter+Ash is an inherently queer sign of Christian belief, blending symbols of mortality and hope, of penance and celebration. Ash Wednesday is the beginning of Lent, a season of repentance. During Lent, Christians look inward and take account in order to move forward with greater health. At this moment in history, glitter ashes will be a powerful reminder of St. Augustine’s teaching that we cannot despair because despair paralyzes, thwarting repentance and impeding the change that we are called to make.

Glitter+Ash exquisitely captures the relationship between Ash Wednesday and Easter -- which is the relationship between death and new life. We do not live in fear of ash - of death - we place it on our foreheads for the world to see. We know that fear will rise, cramping our hearts. We also know that God specifically calls us not to project that fear onto the Other, the alien, the stranger in our midst. God insists that we look for the spark of life, of hope, in ourselves and one another. This Ash Wednesday, we will make that spark easier to see. As Christians, we will witness to the gritty, glittery, scandalous hope that exists in the very marrow of our tradition.