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Local pastor turns heads downtown as he distributes ‘Ashes to Go’

Pastor Joe Medley and Linda Rowton walked the downtown area Wednesday, March 1, placing ashes on willing recipients they met on the sidewalks as a celebration of the liturgical holiday Ash Wednesday.

The two were participating, for the first time, in the Ashes to Go program, said Medley, who pastors both the Fir Lawn Lutheran and the Sweet Home United Methodist churches. Ash Wednesday begins the 40-day period of Lent, leading up to Easter Sunday.

Wearing clerical robes and pushing a wheelbarrow bearing an “Ashes to Go” sign, the two circled the downtown area, stopping to visit with people they met and applying ash to those who requested it, Medley pronouncing “From ashes we come, and to ashes we will return,” as he applied crosses to people’s foreheads or hands.

Medley made a point of noting that the ashes impart no religious blessing other than symbolizing humility.

“Ashes are not a sacrament,” Medley said. “It’s a sign of repentance, when we look to God and not just to ourselves. It’s a statement of mortality.”

This was the first year Medley has participated in Ashes to Go, which has spread nationwide since the program was founded in 2007 as a method of Christian evangelism. He said he hopes to do it again next year, with a little more publicity beforehand so people know what’s going on.

“It starts some great conversations,” he noted.

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